6 ms·

How Drive.ai Is Mastering Autonomous Driving with Deep Learning

68 points by amaks 10y ago

Judgmentality 10y ago
It's been 10 years since the DARPA Urban Challenge. Maybe it's time for another self-driving car competition? One possibility is an automaker that wants self-driving car technology would agree to acquire the winner for a certain price, but this would already exclude most of the big players (Waymo, Cruise, Argo, Delphi, Uber). Another possibility is the competition is funded by the big auto corporations in order to advertise who has the best technology, similar to racing events. The biggest benefit from a public competition like this would be to improve public perception of self-driving cars so they're more receptive to the technology (and more likely to buy it).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- isubkhankulov 10y ago
  I'm sure you mean less reticent?
  - Judgmentality 10y ago
    I meant receptive! Thank you (edited my original comment).
- kyleschiller 10y ago
  Why wouldn't automakers just license self-driving technology from the big players?
  - Judgmentality 10y ago
    I don't think anybody knows for sure how this technology will reach the public, but after Ford and GM each committed around $1 billion to develop the technology in-house and own it, it seems like they want to have total integration into their cars and own the technology. If your goal is selling cars, and you have the best self-driving technology, that might mean you sell more cars and make more money. Of course they have other ways of making money with the technology, such as taxis and trucks.
    - hocuspocus 10y ago
      Not only it's clear every big car-maker is working on its own self-driving technology, I'm not sure how licensing could work... each of the small self-driving startups will need access to hardware and data collection at scale to make true advancements, i.e. partner up with one OEM and be tied forever :) I believe there will be more of those billion dollar exits. Uber is the exception here, but I don't see how this can end well for them.
    - groby_b 10y ago
      FWIW - if you've ever been exposed to Ford computer systems. the idea of them wanting to do self-driving in-house will strike you as extremely comical. They can't manage a computer-controlled transmission so far. (And we're not even mentioning SYNC). This will likely be the inflection point that sees liability laws for computer software, because it's going to be a quite spectacular disaster.
- joshu 10y ago
  I am running http://selfracingcars.com/ http://selfracingcars.com/ in three weeks.
  - unityByFreedom 10y ago
    Cool! You mean you're organizing or participating? Hope to see more competitions like this, and more participation from both smaller and bigger players. I imagine if the little guys get enough press from things like this, the bigger ones will be forced to participate, or risk losing out on awareness of their tech's capabilities. Not sure racing around a track is the best challenge or not but it's something! Good luck. Let us know how it goes with a post here!
    - joshu 10y ago
      Organizing. I am also building an autonomous kart as well: https://youtu.be/6buTfyvYd9o https://youtu.be/6buTfyvYd9o
      - unityByFreedom 10y ago
        Ohhh that's great! Good luck with your projects. I think it's great for the industry to encourage smaller players to join, even if it's just to win some prize money. Do you have any long term hope that bigger companies will join self driving competitions like yours?
        joshu 10y ago
        They are already attending. Audi brought out a vehicle last year, etc.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
- beambot 10y ago
  Any sufficiently-capable team should be able to (trivially?) acquire funding to create a proper autonomous car outfit. The prize would be inconsequential relative to the startup costs, resources, and upside of such a company. It would be more like winning a Phase 2 SBIR grant. On the flip side, any poorly-funded upstart is unlikely to make achievements capable of swaying public perception -- especially in comparison to the autonomous car divisions of big multi-national auto companies. TL;DR: We're probably beyond the stage of a DARPA challenge for autonomous cars. Billions of dollars of private money is already flowing.
- Fricken 10y ago
  The first Darpa challenges were great, but we don't need these things now free market competition is now doing it's job accelerating the development of AVs as fast as it can possibly be accelerated. There are things like Roborace, but the irony is that anyone capable of making an awesome autonomous race vehicle has much more important things to do. Google, GM, Ford, Uber- they're at the point where throwing more money at the problem can't help it. Amongst start-ups that have yet to be swallowed up by a big carmaker or tech company, Drive.ai is by far the most exciting. I mean, if a billion dollars (Cruise, Otto, Argo.ai) is the going rate for a demonstrably talented autonomous driving startup, the Drive.ai is already worth at least that much. They've got the most futuristic approach, and they're moving the fastest.
  - unityByFreedom 10y ago
    Independent testing is lacking. Right now all we have is marketing. This leads many to believe that Tesla is ahead in self driving tech, for example. You may or may not perceive that as a problem. Regardless, I agree with GP that there is a space for independent testing. It could spur development further in the right direction. There is lots of investment now, though the target varies. Developing some tests could help consumers see what types of autonomy they want to buy, and give developers a chance to succeed in different areas, earning more unique awards than "best self driving car". We haven't established a public understanding of SDC testing criteria yet. I'm not clear whether developers agree on a set of tests either. It's an odd state of affairs. Testing ought to be the first thing software engineers design. California DMV does testing, but the results aren't sexy or widely known. Companies participate to varying degrees depending on how they feel it would affect their brand. Uber left CA and Tesla's participation was minimal. Also, the reports are only annual which seems slow these days. We could use something like the league of women voters did for presidential debates, or like Netflix did for machine learning. Get the SDC community to scientifically show who really has the chops, and not just rely on marketing and branding!
    - Fricken 10y ago
      The California DMV doesn't do any testing, all the companies with a testing permit in California self-report. I'm not sure how one would would even go about independent testing, now or ever. Gill Pratt, head of Toyota's SV research lab points out that to have statistically meaningful data about the safety of an autonomous vehicle, you'd need to do about 8.5 billion miles of real world testing on public roads. Of course, by the time one gets to the 8 billionth mile of testing, the early data will be irrelevant because whatever autonomous OS is being tested will have undergone considerable maturation and development in that time frame. I doubt there will ever be a huge amount of 3rd party auditing. “You can apply for a permit to deploy when… you as a manufacturer believe the vehicles are ready to go,” says Bernard Soriano, Deputy Director of the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). “The traditional system of not wanting to be sued crazy controls when manufacturers will do this.”[1] [1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/.WMMMBzJ_sqk.twitter http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self...
deepnotderp 10y ago
Doesn't every SDC company use deep learning though?
- kyleschiller 10y ago
  Yes, this is marketing.
  - EmployedRussian 10y ago
    The article addresses this question: “I think this is the first time autonomous driving has been approached so strongly from a deep learning perspective,” says Tandon. “This is in contrast to a traditional robotics approach,” continues Carol Reiley, cofounder and President. “A lot of companies are just using deep learning for this component or that component, while we view it more holistically,” says Reiley. and "This is why many companies working on vehicle autonomy are more comfortable with using traditional robotics approaches for decision making, and restrict deep learning to perception. They reason: If your system makes an incorrect decision, you’d want to be able to figure out exactly what happened, and then make sure that the mistake won’t be repeated." “This is a big problem,” Tandon acknowledges.
    - deepnotderp 10y ago
      Nvidia has been demonstrating end to end deep learning for a long time....Andrew Ng's talks imply that Baidu's SDCs are also based on end to end.
      - ibrahima 10y ago
        Hmm, it might be worth noting that two of the cofounders of Drive.ai are Andrew Ng's PhD student and his wife. Not sure what that means in terms of how much, if any, collaboration there is between Drive.ai and Baidu.
- commaai 10y ago
  We do deep learning from perception up to planning. And it's released. https://github.com/commaai/openpilot https://github.com/commaai/openpilot
posterboy 10y ago
Does the site really show an advertisement (for an online graduate program) and remove the node completely before I can even read to the end?

68 points by amaks 10y ago

It's been 10 years since the DARPA Urban Challenge. Maybe it's time for another self-driving car competition? One possibility is an automaker that wants self-driving car technology would agree to acquire the winner for a certain price, but this would already exclude most of the big players (Waymo, Cruise, Argo, Delphi, Uber). Another possibility is the competition is funded by the big auto corporations in order to advertise who has the best technology, similar to racing events. The biggest benefit from a public competition like this would be to improve public perception of self-driving cars so they're more receptive to the technology (and more likely to buy it).

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
isubkhankulov 10y ago
I'm sure you mean less reticent?
- Judgmentality 10y ago
  I meant receptive! Thank you (edited my original comment).
kyleschiller 10y ago
Why wouldn't automakers just license self-driving technology from the big players?
- Judgmentality 10y ago
  I don't think anybody knows for sure how this technology will reach the public, but after Ford and GM each committed around $1 billion to develop the technology in-house and own it, it seems like they want to have total integration into their cars and own the technology. If your goal is selling cars, and you have the best self-driving technology, that might mean you sell more cars and make more money. Of course they have other ways of making money with the technology, such as taxis and trucks.
  - hocuspocus 10y ago
    Not only it's clear every big car-maker is working on its own self-driving technology, I'm not sure how licensing could work... each of the small self-driving startups will need access to hardware and data collection at scale to make true advancements, i.e. partner up with one OEM and be tied forever :) I believe there will be more of those billion dollar exits. Uber is the exception here, but I don't see how this can end well for them.
  - groby_b 10y ago
    FWIW - if you've ever been exposed to Ford computer systems. the idea of them wanting to do self-driving in-house will strike you as extremely comical. They can't manage a computer-controlled transmission so far. (And we're not even mentioning SYNC). This will likely be the inflection point that sees liability laws for computer software, because it's going to be a quite spectacular disaster.
joshu 10y ago
I am running http://selfracingcars.com/ http://selfracingcars.com/ in three weeks.
- unityByFreedom 10y ago
  Cool! You mean you're organizing or participating? Hope to see more competitions like this, and more participation from both smaller and bigger players. I imagine if the little guys get enough press from things like this, the bigger ones will be forced to participate, or risk losing out on awareness of their tech's capabilities. Not sure racing around a track is the best challenge or not but it's something! Good luck. Let us know how it goes with a post here!
  - joshu 10y ago
    Organizing. I am also building an autonomous kart as well: https://youtu.be/6buTfyvYd9o https://youtu.be/6buTfyvYd9o
    - unityByFreedom 10y ago
      Ohhh that's great! Good luck with your projects. I think it's great for the industry to encourage smaller players to join, even if it's just to win some prize money. Do you have any long term hope that bigger companies will join self driving competitions like yours?
      - joshu 10y ago
        They are already attending. Audi brought out a vehicle last year, etc.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
beambot 10y ago
Any sufficiently-capable team should be able to (trivially?) acquire funding to create a proper autonomous car outfit. The prize would be inconsequential relative to the startup costs, resources, and upside of such a company. It would be more like winning a Phase 2 SBIR grant. On the flip side, any poorly-funded upstart is unlikely to make achievements capable of swaying public perception -- especially in comparison to the autonomous car divisions of big multi-national auto companies. TL;DR: We're probably beyond the stage of a DARPA challenge for autonomous cars. Billions of dollars of private money is already flowing.
Fricken 10y ago
The first Darpa challenges were great, but we don't need these things now free market competition is now doing it's job accelerating the development of AVs as fast as it can possibly be accelerated. There are things like Roborace, but the irony is that anyone capable of making an awesome autonomous race vehicle has much more important things to do. Google, GM, Ford, Uber- they're at the point where throwing more money at the problem can't help it. Amongst start-ups that have yet to be swallowed up by a big carmaker or tech company, Drive.ai is by far the most exciting. I mean, if a billion dollars (Cruise, Otto, Argo.ai) is the going rate for a demonstrably talented autonomous driving startup, the Drive.ai is already worth at least that much. They've got the most futuristic approach, and they're moving the fastest.
- unityByFreedom 10y ago
  Independent testing is lacking. Right now all we have is marketing. This leads many to believe that Tesla is ahead in self driving tech, for example. You may or may not perceive that as a problem. Regardless, I agree with GP that there is a space for independent testing. It could spur development further in the right direction. There is lots of investment now, though the target varies. Developing some tests could help consumers see what types of autonomy they want to buy, and give developers a chance to succeed in different areas, earning more unique awards than "best self driving car". We haven't established a public understanding of SDC testing criteria yet. I'm not clear whether developers agree on a set of tests either. It's an odd state of affairs. Testing ought to be the first thing software engineers design. California DMV does testing, but the results aren't sexy or widely known. Companies participate to varying degrees depending on how they feel it would affect their brand. Uber left CA and Tesla's participation was minimal. Also, the reports are only annual which seems slow these days. We could use something like the league of women voters did for presidential debates, or like Netflix did for machine learning. Get the SDC community to scientifically show who really has the chops, and not just rely on marketing and branding!
  - Fricken 10y ago
    The California DMV doesn't do any testing, all the companies with a testing permit in California self-report. I'm not sure how one would would even go about independent testing, now or ever. Gill Pratt, head of Toyota's SV research lab points out that to have statistically meaningful data about the safety of an autonomous vehicle, you'd need to do about 8.5 billion miles of real world testing on public roads. Of course, by the time one gets to the 8 billionth mile of testing, the early data will be irrelevant because whatever autonomous OS is being tested will have undergone considerable maturation and development in that time frame. I doubt there will ever be a huge amount of 3rd party auditing. “You can apply for a permit to deploy when… you as a manufacturer believe the vehicles are ready to go,” says Bernard Soriano, Deputy Director of the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). “The traditional system of not wanting to be sued crazy controls when manufacturers will do this.”[1] [1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/.WMMMBzJ_sqk.twitter http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self...

deepnotderp 10y ago

Doesn't every SDC company use deep learning though?

kyleschiller 10y ago
Yes, this is marketing.
- EmployedRussian 10y ago
  The article addresses this question: “I think this is the first time autonomous driving has been approached so strongly from a deep learning perspective,” says Tandon. “This is in contrast to a traditional robotics approach,” continues Carol Reiley, cofounder and President. “A lot of companies are just using deep learning for this component or that component, while we view it more holistically,” says Reiley. and "This is why many companies working on vehicle autonomy are more comfortable with using traditional robotics approaches for decision making, and restrict deep learning to perception. They reason: If your system makes an incorrect decision, you’d want to be able to figure out exactly what happened, and then make sure that the mistake won’t be repeated." “This is a big problem,” Tandon acknowledges.
  - deepnotderp 10y ago
    Nvidia has been demonstrating end to end deep learning for a long time....Andrew Ng's talks imply that Baidu's SDCs are also based on end to end.
    - ibrahima 10y ago
      Hmm, it might be worth noting that two of the cofounders of Drive.ai are Andrew Ng's PhD student and his wife. Not sure what that means in terms of how much, if any, collaboration there is between Drive.ai and Baidu.
commaai 10y ago
We do deep learning from perception up to planning. And it's released. https://github.com/commaai/openpilot https://github.com/commaai/openpilot

posterboy 10y ago

Does the site really show an advertisement (for an online graduate program) and remove the node completely before I can even read to the end?