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Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

venturebeat.com

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Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#91

Post by soared »

rossjudson wrote: post #47
draugadrotten wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was once driving on a road I could not see at all. It was at night, in a blizzard on the road from Denver to Vail. It didn't take long until I was following the two red lights of the bus in front of me. As a human, I knew I could drive safely where the bus had been driving seconds ago. A self-driving car would have... tell me.

Pulled over, like you should have done. I've been exactly where you were, driving the Coq highway in British Columbia at night in a blizzard, following two red dots in front of me. I had (mandatory) snow tires on a rear wheel drive BMW. I also had my family in the car. It was probably the single stupidest thing I've ever done driving a car.

You can’t pull over in that situation unless you want to get your car stuck, be stuck in the cold all night, and potentially rear ended.

Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#92

Post by travisporter »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #88

> Handling yellow lights properly, involves us having to predict how long they will remain yellow for No. That isn't how yellow lights work in the US. If the light turns yellow and you have enough space/time to make a safe stop you do it. There's no need to predict the remaining time on yellow phase. We don't need robot cars bending these rules.

Not sure why you're being downvoted, but I think this is a classic example of why self-driving is so hard. They're not bending the rules, just copying what humans do. We also predict how long a light will be yellow for, but do it naturally (if you just saw it turn from green, or it was yellow as soon as it was in your line of sight).

Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#93

Post by dev_tty01 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #84
dev_tty01 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think people who believe that pulling over is an easy solution may not have been in one of these situations. It can come up quickly and there may be no exit for miles. Pull over into what? The snow bank on the side of the road? Now you are a hazard for everyone else coming along behind you. Sometimes you just have to make it work as best you can until the circumstances change.

Why is any traffic moving in conditions this bad? Just stop.

Again, I assume you've never experienced this. Storms can come up fast in the mountains and be very localized. As I, and the previous poster mentioned, it can be more dangerous to stop sometimes.

Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#94

Post by Gaelan »

xiaolingxiao wrote: post #2

What is the general view on Zoox's progress relative to other non-waymo playes. Such as Argo, Aurora and Cruise. There is the widely reported disengagement per mile, but most robotics people know it is just smoke and mirrors meant to make the regulators go away (disclosure, studied/researched robotics in grad school).

> There is the widely reported disengagement per mile, but most robotics people know it is just smoke and mirrors meant to make the regulators go away

Are you saying that the numbers are inaccurately reported, or accurately reported but just don't tell the whole story?

Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#95

Post by dev_tty01 »

BubRoss wrote: post #87
dev_tty01 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. If I'm a city administrator, I'm not going to license fair weather robo-taxis to operate in the city. They would drive out many other taxis and then people can't get home when the weather turns bad. Anything else is just bad resource management.

This person said navigating automatically out of a crowded parking lot in the rain. You shifted this to just driving in the rain.

I'm confused. Are you asserting that driving in actual traffic in the rain is easier than navigating a parking lot in the rain? Yes, several of us generalized the issue. I don't see why that is troubling.

Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#97

Post by torpfactory »

carapace wrote: post #89

It really really bothers me that these folks are using a live city with real, non-volunteer test subjects of all ages (little kids and old folks use public streets) as a test bed for their massive car-shaped robots. It's bad enough that people are driving cars all over the place, car collisions have killed more Americans than all the wars we've fought put together. I'm one of those people who say, "Self-driving cars…

There is a different perspective that you could use (and I’m not necessarily advocating for it; hear me out):

Human driven cars are dangerous to the tune of ~36,000 deaths per year. Every year without the implementation of full self driving we pay some large percentage of that number in lives. Self driving cars won’t make it out of the lab without real driving on real roads in real scenarios. Taking appropriate precautions (a human safety driver, maybe two) and testing in the real world might save more lives overall than keeping the vehicles in a more lab-like setting for longer, and missing some of the complexity of the real thing.

Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#98

Post by AndrewKemendo »

carapace wrote: post #89

It really really bothers me that these folks are using a live city with real, non-volunteer test subjects of all ages (little kids and old folks use public streets) as a test bed for their massive car-shaped robots. It's bad enough that people are driving cars all over the place, car collisions have killed more Americans than all the wars we've fought put together. I'm one of those people who say, "Self-driving cars…

You can't learn to operate in environments you don't train in. It would be great if we had a solution to the out-of-distribution inference/reward problem, but I don't think it really exists.

I'm firmly in the "Perfect for freight, questionable value for consumers" camp WRT autonomous cars. I also think it's irresponsible to do this but the reality is, they are doing all the socially "appropriate" things, like get approval from the city.

Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#99

Post by stale2002 »

carapace wrote: post #89

It really really bothers me that these folks are using a live city with real, non-volunteer test subjects of all ages (little kids and old folks use public streets) as a test bed for their massive car-shaped robots. It's bad enough that people are driving cars all over the place, car collisions have killed more Americans than all the wars we've fought put together. I'm one of those people who say, "Self-driving cars…

Have you ever driven a car, or been in a car? If so, why? Do you realize that by doing so, you are putting other people in danger?

Maybe you are the one who is being just as irresponsible by being a person who has even been in a car, ever.

Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#100

Post by stale2002 »

vardump wrote: post #33

Yawn. Good lane markings, no rain/snow or other bad weather, perfect road surfaces. Just like all other self-driving demos. I'd like to see a demo like this on snow covered roads, with no lane markings visible. I think that would tell a lot more about the system's ability to deal with an imperfect world.

> Yawn. Good lane markings, no rain/snow or other bad weather, perfect road surfaces.

Ok... What if I were to tell you that there is a solution to this?

The solution to this, is simply "dont drive in those conditions".

A self driving car can't get in a wreck that is caused by snowy roads, if it simply doesn't drive in the snow.

Self driving, during perfect conditions is still extremely valuable, because it turns out that there is a whole lot of driving that is in perfect conditions.

So, you would do things like prevent the taxis from running, if there is any chance of rain at all. I am sure that there are lots of places where rain is not an issue, and rain could be predicted ahead of time. Not everywhere. But still in many places.

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