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Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

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Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#91

Post by nradov »

catigula wrote: post #60
SoftTalker wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, humans have only their eyes. And most of them intentionally distract themselves while driving by listening to music, podcasts, playing with their phones, or eating.

To be fair, humans are fairly poor drivers and generally can't be trusted to drive millions of miles safely.

Actually humans are fairly good drivers. The average US driver goes almost 2 million miles between causing injury collisions. Take the drunks and drug users out and the numbers for humans look even better.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#92

Post by abraxas »

mclau153 wrote: post #90
abraxas wrote: post #86

I actually hope that they do not succeed in the end. Ubiquitous self driving cars will spell the end of what's left of walkable areas in North America and bring about (in time) similar destruction of the urban fabric to Europe and elsewhere. I'm not very articulate and English is my second language but this video below is really worth watching before we all swallow as an axiom the idea that autonomous cars are going…

Are you implying that stopping Waymo will make auto companies more likely to endorse walkable areas?

No, it's orthogonal. But cars that can drive everywhere will show up everywhere, all of the time. Watch the video in its entirety. It makes very strong arguments for why this is a dystopia in the making.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#93

Post by kjksf »

mlsu wrote: post #71

Obviously there is a huge amount of money and effort being spent on automated driving. But I cannot help thinking that this perception technology will prove very useful for robotics in general, factory, home, in space, etc. Car dynamics are fast enough to be useful across a huge number of domains. In some sense, the visionaries in this space are not thinking big enough. I want visions of mobility with a totally diffe…

Tesla never had lidar so they didn't abandon it.

Also, Tesla started FSD in 2016. The very core of their strategy was (and is) to sell $40k car with hardware capable of running FSD.

Cameras are super cheap, FSD chip is reasonably inexpensive. Lidar is not. Maybe today the cost isn't completely prohibitive (I think it still is, because you need multiple lidars) but it certainly was for the first 8 years of FSD program.

Tesla just didn't have the luxury of adding $50k to the cost of the car for the hardware, the way Waymo did. And they didn't have sugar daddy (Google) willing to burn several billions a year for many years.

So the Waymo approach was not an option for Tesla.

And given that in Austin they just reached parity with Waymo (i.e. completely unsupervised robotaxi service), they are not doing badly.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#94

Post by SeanAnderson »

abraxas wrote: post #86

I actually hope that they do not succeed in the end. Ubiquitous self driving cars will spell the end of what's left of walkable areas in North America and bring about (in time) similar destruction of the urban fabric to Europe and elsewhere. I'm not very articulate and English is my second language but this video below is really worth watching before we all swallow as an axiom the idea that autonomous cars are going…

I don't even know what areas of the United States I would consider "walkable". I live in San Francisco, don't own a car, we have "pretty good" public transit, and it's still absolutely miserable getting around. It takes me 40 minutes to go from Outer Sunset to downtown by muni. There are many locations in this city that I can physically jog to faster than public transit.

I can appreciate this technology might negatively impact other countries more heavily, but, for me, it's easily the most exciting tech I interact with and I'm rooting for it whole-heartedly. I'm at around 1000 miles logged on Waymo and am part of their beta tester program for freeway usage.

I also think that post-Covid remote work has probably damaged incentives for increasing the density of cities more so than anything autonomous vehicles will do. San Francisco is actively cutting bus routes, bus density, and threatening to significantly cut BART stops due to budget constraints and reduction in ridership.

It's odd because I do get where you're coming from, and I feel like I should be your target audience, but, for me, the ship sailed so long ago that I struggle to relate to your position.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#95

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

mlsu wrote: post #71

Obviously there is a huge amount of money and effort being spent on automated driving. But I cannot help thinking that this perception technology will prove very useful for robotics in general, factory, home, in space, etc. Car dynamics are fast enough to be useful across a huge number of domains. In some sense, the visionaries in this space are not thinking big enough. I want visions of mobility with a totally diffe…

> Tesla's choice to abandon lidar will be one of the biggest oof in business history.

Why? They have started unsupervised taxi rides in Austin. One of their goals was affordability, and their cars are massively more affordable.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#96

Post by FireBeyond »

youarentrightjr wrote: post #12
xnx wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo is absolutely delighting in their luck that Elon is so stubborn that he has kept Tesla from being anywhere close to catching up.

According to Elon, "sensor ambiguity" is a danger to the process [1], and therefore only a single type of sensor is allowed. (Conveniently ignores that there can be ambiguity/disagreement between two instances of the same type of sensor) The fact that people still trust him on literally anything boggles my mind. [1] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1959831831668228450

Well, given that Elon openly lies on investor calls...

One of his latest, on the topic of rain/snow/mist/fog and handling with cameras:

"Well, we have made that a non-issue as we actually do photon counting in the cameras, which solves that problem."

No, Elon, you don't. For two reasons: reason one, part A, the types of cameras that do photon counting don't work well for normal 'vision'/imagery associated with cameras, and part B, are not actually present in your cars at all. And reason two, photon counting requires the camera being in an enclosed space to work, which cars on the road ... aren't.

What Elon has mastered the art of is making statements that sound informed, pass the BS detector of laypeople, and optionally are also plausibly deniable if actually called out by an SME.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#97

Post by weirdmantis69 »

netsharc wrote: post #89
youarentrightjr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Elon, "sensor ambiguity" is a danger to the process [1], and therefore only a single type of sensor is allowed. (Conveniently ignores that there can be ambiguity/disagreement between two instances of the same type of sensor) The fact that people still trust him on literally anything boggles my mind. [1] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1959831831668228450

> The fact that people still trust him on literally anything boggles my mind. Long-distance amateur psychology question: I wonder if he's convinced himself that he's a smart guy, after all he's got 12 digits in his net worth, "How would that have been possible if I were an idiot?". Anyway, ego protection is how people still defend things like the Maga regime, or the genocide; it's hard for someone to admit that they'…

I've always wondered how people who are not 1/10th as smart as Elon convince themselves that he is not intelligent after solving robotics, AI, neuralink, and space all simultaneously.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#98

Post by abraxas »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #94
abraxas wrote: post #86

I actually hope that they do not succeed in the end. Ubiquitous self driving cars will spell the end of what's left of walkable areas in North America and bring about (in time) similar destruction of the urban fabric to Europe and elsewhere. I'm not very articulate and English is my second language but this video below is really worth watching before we all swallow as an axiom the idea that autonomous cars are going…

I don't even know what areas of the United States I would consider "walkable". I live in San Francisco, don't own a car, we have "pretty good" public transit, and it's still absolutely miserable getting around. It takes me 40 minutes to go from Outer Sunset to downtown by muni. There are many locations in this city that I can physically jog to faster than public transit. I can appreciate this technology might negativ…

You exemplify the defeatism that the auto makers are counting on.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#99

Post by standardUser »

mlsu wrote: post #71

Obviously there is a huge amount of money and effort being spent on automated driving. But I cannot help thinking that this perception technology will prove very useful for robotics in general, factory, home, in space, etc. Car dynamics are fast enough to be useful across a huge number of domains. In some sense, the visionaries in this space are not thinking big enough. I want visions of mobility with a totally diffe…

It's tough in the US because the one thing we have already going for us is a massive and comprehensive road network. Waymo et al are leaning heavily into the existing infrastructure, which is the right move given the inability of the US to execute major changes to infrastructure these days. Compare that to China, where infrastructure is being actively upgraded to accommodate autonomous vehicles. As nice as the Chinese approach sounds, it's probably a lot less exportable than the 'take the roads as they are' approach of Waymo.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#100

Post by SeanAnderson »

abraxas wrote: post #98
SeanAnderson wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know what areas of the United States I would consider "walkable". I live in San Francisco, don't own a car, we have "pretty good" public transit, and it's still absolutely miserable getting around. It takes me 40 minutes to go from Outer Sunset to downtown by muni. There are many locations in this city that I can physically jog to faster than public transit. I can appreciate this technology might negativ…

You exemplify the defeatism that the auto makers are counting on.

I literally have never owned a vehicle in my life. If you feel I exemplify defeatism then I think you need to look inward.
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