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Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco
- annerajb 10y agoJust saw this: https://electrek.co/2016/12/14/uber-autonomous-rides-california/ https://electrek.co/2016/12/14/uber-autonomous-rides-califor... I am confused do they require a permit or is uber changing the claim/capabilities of the car to evade getting a permit?
- mdorazio 10y agoNo permit as far as I can tell. They have drivers actively monitoring their vehicles at all times and are playing semantic games right now as that article says. The biggest disappointment to me is the way they're deliberately ignoring NHTSA's guidelines around collision and near-miss data sharing.
- mdorazio 10y agoDefinitely no permit. They just got slapped with a stop order: http://www.recode.net/2016/12/14/13962698/uber-dmv-self-driving-cars-stop-order http://www.recode.net/2016/12/14/13962698/uber-dmv-self-driv...
- tyingq 10y agoFrom the original article referenced: "The company doesn’t require a permit from the California DMV to operate in the state, it says, because the cars don’t qualify as fully autonomous as defined by state law because of the always present onboard safety operator."
- jayjay71 10y agoInteresting. My guess is Uber is just planning on paying the inevitable fines as is their modus operandi. I wonder how much an infraction like this costs? I doubt there's any precedent.
- estefan 10y agoNot sure why you're being downvoted. It's the MO of airbnb, uber and other SV startups. We've seen more than once that making a land grab for a new market brings more long-term success than any penalties dished out for not playing by the rules.
- cstejerean 10y agoBecause there is no reason to guess and make baseless claims, the article already addressed this topic. A permit is not required because a safety operator is on board at all times. Skirting regulations and paying fines has nothing to do with it.
- estefan 10y agoThat's only because of Uber's interpretation. From the FT article: > California law defines an autonomous vehicle as one that is able to drive “without the active physical control or monitoring by a human operator”. > Anthony Levandowski, a former Google engineer who leads Uber’s driverless car efforts, said the fleet would be “self-driving” but not “autonomous”, making an unusual semantic distinction. A pretty tenuous way of avoiding regulations if you ask me.
- Jarwain 10y agoMy understanding of the law is that an autonomous vehicle does not require control or monitoring. However, Uber's car has an operator monitoring the car's activity, although not actively controlling the car. Because of this, it is not considered autonomous by California law.
- jayjay71 10y agoApparently San Francisco disagrees. https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/uber-ordered-to-stop-self-driving-vehicle-service-in-san-francisco/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/uber-ordered-to-stop-self-...
- lojack 10y agoThat seems like click bait to me. I believe they require a permit for a fully autonomous vehicle, but since there's a driver in the car monitoring the systems with the ability to override, it isn't considered fully autonomous. This is neither sketchy, surprising, or even skirting the rules. The fact that it's picking up passengers seems mostly like a PR move to me as the income generated by them probably pales in comparison to the cost of the car plus the overhead of a (not typical) driver plus engineer.
- estefan 10y agoNo permit. They're avoiding the regs like usual: https://www.ft.com/content/a6e8c5c4-c16e-11e6-81c2-f57d90f6741a https://www.ft.com/content/a6e8c5c4-c16e-11e6-81c2-f57d90f67...
- Edward16 10y agoYou need a savvy hacker,one who specializes in Expunging Criminal Records and Change of University Grades. Contact edwardsnowcare@gmail.com One who would be able to carry out and successfully execute hacks on your behalf while keeping it all discrete and under the radar.
- dzdt 10y agoThey describe this as a third-generation vehicle, but it still requires multiple human-driver interventions over a single journey. How many more generations to reach reliable true autonomy?
- rmc 10y agoReal Soon Now
- rtx 10y agoNot really, If I have an AI good enough to drive safely. There are many other places where I can use them more profitably.
- aetherson 10y agoCurrently, self-driving AIs are kind of like chess AIs, or the Watson AI that won at Jeopardy: they have some inhuman strengths that mostly compensate for their sub-human understanding of inputs. So, for example, chess AIs are better chess players than humans because they have longer lookahead, even though they're worse at analyzing a given board. The Watson AI didn't understand questions as well as a human, and had obvious comprehension failures such as the final jeopardy answer, but when its comprehension was good enough, it had a vast database that it could perfectly recall at very high speed, and those more than compensated for its comprehension problems. Driving AIs are not as good at understanding what's happening around them, but they are constantly attentive in 360 degrees and have fast reactions, which (may, someday, but does not yet) compensates for their imperfect understanding of the world. This AI is not generalizable to tons of other circumstances in which there is no obvious way to parlay the inhuman strengths of the AI into compensating for their weaknesses. As such, while there may be some other places where a driving-AI-like intelligence could be used profitably, there probably aren't many such places.
- hagbarth 10y agoYes, but there are lots of applications for driving capabilities, that are not getting people from a to b. Like transporting cargo at an airport, dumpers at a pit mine, even long haul trucking (see Otto).
- bryanrasmussen 10y agoand never letting them go.
- autotune 10y agoHow is this going to combat people who make a mess inside the vehicle after going 100 percent without human drivers/test engineers? If it picks up a drunk person at 3 AM who then throws up inside the car, is it vomit-aware and knows it needs a cleaning before picking up the next passenger?
- phreeza 10y agoProbably. Even if it can't be automated (which doesn't sound too complicated), it wouldn't take many people to evaluate a photo of every cab interior once after every ride.
- kraftman 10y agoYou've already got someone to evaluate it for free: the next person to get in it. Then you only need people to evaluate the reports, and you offer the person reporting it either a free ride in the dirty car or a fresh car in a few minutes at a discounted price.
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- kraftman 10y agoYou could just have the next person report it, which fines the previous person.
- nannal 10y agoDoes mean I can fine a person I don't know with the click of a button.
- mabramo 10y agoThe only way I think this can work is if the customer who reports the incident describes exactly what they see in the report. Then the human who receives the dirty car and cleans it verifies that the car is not only dirty but meets the description of the reporter. How else could "dirty car" reports be audited? In another case, a customer could actually throw garbage in the car and then report the car dirty - causing the previous customer to be fined. The only safety net against this I know is to record video inside the car while a customer is present.
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- ckinnan 10y ago> “a blade architecture, a whole bunch of CPUs and GPUs that we can swap out under there,” though he wouldn’t speak to who’s supplying those components specifically. Does anyone have more info or speculation on the tech stack sitting in the trunk?
- lsv1 10y agoI think it might be Nvidia - http://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2016/08/22/nvidia-unveils-new-processor-for-its-self-driving-car-supercomputer/#47c8fc686339 http://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2016/08/22/nvidia-un...
- dvdhnt 10y agoNo thanks.
- Globz 10y agoAs a Canadian, I wonder how anyone in this industry can create an autonomous vehicle that can safely drive during winter?
- ams6110 10y agoThe biggest problem human drivers have in winter weather is simply driving too fast. Self-driving cars won't get impatient and will presumably never exceed safe speeds for given conditions.
- nradov 10y agoThe biggest problem computer drivers have in winter weather is not being able to see lane markers. Humans are (for now) still better at figuring out where the lane is. Presumably this problem can be solved with improvements in maps, cameras, and image recognition algorithms.
- stuckagain 10y agoHumans do an unbelievably bad job at this, too, like all other tasks behind the wheel. Humans essentially just follow the tracks of the last car, creating ad hoc lanes. Computers can do this just as well.
- Globz 10y agoWhat happen when you are the first on the road with no tracks to follow from previous cars and suddenly it turns into a blizzard/zero visibility? I am guessing the car can pull over and turn on emergency flasher...I don't know but to me I believe a Human will always have to take over at some point because you never know what mother nature will throw at you, keep in mind I am talking about a future where we aim for 100% autonomous car.
- dsr_ 10y agoHaving lived through many such blizzards, there are two things that humans do: The smart ones pull over and turn on the emergency flasher. Then they check to make sure they have lots of gas, blankets and water, just as they prepared. The dumb ones slow down to 45 mph and stare into the white blankness looking for clues about curves.
- joosters 10y agoI wonder if everything you say & do is recorded in these? The car has all those cameras covering the outside of the vehicle, it would be little effort to add another inside, and I doubt Uber will be able to resist. Uber could claim they need to record passengers in order to spot damage or dirtying of the cab. (Otherwise passengers could blame any damage on the previous occupant.)
- notheguyouthink 10y ago> The car has all those cameras covering the outside of the vehicle This raises a good point i never thought about. If in some day all of our cars have self driving or self aware features, then that means nearly all locations in the city are within reach of cameras and possibly microphones. I'm not "a paranoid" about privacy stuff, but that is quite impressive nonetheless. The future is going to be quite interesting. I always thought we'd end up with cameras on every street corner monitoring everything. I never thought our own cars could become every present monitoring devices.
- Taek 10y agoYour phone is more omnipresent and knows about as much as your car would.
- notheguyouthink 10y agoYes but i'm not trying to evade detection. If i was, i would obviously not bring a phone with me. I can't however, avoid all cars, everywhere.
- joosters 10y agoI didn't thought of it that way round! I was concerned with cameras & microphones inside the car, but as you say, it's likely that there will be microphones on the outside too.
- nathan_f77 10y agoThe UK already has millions of CCTV cameras set up like this. You might find this article interesting: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/one-nation-under-cctv http://www.wired.co.uk/article/one-nation-under-cctv
- aedron 10y agoUber's product is the company's stock. All of their "AI" and "self-driving" stunts so far have been transparent hype fuel that anyone with the slightest domain knowledge knows have no practical significance. Their PR department are, as can be expected, top notch though. I especially like how they put a populist spin on their announcements, like the beer delivery (yay, beer!) and now picking up passengers with their proof-of-concept vehicles, to make it look like self-driving cars are already part of their business.
- beambot 10y agoOr... they're trying to learn the nuances of operating with and around real customers for their actual application. Too many tech companies (and esp. robotics ones) do their development and testing under limited conditions, and then they're blindsided by real-world realities. Getting contact with customers early is key. It's like the old military adage: No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. In this case, the "enemy" is the real world. Kudos to Uber for getting out there and working with customers -- it's much better than Google's autonomous cars, which have driven millions of miles and never had a single paying passenger!
- Fricken 10y agoYa, Uber just wants people to think they provide better service at lower prices than their competition; and the tricksters, they're doing it by working to provide better service at lower prices than the competition. Feeling peckish? Ignore it. It's just the McDonald's corporation trying to raise the value of it's stock.
- ASinclair 10y ago> Ya, Uber just wants people to think they provide better service at lower prices than their competition; and the tricksters, they're doing it by working to provide better service at lower prices than the competition. The prices are lower because they're subsidized with invested money and debt.
- lucker 10y agoBit of a conspiracy theory sort of question, but... is there any reason to believe that maybe self-driving car technology is being backed by the military-industrial complex as a way to run R&D for military automation and related technologies? That could explain why there was a sudden spike in interest in this technology several years ago, and it could also explain why enormous amounts of hype are continually being generated for a technology that is probably still quite far away from being approved for fully automated road use.
- smrtinsert 10y agoVery weak conspiracy theory. A better one is that the private sector lags military technology by at least 50 years.
- linkregister 10y agoAnyone who has used military technology would be unlikely to agree with you. Especially when it comes to software!
- vintageseltzer 10y agoNo, it's the other way around — the private industry's self-driving car technology is based on research funded and carried out by the military-industrial complex. See: Uber's takeover of the CMU robotics lab (NREC).
- huherto 10y agoI don't know why you are being down voted. But you don't have to invoke a conspiracy. Interesting. The US Military did spawn the self-driving Car Revolution with their DARPA Challange. http://www.livescience.com/44272-darpa-self-driving-car-revolution.html http://www.livescience.com/44272-darpa-self-driving-car-revo...
- marssaxman 10y agoThere's no conspiracy about it - that is exactly what happened, and it happened right out in the open, in the form of the DARPA Grand Challenge races in 2004-2007. The explicitly stated goal of those races was to motivate research into autonomous vehicles that would enable the US military to begin converting its ground vehicles to autonomous operation. The much-hyped commercial applications are a spin-off.
- vit05 10y agoI have more expectation about self drive Bus and Trucks than cars.
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- yalogin 10y agoIs this a voluntary thing? Do I get a discount to sit in those? I would at the very least want to know in advance that an autonomous car is going to pick me up so if I want I can reject it if I want to and not waste time.
- diogenescynic 10y agoThey sent an email this morning saying you will be notified that it is an autonomous vehicle, you have the option to cancel, and prices are the same.
- bigtones 10y agoActually these Uber Volvo self driving cars have been picking up passengers using UberX in San Francisco for weeks. They're easy to spot because they have a huge lidar contraption on the roof and a lot of camera's mounted on the roof, rear vision mirrors, and the rear tailgate of the vehicle. The depot they use is on Harrison and 3rd so you see a lot of them driving around the area just south of Market Street, which has a lot of traffic obstacles, construction, and pedestrians. They go very slow and stop often out of an abundance of caution, much to the consternation of impatient SF drivers behind them.
- drcode 10y agoIf you think self driving cars are cool, wait until two years from now when you're stuck behind them in your morning commute every day, while they drive 15 miles under the speed limit.
- imgabe 10y agoPretty tough to get stuck behind a car for very long while on a bike, so I'm not too worried.
- mseebach 10y ago15 mph under the speed limit during SF morning commute is ~30 mph faster than today, so that'll be awesome.
- JimboOmega 10y agoBut the speed limit in almost all of SF is 25?
- galdosdi 10y agoNot on freeways
- wcummings 10y agoI can't wait to ride my fixie 5mph in front of them :)
- luhn 10y agoOne thing that's still not clear to me is how autonomous these truly are. There's still a human in the driver's seat, but how much intervention is required from them?
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- jasoncchild 10y agoThere is an amazing amount of hand waiving and conjecture in this discussion.
- acedinlowball 10y agoYour comment is very dismissive and hand-wavy. What do you think your conjecture has contributed to the discussion?
- sankyo 10y agoI ride a motorcycle in SF daily and frequently "split lanes". I saw one of the Ubers all decked out with spinning radar and wondered how it would react as I passed through at 10-15mph. There was a person at the steering wheel, I am not sure who was in control. Thankfully it was uneventful. I thought the car might brake or veer away from me.
- sf_rob 10y agoI'd be curious as well, but after lane splitting in the bay area, my default assumption would be that a self-driving car would react in a safer way. In my experience most lane splitting close calls are due to inattentive drivers changing lanes without signalling or randomly shifting position within their own lane.
- kabes 10y agoDoes anybody know what the chance of getting a self driving car is? I could try to use uberX instead of pool for a while, if there's a sufficient chance of getting one.
- TheMagician0 10y agoWill a Self-Driving Car be available for ride service by the end of 2018? http://www.metaculus.com/questions/181/will-a-self-driving-car-be-available-for-ride-service-by-the-end-of-2018/ http://www.metaculus.com/questions/181/will-a-self-driving-c...