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Udacity plans to build its own open-source self-driving car
- olivercameron 10y agoHello everyone! Former YC founder here (S11) who now works at Udacity on this team. I'd love to answer any questions on this project or our autonomous vehicles curriculum, and welcome you to our enthusiasts Slack team (http://nd013.udacity.com http://nd013.udacity.com).
- nxzero 10y agoWhy do it if "it isn’t the core focus of Udacity’s business" as the founder, Sebastian Thrun, said? Seems like creating free and open source simulator would be of more value than trying to get students to build hardware based vehicles? DARPA, YC, and other have taken this approach for various reasons in some projects - and it seems if the intent is to teach, learn, share, etc. - it'd be a better investment.
- olivercameron 10y agoGreat question! My 2 cents: our core mission is to democratize education, and although the car itself won't make or break Udacity, I think it can contribute dramatically to our core mission. How so? We have students all around the world (almost every country is represented in our DAU) who will never have access to a car outfitted with hardware and sensors (easy $125k), never mind the costs needed to get a permit to get on the road ($50k!). Being able to contribute code and see the results run in real environments (ask Sebastian what he thinks about simulation!) could be a huge advantage to students around the world in their quest to jump into this industry and get credibility. Speaking of credibility, we want to prove to the world we really know what we're doing, and that our curriculum is truly legit. tl;dr: We hope that by open sourcing our car that we can give opportunities to students around the world who otherwise wouldn't have it.
- nxzero 10y ago>> "ask Sebastian what he thinks about simulation" Thanks, appreciate you addressing the questions. If you wanted to ping Sebastian and let him know about the AMA, I'm sure there would be a lot of interest beyond just me getting an answer to my questions from him; I truly am curious to hear his take, since as you say, the barrier to rendering the software in hardware would likely be beyond the reach of an individual student or even likely a group of students in closes proximity to each other.
- olivercameron 10y agoLet me work on that!
- asimuvPR 10y agoA simulator is indeed more practical. A live application will allow exposure in a way the simulator cannot. Its about theory and practice (and marketing, in this case). I did simulations before doing anything in practice. Benefits were many because there is nothing like the real thing. Edit: Removed presumptuous comment about myself
- tamana 10y agoMaybe Thrun doesn't feel like launching separate companies for each of his interests.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jackcosgrove 10y agoHi Oliver. There are thousands of applications for 250 seats per cohort, and it sounds like one cohort will start per month. Is there a rhyme and reason for how admission to a cohort will work?
- olivercameron 10y agoHello! You can check out this FAQ for info: https://www.udacity.com/drive/faq https://www.udacity.com/drive/faq We're taking a lot of learnings from our Georgia Tech OMS program to find amazing students from around the world.
- east2west 10y agoI am currently working full time as a scientific developer with substantial background in statistics and control theory, and I want to attend, but I am not sure about the expected course load. Could you discuss average hours a student is expected to spend on this? And whether this is like a full-time student course load or a part-time course load?
- olivercameron 10y agoWe optimize our curriculum for those who are unable to spend all of their time on education. 10hrs/week is our recommended amount of learning.
- etendue 10y agoWill ethics (e.g., the collection and storage of personal information, or professional responsibilities in regulated industries) be given any treatment?
- olivercameron 10y agoCould you go into a little more detail here? Thanks!
- scoot 10y agoIt isn't just ethics; in Europe, at least, it's regulatory. (See GDPR and it predecessors). The response from Udacity suggests not.
- etendue 10y agoThinking of training data sets as an example: they contain a lot of personal information (faces, license plates, times, locations, speeds, etc.). Depends on jurisdiction, but there likely aren't legal issues in amassing and using this data when it is collected in plain view from public areas; I envision possible ethical issues though. Could you release training data for public use, without obscuring identifying information? There may not be legal issues in releasing raw data, but keeping in mind that the information is sensitive and recorded without consent, and that an engineer's first duty is to the public health, safety, and well-being, might there be a professional obligation to sanitize the data? My example might be a bit contrived, but I think there are going to be many valid (and far better!) questions in this discipline that should be asked and considered, and I think your graduates need to be equipped to do so.
- dhruvp 10y agoHey! Great question. We strongly believe that it's important to understand the ethical implications of such technology. However, we don't believe we are experts or authorities on the ethical implications and as such will provide recommended readings but not cover it ourselves.
- knocte 10y agoHi. Simple question, what's the tech stack that will be used for the opensource software that will run the self-driving? (I imagine static and safe programming language?)
- georgeecollins 10y agoI think this is peak self driving car.
- im_down_w_otp 10y agoI think it's a marketplace in its early infancy.
- dhruvp 10y agoAgreed. Some of the biggest companies in the world are investing in the space: Apple, Google, Ford, GM, Mercedes Benz, Tesla, Uber, NVidia, Baidu, Didi and many more!
- jellicle 10y agoIt's not peak until we have a wave of absolutely fraudulent schemes designed to take money from the gullible general public. "Kickstarter - Self-driving car - release in 2019! 4795% funded! Backers get one for just $10,000!" "Stock tip - self-driving car startup - invest now to get pre-market shares in this company! Top Secret!" That sort of thing. When the TV morning shows start pumping self-driving cars every day.
- visarga 10y agoBut in reality we don't even know how far we are from level 5 self driving car.
- kmonsen 10y agoWe don't know how far (or if it will ever happen) we are from level 3.
- asimuvPR 10y agoNot at all. There are still many issues to solve. Some are too expensive to be approached by smaller efforts.
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- abstractbill 10y agoTo put this into perspective, it wasn't so long ago (2004) that nobody managed to pass the DARPA Grand Challenge of having a car drive itself around in the Mojave desert. We've come a long way very quickly!
- amelius 10y agoWhat was the most important achievement since then? Was it the LIDAR system? Or was it 3d vision? Or some other form of AI?
- dhruvp 10y agoOne interesting thing to me is that today we are able to collect way more data around driving than before. Since 2004, almost all of us have an incredible video camera in our pockets capable of recording our driving and the road conditions. We also almost all use highly detailed maps that we correct and add to (waze)! Finally, we have companies that care deeply about technology and data (Uber, Tesla) with fleets of cars on the road. These advancements mean we can improve on such software faster than before.
- jowiar 10y agoI'm sure someone more qualified to than me is floating around here. From what I heard at CMU then, the GPS data in '04 was a couple feet off, and everyone was driving a few feet off the road as a result. I imagine the key takeaway then was that one couldn't depend on GPS.
- olivercameron 10y agoLocalization is a really hard problem!
- Animats 10y agoThat caused us trouble in the 2005 Grand Challenge. It turns out that Novatel and Garmin GPSs were about a meter apart. They're both applying corrections for atmospheric distortion obtained from ground stations and distributed through a geostationary satellite, which can give 15cm precision. We had Novatel, and DARPA had measured the course with Garmin. I talked to the JPL team, which also had Novatel, and they had a similar error. We were strictly obeying the course boundaries, and had a terrible time getting through narrow gates where DARPA's waypoint file had a narrow width designed to guide us through the gates. If you look at videos of our runs, you can see the vehicle backing up and trying to get through a narrow obstacle. It's trying to get past a real-world obstacle on one side and a GPS limit on the other, which has narrowed the allowed path to where it can't quite fit. So for the second run, I put in a patch to add 1 meter to DARPA's lane width. But I forgot to push it out to the vehicle, and we botched the second test run. It was in place for the third test run, though.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoWonder if part of Thrun's departure from Google is their closed focus? Open source self-driving car is something Google would never allow under current leadership.
- agumonkey 10y agoWith the recent commercial competition catching up, I wonder if Google won't reconsider..
- jwatte 10y agoI don't see any commercial company catching up with the really hard problems like "pedestrian behind hedge" or "policeman's hand signals" or whatever. What I see from the commercial companies is little more advanced than "automated lane keeping and sometimes recognizing a red light, at least when cars in front stop." (OK, in being a little uncharitable, but it's to illustrate the problem.)
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoBear in mind, when you're looking at making a commercial product, you look at cost. Presumably, that's why most companies have ruled out Google's sensor setup, which costs more than my house. As costs drop, sensors will probably be added or improved, and you'll see more companies integrate those features. Google's program is a tech demo for PR purposes. Everyone else is trying to actually put systems in cars.
- tamana 10y agoOr Google is trying to solve L4 and doesn't care about lower levels, while others (esp car manufacturers for safety, and Uber for PR/advertising) see value in detouring to L2/L3 goals.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoOr, Google has no intention of releasing a real product, and by setting a far off goal they know they won't reach, gets to milk the PR for a really long time. :)
- SwellJoe 10y agoGiven how important self-driving vehicles are, on so many fronts, I think it's fantastic that a company with resources is pushing forward an OSS implementation. Safety alone is reason enough for there to be a good OSS reference implementation. I'm surprised/disappointed that government hasn't been more instrumental in pushing forward an agenda of promoting self-driving cars (while expending resources on other types of work that will be far less effective long-term). So, this is super cool. I'm surprised it's Udacity doing it; on a couple of fronts: It seems, on the surface, outside of their core competency...but thinking about it, it does make some sense, if they really have enough paying students (and maybe sponsoring organizations) to make it work. I mean, schools that teach auto repair don't work on fake cars. Why would a school teaching self-driving limit themselves to simulated cars? But, it's also surprising that Udacity has the funds to make it work. The cost of building self-driving car technology must have come way down just in the past few years. And/or Udacity must be making a lot more money than I would have guessed based on how crowded their market is. Regardless, it's super cool!
- asimuvPR 10y agoIt is way cheaper. The cars can be leased or rented and are ready to be used with electronic control steering, throttle and braking. The hardware is accessible. The software is fairly straightforward as long as you define a good sandbox.
- olivercameron 10y agoThank you, and great thoughts! I think we'd surprise you on our growth, but costs have also decreased a fair amount in the past 4-5 years.
- dcposch 10y ago> I'm surprised/disappointed that government hasn't been more instrumental in pushing forward an agenda of promoting self-driving cars The DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005 and Urban Challenge in 2007 are what started it all. Now that Google, Uber and others are racing to commercialize, all the government has to do is not overregulate. No need to "push forward an agenda". (FWIW DARPA, then known as ARPA, did the same thing the internet a few decades ago.)
- WhitneyLand 10y agoWhen will a degree from Udacity have enough credibility to get you hired as a: Consultant at Bain or McKinsey Developer at a Big 4 tech company Investment banker on Wall street Other highly competitive jobs Has it happened a lot? Once? Never? (in a situation where experience alone wouldn't have earned the position)
- nsgi 10y agoWhen Udacity is as difficult to gain admission to as the schools McKinsey and Goldman typically recruit from?
- dhruvp 10y agoWe have graduates at Big 4 Tech (Google, Microsoft etc.) and other competitive tech focused companies. I'm not sure about Investment Bankers but we teach software engineering primarily so I wouldn't expect many graduates go into I Banking or Consulting.
- jnordwick 10y agoI think he's talking about the tech side of trading that occurs at banks and also a lot of high profile prop trading shops.
- WhitneyLand 10y agoCan you confirm you have Big 4 tech graduates who were hired fresh from getting their Udacity degree without prior experience? For example since I attended a mediocre state school these companies did not come to interview at my school, and never granted interviews to those who directly applied. A few years later I ended up getting hired by these same companies based on the merit of my actual experience. However you see the big difference here? I couldn't fairly say that the big 4 hire from mediocre state schools (or from Udacity), just because someone ended up getting a job there later.
- dhruvp 10y agoHey! We do indeed have people who got jobs fresh out of graduating from our program. Obviously it's hard for me to discount all their prior experience and say it was entirely up to us. What I can confirm is that within months of graduating from our program they were able to get these jobs. You can read about some of these students here: https://www.udacity.com/success https://www.udacity.com/success
- jwatte 10y agoThe User/Volvo/whatever approach may deliver earlier value, but the Google approach is what's needed to have safe cars in uncontrolled urban environments. I get quite frustrated with articles and headlines and even analysts who don't understand the quite fundamental difference. Uber, who lives almost entirely in that space, will be in for a rude awakening IMO. Unless they already know they are ten years behind Google, and plan to use instrumented human semi-operated vehicles for learning, and cynically market it as "self driving" when it isn't. That'd work, too.
- bitL 10y agoSweet! Imagine Udacity later licensing K1 Attack kit car with electric drive from PLA, and open sourcing it for everyone! One can dream ;-)
- jonathankoren 10y agoThis announcement raises all sorts of red flags, not just for Udacity in particular, but for Silicon Valley as a whole. This is the story: Online correspondence school announces it's making a self-driving car, and issuing "nanodegrees" of dubious reputability. I'm sorry, but what does a correspondence school have to do with self-driving cars? How does this promote the core business? How does even relate to the core business? Does Udacity have any technical talent that would even be relevant to this? (I'm betting they don't have any computer vision experts.) This strikes me as a company with too much money, and not enough supervision. This is not going to end well, for anyone.
- ericlavigne 10y ago"Does Udacity have any technical talent that would even be relevant to this? (I'm betting they don't have any computer vision experts.)" Sebastian Thrun is a cofounder of Udacity, and one of the world's top experts in self-driving cars. Sebastian Thru won 1st place in the DARPA Grand Challenge in which self-driving cars raced across the Mojave desert. He is also a VP at Google, where he has worked on Google's self-driving car technology. One of the first courses at Udacity was called "Artificial Intelligence for Robotics." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Thrun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Thrun
- denzell 10y agoWhat is the obsession with self driving cars? There are so many other important problems in the world that need solving
- fma 10y agoI'm sure someone can make the same argument for every research. If self driving cars become mass marketed, then that's reduce death/injuries, less energy consumption/pollution from more efficient driving, more time saved from efficient driving, possible reduction of manufactured cars from a sharing economy standpoint.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoCar accidents kill 1.3 million people a year. Sounds like a worthy obsession.
- morgante 10y agoIf it were possible to short Udacity, I'd be putting all my money into a short position. This is obviously so far outside of Udacity's core wheelhouse that I have to assume it's simply an ego project for the founder. Unfortunately, before you start pursuing unrelated ego projects, your company should have several billion in cash in the bank. I cannot possibly see how this ends up working out well for Udacity. Developing self-driving cars is very expensive and not their core expertise at all.
- empath75 10y agoI think it's mostly meant as a class project, and that seems like something in their wheelhouse.
- carleverett 10y agoAlso seems very smart of them to have partners like Mercedes. They're likely offsetting a huge portion of the cost for the program, and it's all from taking advantage of the climate where everyone is dying to get a head start in self-driving.
- gremlinsinc 10y agoalso Thun has a history in robotics/ai/machine learning so it is in his wheelhouse. Solar, Electric Vehicles, and Space travel were well outside Paypal's expertise, but one of it's co-founders went on to revolutionize all three of those industries... and many people called him crazy for even considering to launch his own rockets into space.
- etendue 10y agoThe nanodegree page prominently lists the "base salary: self driving car engineer" as $66.8k to $210k. Noice! Following the link to the data (https://www.paysa.com/salaries/self-driving-car-engineer--t https://www.paysa.com/salaries/self-driving-car-engineer--t) shows the following, with my emphases: > The average Base Salary for Self Driving Car Engineer is $138,372 per year, ranging from $100,880 to $178,478. Salaries calculated from less than 20 profiles. Men outnumber women by 13 to 1. 42% Self Driving Car Engineer are White. From recent job postings for Self Driving Car Engineer, we know that 88% of Self Driving Car Engineer need to know C++. From recent job postings for Self Driving Car Engineer, 100% of Self Driving Car Engineer need to have a Bachelors degree. If there's less than 20 profiles, is this salary data a fair representation of the expected job salary? And if recent job postings all have a BS as a requirement, then shouldn't it be more prominently noted while recruiting people into this program? The prereqs for the program list "some background in probability and statistics and calculus" and Python programming, but it sounds like that C++ experience and a BS might also be needed to be competitive in the job market for this field.
- networth 10y agoCurious what opensource stack they will use (like ros), or if they will write their own.
- flowless 10y agoThere's even a ros project for that https://github.com/CPFL/Autoware https://github.com/CPFL/Autoware
- networth 10y agoI am curious how ros plays with real time requirements? Does it have rtos extensions? I used ros a bit for drone simulations 5 or so years ago, things might have changed these days.
- dschiptsov 10y agoAs part of its new nanodegree?)