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Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

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Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#91

Post by Mizza »

shogun21 wrote: post #79

I feel like they're really getting on the cute-sy theme, from the car's friendly design to the name "Waymo". The lack of control is still kind of terrifying so I think they're trying to make it as non-threatening as possible.

> "The lack of control is still kind of terrifying so I think they're trying to make it as non-threatening as possible."

This is true of all Google products, and has been the basis of Google's branding strategy from the very beginning. The dorky, colorful logo isn't an accident. They are a scary, dangerous and harmful company with an extremely friendly face.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#92

Post by untog »

heywire wrote: post #55

On days like today, when there are several inches of snow on the ground and more to come, I always wonder how autonomous vehicles will handle such situations. What happens when snow (or mud, etc) accumulates on the camera or sensors? I don't doubt that a computer can react quicker and with more precision in an "event", but what about when it simply can't "see"? I don't see a steering wheel in these videos, so I guess…

It's a fair question, but it doesn't seem unsolvable. And humans have huge issues driving in snow themselves, so by comparison even sightly impaired self driving will be preferable.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#93

Post by ksrm »

boxcardavin wrote: post #32

Google's commitment to SDCs has always seemed half hearted so I wonder if this indicates that they are getting more serious about it. Moonshots at X have been getting the axe, the SDC stuff seems to be the only obviously viable one right now. To the surprise of many folks (myself included) it has turned out that SDC tech is probably for existing manufacturers to develop versus software guys learning how to build cars…

I haven't been in either. What differences do you mean?

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#94

Post by tannedNerd »

zfedoran wrote: post #72
heywire wrote: post #55

On days like today, when there are several inches of snow on the ground and more to come, I always wonder how autonomous vehicles will handle such situations. What happens when snow (or mud, etc) accumulates on the camera or sensors? I don't doubt that a computer can react quicker and with more precision in an "event", but what about when it simply can't "see"? I don't see a steering wheel in these videos, so I guess…

These cars will likely have many sensors of different types at overlapping locations, its not likely to keep going if all are completely unusable. But I wonder about the snow though. How does the car know where to go when there are no identifying lane features? Maybe its not as hard of a problem as I believe it to be?

How does a human do it? It's extremely hard but recognizing landmarks like a guard rail or plow markers would be possible. Or maybe self driving cars will apply a sane approach and stay off the streets in bad weather unlike human piloted vehicles. (There is a whole other rant about letting employees work from on bad snow days)

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#95

Post by rorykoehler »

stormbrew wrote: post #59
joeguilmette wrote: post #49

I'm interested to see where all the major players end up in 5yrs: • Tesla bootstrapping a ride service on the backs of buyers • Waymo directly rolling their own fleet • Uber trying to get a self-driving fleet up, burning mountains of money to maintain their "monopoly" on Uber for rides • Lyft working with GM to get a fleet up • All of the other car manufacturers trying to get autonomous vehicles going, presumably hop…

Uber is literally all over the world, though. Google can barely launch a keyboard app outside the US. Or a payment system. Lyft is still constrained entirely to the US and a handful of large Asian cities. I think people severely underestimate Uber's worldwide push in preparing themselves to be a force to be reckoned with when the autonomous vehicle takes off.

It won't be worth anything because autonomous ride-sharing will be a pricing game. Anyone who undercuts Uber, and there will be plenty of willing and able companies, will beat them.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#96

Post by heywire »

scarmig wrote: post #86
zfedoran wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These cars will likely have many sensors of different types at overlapping locations, its not likely to keep going if all are completely unusable. But I wonder about the snow though. How does the car know where to go when there are no identifying lane features? Maybe its not as hard of a problem as I believe it to be?

I really don't get these questions. "How will the car drive in whiteout conditions where the road is frozen over and not at all visible?" Same way a (smart) human drives: it will pull over. For substantially less crazy conditions, you can infer where the lanes would be by (a) looking at the spots of the road you can see, (b) prior knowledge of the road from experience, and (c) looking at oncoming cars and the flow of…

You must not live somewhere that gets a lot of snow :) For those of us that do, sometimes driving conditions are much less than ideal, even unsafe. Several times per winter I have to drive home from work on unplowed roads. As you put it, I have prior knowledge of the road (maybe precise GPS will help here?), and I can figure out where it is safe to drive based on tire tracks. I guess these will just be places that you probably won't have one of these vehicles (just as you wouldn't ride your motorcycle in such weather).

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#97

Post by virmundi »

cphoover wrote: post #83
joeguilmette wrote: post #49

I'm interested to see where all the major players end up in 5yrs: • Tesla bootstrapping a ride service on the backs of buyers • Waymo directly rolling their own fleet • Uber trying to get a self-driving fleet up, burning mountains of money to maintain their "monopoly" on Uber for rides • Lyft working with GM to get a fleet up • All of the other car manufacturers trying to get autonomous vehicles going, presumably hop…

a whole industry of workers will be out of the job. How will society react? Will we have a socialist revolt? Want to stay clear from politics... but seriously why isn't anyone talking about the socioeconomic impact this will have once drivers are put out of the job? IMHO this is the reason Trump won the election, because there is no plan for these people.

There are plenty of conversations around that idea here. UBI for example. Some people think that the population in general will retool (some will get left behind). Others point to the horse population in the US that went from some 5 million to a few hundred thousand following mechanized transportation as an example of what will happen to the middle class.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#98

Post by rorykoehler »

cphoover wrote: post #83
joeguilmette wrote: post #49

I'm interested to see where all the major players end up in 5yrs: • Tesla bootstrapping a ride service on the backs of buyers • Waymo directly rolling their own fleet • Uber trying to get a self-driving fleet up, burning mountains of money to maintain their "monopoly" on Uber for rides • Lyft working with GM to get a fleet up • All of the other car manufacturers trying to get autonomous vehicles going, presumably hop…

a whole industry of workers will be out of the job. How will society react? Will we have a socialist revolt? Want to stay clear from politics... but seriously why isn't anyone talking about the socioeconomic impact this will have once drivers are put out of the job? IMHO this is the reason Trump won the election, because there is no plan for these people.

Musk is talking about Universal Basic Income regularly. I also can't really see any other way this will pan out.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#99

Post by emmett »

cjcole wrote: post #68

"The average US city gets 26 inches of snow per year." http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/california/mountain_v... "Snowfall is 0 inches." http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/arizona/phoenix "Snowfall is 0 inches." http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/texas/austin "Snowfall is 1 inches." http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/washington/kirkland "Snowfall is 4 inches." I hope they are driving far enough from…

Do you really think it hasn't occurred to WayMo/Google that maybe they should test their cars in snow/rain/sleet/fog/confetti?

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#100

Post by Fricken »

yessql wrote: post #30
ucaetano wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"how they compare to Tesla" Given that Tesla doesn't even have emergency braking and auto-steering, I'd guess they compare quite favorably...

Tesla will have 100,000 prototypes being trained in shadow mode for a billion miles per year across the globe within a year. Tesla will compare quite favorably

One can scale up the first 99% of an autonomous driving os pretty fast just using pattern recognition, but the devil is in the edge cases.

We haven't heard much from Google because they've been programming and validating all the unglamorous little problems that training data and a neural net can't solve alone. 4 way stops, passing motorcyclists and stuff like that, where old fashioned hand coded features are necessary to adress situations in which specific kinds of reasoning is necessary.

Tesla has to solve all this boring stuff as well before they can offer comparable capabilities in an AV.

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