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Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

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Re: Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

#71

Post by will_pseudonym »

abalone wrote: post #57

At the risk of sounding pedantic this is not a Level 4 demo. It is a Level 2 demo where the driver didn't have to intervene during the demonstrated route. What's the difference? Apart from the legal requirement to have a diver ready to take over in test vehicles (which necessarily makes it Level 2), the fundamental difference is that you'd have to show a lot more than one demo to establish that you've achieved Level…

Thank you! This is not pedantry at all. You are correcting incorrect misleading safety claims.

Re: Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

#72

Post by MaulingMonkey »

phil21 wrote: post #53
Stratoscope wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is scary is how few drivers in California know about this rule or the reason behind it, which is for the safety of the bicyclists. Near my home there are several intersections with bike lanes, and I estimate that perhaps one driver in 10 enters the bike lane to make the right turn as they are required to. In fact, I sometimes get surprised or even dirty looks from drivers making illegal right turns when I do mov…

When only 10% of drivers apparently know the correct way, the problem is with the system not the drivers. Better signage and more consistent (state to state) rules that make common sense would go a long way. Keeping in mind what is common sense to a biker is many times counter-intuitive to a driver. I hate the unprotected bike lanes on the right - as a driver you simply are not expecting people to be passing you on t…

> I hate the unprotected bike lanes on the right - as a driver you simply are not expecting people to be passing you on the right, on what effectively "feels" like a shoulder

Having driven for a bit in California I'm now used to expecting people to be passing me on the right, on the left, between lanes - everywhere - thanks to a combination of legal and illegal lane splitting by motorcycles and mopeds.

Re: Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

#73

Post by tgb »

grogenaut wrote: post #30

Random side thought: How do I signal in an ambiguous situation to the car on who's going first. Like Super high traffic and I want to merge in front of them or let them go first? Currently I do that with a wave. Which is super effective on a motorcycle as people almost always say "sure we can squeeze you in here" which lets me get places way faster.

I've read that insurance people strongly suggest to never wave: it's one of the top things that seems to occur during accidents. It's hard to distinguish from someone "waving you on" versus someone "waving to say thanks for letting me go". Trusting anyone else to check for oncoming traffic is a terrible idea. It's really easy to focus on the wave-giver and not check the rest of the traffic. And even if you are good at these, all waves are inherently involving at least 2 drivers, and you can't really count on them being any good.

I couldn't find any real information on this though. I think I picked it up from Reddit comments. Some info does suggest it's legally complicated: http://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2014/03/06/244965...

Re: Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

#74

Post by Jedd »

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #55
ea2100 wrote: post #39

Funny to see the it slow down for the pigeon in the road at 14:50.

Hah, nice catch, I remember seeing it do that weird jig but didn't look rewind or look close enough to figure out why it did that.

There is a paragraph and video fragment describing this in TFA.

Re: Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

#75

Post by tigershark »

abalone wrote: post #57

At the risk of sounding pedantic this is not a Level 4 demo. It is a Level 2 demo where the driver didn't have to intervene during the demonstrated route. What's the difference? Apart from the legal requirement to have a diver ready to take over in test vehicles (which necessarily makes it Level 2), the fundamental difference is that you'd have to show a lot more than one demo to establish that you've achieved Level…

I agree completely. And the video although not new is quite impressive. But if the claim of the author that San Francisco is a tough city in which to drive is true, than I fear that some parts of Italy (and probably A LOT of cities in the world) won't have self driving cars for a very long time. When I saw the video the first time I was very impressed, but I would have never imagined that for someone that was a VERY challenging urban scenario. From the article:

    when we see the streets of San Fransisco conquered, then we know that self-driving is ready to come of age.
Seriously? And if you conquer the street of Naples what will come of age?

Re: Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

#76

Post by Jedd »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #42

Dumb question: how do these systems distinguish a traffic light? Here in New England at least, there's quite a variety of lights, many different modes (red, yellow, green, flashing red, flashing yellow, no-turn-left red arrow, no-turn-right red arrow, and different light technologies: old-fashioned style, Fresnel lens, slotted shade. Add to this complexity the weather conditions. Suppose the sun is shining straight a…

> Dumb question: how do these systems distinguish a traffic light?

Well, how do you distinguish / identify a traffic light?

For me it's a combination of knowing the area, knowing what a traffic light looks like, and observing the behaviour of traffic around (mostly in front) of me (if the intersection isn't visible).

For an autonomous vehicle, they'd use the same methods plus they'd have the non-trivial added benefit of colleague robots feeding them updated information.

> Suppose the sun is shining straight at you and you need to squint ...

I'm sure the human eye + sunglasses + visor comes a poor second compared to CCD + mechanical + IR + (etc) can do.

> What about when it's raining, misting or drizzling, snowing heavily, etc. and the traffic lights are these fragmented outlines that you, the human, can heuristically distinguish but a machine might not?

Interesting use of the word heuristic there. If you can determine the heuristics you are using, then an autonomous vehicle can use the same.

> One last thought: suppose it's right turn on red and first car in line is a self-driving vehicle. Can it really look left and safely determine there's enough time to beat the cross traffic? If it's highly conservative and just waits until green, there could be ten irate motorists behind it and guaranteed to honk and curse.

This, and variations, frequently come up in discussions on AV. There's an implicit expectation that no one building these things has considered this problem (this is clearly false). There's two explicit expectations that once a tipping point of AV's are out there, a) there'll be a regulatory push to massively accelerate the adoption close to 100%, and b) inter-vehicle communication means this problem won't arise. In the short term these problems may occur, but to address your question, yes, I'd suggest a computer would be better able to predict if there's enough time to safely turn than most humans.

> I worry that if these machines can't demonstrate 110% of a human's ability ...

Which human would you pick?

Anyway, I wouldn't worry - none of these problems are intractable.

Re: Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

#77

Post by CoolGuySteve »

tigershark wrote: post #75
abalone wrote: post #57

At the risk of sounding pedantic this is not a Level 4 demo. It is a Level 2 demo where the driver didn't have to intervene during the demonstrated route. What's the difference? Apart from the legal requirement to have a diver ready to take over in test vehicles (which necessarily makes it Level 2), the fundamental difference is that you'd have to show a lot more than one demo to establish that you've achieved Level…

I agree completely. And the video although not new is quite impressive. But if the claim of the author that San Francisco is a tough city in which to drive is true, than I fear that some parts of Italy (and probably A LOT of cities in the world) won't have self driving cars for a very long time. When I saw the video the first time I was very impressed, but I would have never imagined that for someone that was a VERY…

This is moreso true for China and India.

If you've ever been to those countries, the first thing you notice as a westerner is that the streets are chaos, traffic rules are barely obeyed, and aggressiveness is required to get anywhere.

Meanwhile, Beijing and Dehli have extreme pollution problems partially caused by cars.

If any place was in need of point to point autonomous ride sharing, it's Asia. The reduction in cars would reduce congestion from the outset. But in the future, protocol guided right of way negotiation could reduce congestion even further.

Re: Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

#78

Post by kuschku »

gcheong wrote: post #49
employee8000 wrote: post #6

Very cool. But am I mistaken that they didn't attempt to go through a 4-way stop with massive pedestrians, like in PacHeights or Marina? I would be curious to see how they fared with the obnoxious drivers skipping their turn as well as the constant flow of pedestrians. I'm also curious how it would react to going up Mason and California, where there's a traffic light at the top of a steep hill. Last time I had to phy…

I'm guessing that will be part of Level 5 or at least we will be very close to level 5(full) autonomy once complex situations like 4-way stops with lots of pedestrians have been mastered.

So you’re saying until we reach Level 5, autonomous cars will be entirely useless almost everywhere except a handful of US cities?

Re: Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

#79

Post by fsckin »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #77
tigershark wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely. And the video although not new is quite impressive. But if the claim of the author that San Francisco is a tough city in which to drive is true, than I fear that some parts of Italy (and probably A LOT of cities in the world) won't have self driving cars for a very long time. When I saw the video the first time I was very impressed, but I would have never imagined that for someone that was a VERY…

This is moreso true for China and India. If you've ever been to those countries, the first thing you notice as a westerner is that the streets are chaos, traffic rules are barely obeyed, and aggressiveness is required to get anywhere. Meanwhile, Beijing and Dehli have extreme pollution problems partially caused by cars. If any place was in need of point to point autonomous ride sharing, it's Asia. The reduction in ca…

I tried to flag a taxi in downtown Shanghai for 45 minutes and finally gave into the broken English speaking motorcycle taxi who had been circling the block every five minutes.

Riding bitch through Hangpu to Pudong with a laptop in one arm while lane splitting with aggressive (and otherwise bad drivers) all around was a rather exciting experience.

Even with a skilled pilot, the adrenaline rush was similar to my first time tandem skydiving.

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