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Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo
- brianwawok 10y agoGood we need competition in this space. I love Tesla but if this is going to end up everywhere, we need a few good players.
- woofyman 10y ago>within 5 to 10 years we'll see these vehicles driving safely around San Francisco
- HappyTypist 10y agoPretty ironic in consideration of "red lights don't apply to me" Ubers and more sane but extremely slow grandma Teslas
- thefastlane 10y agohow dare you emit an utterance that amounts to anything other than deification of our future self-driving overlords and the peter-theil-worshipping engineers who unleash them upon us!
- bsaul 10y agoNow that tesla has started to pretend selling autonomous cars now is making sense, the field went from research ( where researcher honestly reports shortcomings themselves) to the horrendous world of SV start up, where everything should be considered a lie until the day someone can actually buy the stuff and test for himself. And so you end up with posts like this trying to analyse a video frame by frame to assess the reality of the technology, and yet everyone including the author tries to guess where's the catch ( is the green light really trustworthy ? Why is the video accelerated ? Etc..).
- delinka 10y ago"...until the day someone can actually buy the stuff" I'm reasonably certain we can stop right there. It's a heavily regulated field and these things can't be sold until they've been rigorously tested. I know SV isn't known for its coziness with regulatory agencies, but in the field of safety, they'll have to play ball or take on all the liability the lawsuits will throw at them.
- beambot 10y agoPlus, many of the players do not have the intention of ever letting you "buy" the hardware. You will be buying transportation from A -> B, and it might just come in the form of an autonomous car (or a human driver).
- ericd 10y agoCruise is now owned by GM, which I really doubt is going to throw something out into the market without testing very rigorously first.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y agoI get GM cars as rentals pretty often and while they're better than Chrysler I don't have a lot of faith in their product.
- ericd 10y agoMy point was that they don't take a cavalier SV-style approach to testing things.
- greglindahl 10y agoMany Silicon Valley startups don't take a "cavalier SV-style approach" to testing things, either. There are a ton of medical device startups, for example.
- employee8000 10y agoVery cool. But am I mistaken that they didn't attempt to go through a 4-way stop with massive pedestrians, like in PacHeights or Marina? I would be curious to see how they fared with the obnoxious drivers skipping their turn as well as the constant flow of pedestrians. I'm also curious how it would react to going up Mason and California, where there's a traffic light at the top of a steep hill. Last time I had to physically pull myself up via the steering wheel to see anything, and as a seasoned driver I was a bit worried.
- gcheong 10y agoI'm guessing that will be part of Level 5 or at least we will be very close to level 5(full) autonomy once complex situations like 4-way stops with lots of pedestrians have been mastered.
- kuschku 10y agoSo you’re saying until we reach Level 5, autonomous cars will be entirely useless almost everywhere except a handful of US cities?
- stale2002 10y agoNo.... They would work perfect on a highway WAY before we have cities figured out. If autonomous cars and trucks work on highways, then millions of jobs go poof.
- ghaff 10y agoFully agree with you until the last phrase. Highway autonomy will be a nice feature but you still need a competent human driver to be present for end to end transportation. So I still need to order a car with a driver to get to the airport. I assume that you're referring to trucking. It's possible that trucking companies will set up depots right off the highway and will reduce drivers as a result. But a lot of long distance container transport is already done by trains so it's not immediately obvious that eliminating drivers for only the highway portion of trucking is necessarily a big enough win to make it happen. (Especially if autonomous driving systems allow for the driver to sleep in his cab while underway.)
- Groxx 10y ago5-10 years still seems roughly accurate or optimistic. A tech demo does not a consumer-purchasable licensed product make.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- renlo 10y agoIt looks like the car doesn't travel in a straight line (it wobbles) because it's trying avoid parked cars.
- CamelCaseName 10y agoProbably for the best. Someone could always open up a car door unexpectedly. I imagine it would be very hard for a driving algorithm to read social cues and notice drivers getting in/out of cars.
- rmason 10y agoExtremely cool feat. Next try Chicago or Detroit in January guys.
- tomschlick 10y agoThats one of the reasons why Uber chose Pittsburgh for development. We might not get the same amount of snow as those cities but we get enough and have a variety of terrain for them to use as test cases.
- formerly_ta 10y agoCMU being there doesn't hurt, either
- tomschlick 10y agoYup. Plus the mayor was trying to remove as much red tape for them as he could to bring the notoriety to the city.
- maxerickson 10y agoChicago and Detroit don't get all that much snow. (Southern Michigan gets quite a lot of snow. Prevailing winds are westerly so lots of lake effect. Grand Rapids gets almost 2x the snow that Detroit gets. Cleveland also gets more snow than Detroit, lake effect from Erie)
- phkahler 10y agoDetroit may have a lot more complex situations than Grand Rapids, and even thought it gets much less snow it does get storms with several inches which is enough to cover all the lane marking and making things very messy with traction control coming on a lot. I would say they need to deploy to as many cities in as diverse conditions as possible, but that's after they master stuff like in this article.
- rmason 10y agoOnce they can traverse Chicago or Detroit in the winter safely then they can try Grand Rapids or Buffalo. For the record in East Lansing we get a lot more snow than Detroit but we're pikers compared to say Holland or Grand Haven.
- mikepurvis 10y agoCruise was a sponsor of ROSCon in 2014, but had no booth or presenters: http://roscon.ros.org/2014/#program http://roscon.ros.org/2014/#program Nor do they have any presence I'm aware of on Github. This is in contrast to BMW, for example, who have made a number of contributions: https://github.com/bmwcarit https://github.com/bmwcarit Anyway, just curious to what extent Cruise used (or still uses) ROS and open source software in their stack.
- Animats 10y agoNice. It's annoying that they provide only 10x sped up video. Watching this slowed down is helpful. Notes: * There are frequent steering twitches to the left. This may be associated with passing parked cars. There are similar twitches to the right when in the left lane of a one-way street. * Crosswalk behavior when turning needs some work. The vehicle enters the intersection, then stops in the intersection before the crosswalk with people in it. This is a hard problem, because the system needs to recognize people waiting to cross but not yet in the roadway. When the light turns green, both the pedestrians going straight and the turning vehicle can enter the intersection, the pedestrians having right of way. The pedestrians now block the vehicle, and the vehicle blocks the bike lane. * Left turns into multi-lane streets are too wide and into the wrong lane. * On two occasions, the vehicle is stuck behind a doubly-parked vehicle engaged in loading. The options are to wait or to cross a double yellow line. There's a delay of several seconds, then forward movement. Suspect manual intervention.
- STRiDEX 10y agoAt one of the red lights it comes to a complete stop then crawls forward. 0:49 Maybe because of the cars turning left. That stood out to me
- Animats 10y agoThat happens more than once. Google cars sometimes do that when they don't have a good view of cross traffic due to corner obstructions. It's the right thing to do, but it's resulted in Google cars being rear-ended at very low speed several times.
- abalone 10y agoI counted 30 seconds of being stuck behind the unloading van with no way to pass without crossing double yellow. I didn't notice the autonomous green light turn off though. Possibly the algorithm is, if you're stuck then certain rules become flexible. Worth mentioning, 30 seconds would feel like an eternity inside a car.
- 10y ago
- exDM69 10y ago"Level 4" means that no human intervention is required and in case of conditions going from good to bad, the car can autonomously put itself in a safe state. That was nice and clean city driving in the video clips but nothing that distinguishes it from "Level 3" (human intervention may be required within ~15 seconds or so) or even "Level 2" (human intervention may be required within seconds, current state of the art).
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoI imagine a space defined by visibility, traction and road flatness. A large space of Level 0 conditions, i.e. the conditions within most humans can drive, encapsulates Level 1, i.e. cruise control, which mostly encapsulates successive levels. The benefit of this is you notice where levels "poke through," e.g. Level 4 may work on a sunny day, but a small change in rain or road conditions could downgrade the system to Level 1. As time goes forward, the inner levels can be expected to radiate out. EDIT: Never mind. The point of "Level 4" is it is competent in all reasonable operating domains.
- exDM69 10y ago> Level 4 may work on a sunny day, but a small change in rain or road conditions could downgrade the system to Level 1. This isn't the way it works. If a car says it can do "Level 4 on a sunny day" it means when you sit in the car and engage the autopilot (and it says it's safe to engage), then no human intervention will not be required during the course of the trip. If conditions change, the car will be parked without human assistance and wait for help (what happens next is outside of the scope). You could be sitting in the back seat, or your kids could be in the car alone on their way to school. "Level 4 on a sunny day on some pre-certified highways" is ok. "Level 4 in San Francisco traffic" is also ok, and much harder. "Level 4 unless it starts raining and we'll deteriorate to Level 3" is Level 3, not 4. This is the definition of autonomy levels from SAE, and they're pretty strictly defined.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> This is the definition of autonomy levels from SAE It's still domain dependent, right? If the rules say we're flattening precipitation and visibility within normal bounds, fine, but sometimes you have abnormal weather and badly-maintained roads. It is useful to compare hypothetical cars that autonomously navigate conditions no humans would dare. EDIT: Never mind. The point of "Level 4" is it is competent in all reasonable operating domains.
- grogenaut 10y agoRandom side thought: How do I signal in an ambiguous situation to the car on who's going first. Like Super high traffic and I want to merge in front of them or let them go first? Currently I do that with a wave. Which is super effective on a motorcycle as people almost always say "sure we can squeeze you in here" which lets me get places way faster.
- mahyarm 10y agoLED signs attached to the car.
- exDM69 10y agoYes, I absolutely do think that some kind of car-to-car communication is required for these situations. It's not an impossible problem to solve, but I have not heard of any efforts to create a car-to-car or car-to-road communications protocol and infrastructure that would be cross-manufacturer and/or internationally approved. In my opinion, before such a mechanism exists, autonomous cars will only work as long as the majority of cars are driven by humans. I will change my opinion when I see a demonstration of a city (or city-like test site) traffic where all or the majority of cars are autonomous.
- mcintyre1994 10y agoThere's a lot of academic work on Vehicle Adhoc Networks (VANETs) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicular_ad_hoc_network https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicular_ad_hoc_network has some sources. We discussed it a little at university in a module about mobile/sensor nerworks, it's definitely an interesting research area.
- tgb 10y agoI've read that insurance people strongly suggest to never wave: it's one of the top things that seems to occur during accidents. It's hard to distinguish from someone "waving you on" versus someone "waving to say thanks for letting me go". Trusting anyone else to check for oncoming traffic is a terrible idea. It's really easy to focus on the wave-giver and not check the rest of the traffic. And even if you are good at these, all waves are inherently involving at least 2 drivers, and you can't really count on them being any good. I couldn't find any real information on this though. I think I picked it up from Reddit comments. Some info does suggest it's legally complicated: http://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2014/03/06/244965.htm http://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2014/03/06/244965...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ea2100 10y agoFunny to see the it slow down for the pigeon in the road at 14:50.
- NAHWheatCracker 10y agoHah, nice catch, I remember seeing it do that weird jig but didn't look rewind or look close enough to figure out why it did that.
- Jedd 10y agoThere is a paragraph and video fragment describing this in TFA.
- blisterpeanuts 10y agoDumb question: how do these systems distinguish a traffic light? Here in New England at least, there's quite a variety of lights, many different modes (red, yellow, green, flashing red, flashing yellow, no-turn-left red arrow, no-turn-right red arrow, and different light technologies: old-fashioned style, Fresnel lens, slotted shade. Add to this complexity the weather conditions. Suppose the sun is shining straight at you and you need to squint and shade your eyes just to make out what the light is -- this happens to me frequently -- can the camera see the traffic light and distinguish its color clearly under such conditions? What about when it's raining, misting or drizzling, snowing heavily, etc. and the traffic lights are these fragmented outlines that you, the human, can heuristically distinguish but a machine might not? One last thought: suppose it's right turn on red and first car in line is a self-driving vehicle. Can it really look left and safely determine there's enough time to beat the cross traffic? If it's highly conservative and just waits until green, there could be ten irate motorists behind it and guaranteed to honk and curse. It's exciting technology but there are some very difficult problems to solve. I worry that if these machines can't demonstrate 110% of a human's ability to drive, they simply won't be implemented in many places except some very well defined rigid routes that are free of problematical challenges and variations.
- cbr 10y agored, yellow, green, flashing red, flashing yellow, no-turn-left red arrow, no-turn-right red arrow You forgot flashing green, which does actually exist, at least in MA. You treat it like a green light, but it could go yellow and then red if a pedestrian presses the walk button.
- blisterpeanuts 10y agoYeah, that, and also a traffic cop standing in random spots waving cars around an accident etc.
- ktRolster 10y agoIn some parts of San Francisco there's a stoplight with a green X. Took me a long time to figure out it means "one way street, don't enter"
- andrewem 10y agoWatching this video what struck me most was how overbuilt almost all the streets were - they're designed for high speeds and devote essentially all the space to cars. We know how to get at least a 3x reduction in fatalities, as the Netherlands has done, with engineering changes that make human drivers less likely to make mistakes and make their mistakes less costly.
- bbarn 10y agoReally? The narrow downtown San Francisco streets? You should check out a suburb sometime.
- ilaksh 10y agoThis video was posted quite awhile ago. Are we sure its not just Nvidia's reference app configured by the Cruise people? Most of this stuff was in the Tesla and other Nvidia Drive demos.
- 0898 10y agoAnybody else think this was about scientology for a moment?
- abalone 10y agoAt the risk of sounding pedantic this is not a Level 4 demo. It is a Level 2 demo where the driver didn't have to intervene during the demonstrated route. What's the difference? Apart from the legal requirement to have a diver ready to take over in test vehicles (which necessarily makes it Level 2), the fundamental difference is that you'd have to show a lot more than one demo to establish that you've achieved Level 4. Level 4s are supposed to be able to operate without human intervention at all within prescribed domains (e.g. downtown cities). That doesn't mean operate one trip or one day or one month without a disengagement -- that's still Level 2. I'm super impressed by the demo but Cruise will have to show more data to back up a Level 4 claim.
- will_pseudonym 10y agoThank you! This is not pedantry at all. You are correcting incorrect misleading safety claims.
- tigershark 10y agoI agree completely. And the video although not new is quite impressive. But if the claim of the author that San Francisco is a tough city in which to drive is true, than I fear that some parts of Italy (and probably A LOT of cities in the world) won't have self driving cars for a very long time. When I saw the video the first time I was very impressed, but I would have never imagined that for someone that was a VERY challenging urban scenario. From the article: when we see the streets of San Fransisco conquered, then we know that self-driving is ready to come of age. Seriously? And if you conquer the street of Naples what will come of age?
- CoolGuySteve 10y agoThis is moreso true for China and India. If you've ever been to those countries, the first thing you notice as a westerner is that the streets are chaos, traffic rules are barely obeyed, and aggressiveness is required to get anywhere. Meanwhile, Beijing and Dehli have extreme pollution problems partially caused by cars. If any place was in need of point to point autonomous ride sharing, it's Asia. The reduction in cars would reduce congestion from the outset. But in the future, protocol guided right of way negotiation could reduce congestion even further.
- Apocryphon 10y agoGood news for Lyft?
- dorianm 10y agoLevel 0: Automated system has no vehicle control, but may issue warnings. Level 1: Driver must be ready to take control at any time. Automated system may include features such as Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), Parking Assistance with automated steering, and Lane Keeping Assistance (LKA) Type II in any combination. Level 2: The driver is obliged to detect objects and events and respond if the automated system fails to respond properly. The automated system executes accelerating, braking, and steering. The automated system can deactivate immediately upon takeover by the driver. Level 3: Within known, limited environments (such as freeways), the driver can safely turn their attention away from driving tasks, but must still be prepared to take control when needed. Level 4: The automated system can control the vehicle in all but a few environments such as severe weather. The driver must enable the automated system only when it is safe to do so. When enabled, driver attention is not required. Level 5: Other than setting the destination and starting the system, no human intervention is required. The automatic system can drive to any location where it is legal to drive and make its own decision. From the Society of Automotive Engineers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Classification
- teawithcarl 10y agoEach time the Cruise starts from a stop light, it's too slow. Every time ... cars pass it, and dive into its lane (a typical reaction to slow moving vehicles). Still, nice accomplishment.
- notatoad 10y agoIt's hard to tell for sure what's happening in a sped up video like this, but starting slower than other cars at the light isn't necessarily a bad thing, depending on just how slow they're going. Going hard off the line is extremely inefficient for very little benefit. Autonomous cars correcting that habit could be good.
- stale2002 10y agoThis is a pro, not a con. Slamming on the accelerator is a bad behavior that self driving cars will be correcting.
- bearlow 10y agoThis looks very amateurish, no roundabouts, no give-way intersection. It's really easy to stop at red lights or where then car in front of you breaks and it emits another red light: if ( light == red) stop() ....
- panitaxx 10y agoPigeons and human have a pact. You continue and they will fly away in the last second. Cars don't need to stop for pigeons. https://youtu.be/xPCZtrac-Ss https://youtu.be/xPCZtrac-Ss
- will_pseudonym 10y agoWhat about squirrels? :)
- cardiffspaceman 10y agoI hope you're kidding. In an area where they had just opened a freeway segment for my commute, my car had a couple of "reverse bird strikes" -- the car was safe but the fate of the bird was unknown -- at the beginning of the new segment. It's possible the birds weren't pigeons.
- will_pseudonym 10y agoHe was kidding. It's from Seinfeld.
- arnonejoe 10y agoWould be more impressed with a drive from Lombard and Van Ness to Telegraph Hill.
- dsfyu404ed 10y agoI said it before and I'll say it again: You might not be able to turn an aircraft carrier on a dime but when you do you've got an aircraft carrier. GM (and the other automotive manufacturers for that matter) decided they wanted in on self driving and electric vehicles, had a few meetings, wrote a few checks and a few years later look at the result. Are Google and Tesla going to reply with similar videos?
- luhn 10y ago> You might not be able to turn an aircraft carrier on a dime but when you do you've got an aircraft carrier. I'm not sure what this means.
- thecopy 10y agoI interpret it as GM/Ford etc, the big ones, means serious competetion when they start focusing on this, but they are slow to start the focus since they are big.
- bfstein 10y agoHe's saying that while it may be more difficult to change strategic direction of a $50B company (Ford/Gm/etc.), once you do, you have a huge company and giant production line behind you.
- EGreg 10y agoWhat I'd liks to see with level 4 is millions of miles driven by a car with a SOFT outer shell. That way collisions don't hurt other cars or even pedestrians. Make the car's top entirely out of foam or something, when driving without a driver.
- erikb 10y agoWhat is a level four skill?
- mavhc 10y agoExample edge case: Waymo cars know that police cars often stop behind other cars and to expect people to be walking nearby. Thought: Once we have 99% self driving cars it will be quite easy to convert a portion of roads to pedestrian only at times when traffic is light: bollards go up, lighting changes, cars informed to reroute.
- scirocco 10y agoIt's interesting how the autonomous car evolution is to a very large extent a result from the private sector. Companies could have been asking the federal government to install sensors in all stop signs, and under the street to support this evolution. Rather, they look at the cities as they are and build something that works with it. Sometimes I wonder if government should take a more active role and ease the adoption by adapting cities to autonomus vehicle (rather than the other way around as it is today).