8 ms·

Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

113 points by bobuk 9y ago

a-b 9y ago
Can't resist. First thought this post is about https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/6e03eh/driving_through_an_airport https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/6e03eh/driving_through...
old-gregg 9y ago
Does anyone else think the steering wheel movements are unrealistically aggressive? The car is barely turning, yet the wheel is doing 60+ degree turns. Has it been calibrated to be this way, or Prius steering ratio is that relaxed?
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Yea that did seem weird. Also as far as collision avoidance, shouldn't the car come to a complete stop if a van pulls out in front of it instead of just trying to move around it? What would happen if the van kept going? I hope this is an early prototype.
  - vbezhenar 9y ago
    Well, van stopped and yandex was slow enough to stop if necessary. Human would drive exactly the same way, I think. You won't go far away if you would give a way to every van who's trying to push his nose before you.
  - ton4eg 9y ago
    It's an early prototype, stay tuned!
  - cr0sh 9y ago
    Remember, this is Russia we're talking about - or haven't you watched any of those dashcam videos? If it drove what we in the West think of as "normal", it would probably cause more accidents, not less. /s
- ehsankia 9y ago
  Forget about that. This is a video of a car barely managing to properly drive in an empty parking lot. Google had released a video of a car driving through streets back in 2009. 8 years later they just now feel ready enough to do public tests. Just wanted to bring some perspective about how big the journey is from doing a simple drive on video to having something that works well enough to be publicly deployed. We all saw what happened when Uber tried to publicly test way too early.
runnr_az 9y ago
In Russia, the cars drive you?
- wawka13 9y ago
  hehe In Soviet Russia, essay orders you on writing services
virtuexru 9y ago
Too bad most roads in Russia are a joke. This will never happen until Russian infrastructure improves; albeit this tech will stay in the huge provinces, Moscow & St. Petersburg.
- vbezhenar 9y ago
  This tech won't be used in small cities, it makes no sense, and big cities usually have good roads.
  - lambdadmitry 9y ago
    1.1mil city, 6th in Russia (Samara), city center (I lived not far from the place) [1] I would argue that's not a "good road". However, GP is right that this is Moscow-only (maybe Saint-Petersburg, too) anyway. [1] https://a.d-cd.net/9661606s-960.jpg https://a.d-cd.net/9661606s-960.jpg
    - betaby 9y ago
      Your link looks like Montreal to me https://www.google.ca/search?q=montreal+nid+de+poule&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.ca/search?q=montreal+nid+de+poule&source=...
  - Grue3 9y ago
    I live in Russia, and none of the roads outside of Moscow Ring Road have any markings at all. Yes, even big cities. At best the markings are painted in spring and disappear within a few months. Getting autonomous cars to work in these conditions is a huge challenge. There's a famous saying that Russia has two problems: fools and roads, and it's just as true as when it was first coined.
    - konart 9y ago
      Well, that's not true for at least two cities I lived in. St.Petersburg and Cheboksary. Cheboksary always had pretty good roads, even outside the city. But - yeah, this kind of vehicles won't be a thing outside of Moscow for a quite a while.
pilsetnieks 9y ago
Isn't every taxi service on-demand?
- tintor 9y ago
  There are taxi services that you can schedule a ride upfront and also taxi pool lines (similar to bus/tram lines).
- delegate 9y ago
  Yes. Also, from a passenger's perspective, it's self-driving.
  - muthdra 9y ago
    I don't know how to drive. From my perspective, all cars are self-driving.
Animats 9y ago
That takes me back. That's about the level of performance we had with our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle in 1985. Driving around barrels is a basic test; we did that too. Ours worked OK at 15MPH, but faster than that we'd out-drive the LIDAR range. It's much easier now to get to that level - good multibeam LIDAR is available, GPS/INS integration is common and cheap, and powerful computers that will survive in the automotive environment are available. Progress in vision has been huge, there's good software for digesting point clouds, and 3D SLAM works. Most of the hard problems today involve dealing with other road users.
- georgecmu 9y ago
  > DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle in 1985 I think that date is off by two decades ;)
  - muthdra 9y ago
    So they did have self driving cars in the 60's. I knew it!
    - georgecmu 9y ago
      Right. Jokes aside, though, they did have self-driving cars in the 80s: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/alv/www/ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/alv/www/ If you scroll down to the PhD theses names, there are some pretty well-known names that defended their dissertations as a part of the NavLab development. (The Second) Grand Challenge, of course, was 2005. If I remember right, vehicles didn't have to deal with other road users until 2007 (Urban Challenge).
      - cr0sh 9y ago
        They actually had "self driving cars" in the 60s, and earlier - for given values of "self driving": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_autonomous_cars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_autonomous_cars
  - Animats 9y ago
salimmadjd 9y ago
Yandex has some of the best programmers in the world. This was a surprise to me, but in the past 5 years, I've been spending few months a year in Belarus with various engineering team and have been learning a lot about this region. Yandex has it's own school within the universities where they recruit the best minds early on and train them. I've heard from programmers who now work at FB. That they could pass google's interview tests, but could not pass the Yandex test at all. Add to that, Yandex Taxi is currently the second most popular on demand Taxi service in Russia. They might also be able to easily bypass many regulations we face here in US and get to a lot more driving data than google/uber/apple/lyft might have. What does that mean? I think, the self driving car might finally give Yandex team something to do with all the talent they've been recruiting. So I would not dismiss their efforts at all. They could become a real force very quickly.
- wsinks 9y ago
  What's the first most popular Taxi service? I haven't seen anyone using something different than Yandex.
  - tetromino_ 9y ago
    Probably Gett. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gett https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gett
    - sshb 9y ago
      Yandex is the most popular taxi service in Russia https://www.ft.com/content/3fce1422-8fd0-11e6-a72e-b428cb934b78 https://www.ft.com/content/3fce1422-8fd0-11e6-a72e-b428cb934...
      - SXX 9y ago
        They have most popular mobile app, but there are other taxi aggregators that still heavily used and competitive on price.
  - Grue3 9y ago
sAbakumoff 9y ago
Yandex taxi is really, really the best ride hailing service I have ever used. Wish them luck with self-driving cars, that would be a real challenge to start such a thing in Russia where drivers could be insanely careless about safety rules. For example a couple of times Russian taxi drivers asked me about WTF I buckle up for - is it a traumatic experience or something? :D
batat 9y ago
Powered by Ubuntu?

113 points by bobuk 9y ago

a-b 9y ago

Can't resist. First thought this post is about https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/6e03eh/driving_through_an_airport https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/6e03eh/driving_through...

old-gregg 9y ago

Does anyone else think the steering wheel movements are unrealistically aggressive? The car is barely turning, yet the wheel is doing 60+ degree turns. Has it been calibrated to be this way, or Prius steering ratio is that relaxed?

djsumdog 9y ago
Yea that did seem weird. Also as far as collision avoidance, shouldn't the car come to a complete stop if a van pulls out in front of it instead of just trying to move around it? What would happen if the van kept going? I hope this is an early prototype.
- vbezhenar 9y ago
  Well, van stopped and yandex was slow enough to stop if necessary. Human would drive exactly the same way, I think. You won't go far away if you would give a way to every van who's trying to push his nose before you.
- ton4eg 9y ago
  It's an early prototype, stay tuned!
- cr0sh 9y ago
  Remember, this is Russia we're talking about - or haven't you watched any of those dashcam videos? If it drove what we in the West think of as "normal", it would probably cause more accidents, not less. /s
ehsankia 9y ago
Forget about that. This is a video of a car barely managing to properly drive in an empty parking lot. Google had released a video of a car driving through streets back in 2009. 8 years later they just now feel ready enough to do public tests. Just wanted to bring some perspective about how big the journey is from doing a simple drive on video to having something that works well enough to be publicly deployed. We all saw what happened when Uber tried to publicly test way too early.

runnr_az 9y ago

In Russia, the cars drive you?

wawka13 9y ago
hehe In Soviet Russia, essay orders you on writing services

virtuexru 9y ago

Too bad most roads in Russia are a joke. This will never happen until Russian infrastructure improves; albeit this tech will stay in the huge provinces, Moscow & St. Petersburg.

vbezhenar 9y ago
This tech won't be used in small cities, it makes no sense, and big cities usually have good roads.
- lambdadmitry 9y ago
  1.1mil city, 6th in Russia (Samara), city center (I lived not far from the place) [1] I would argue that's not a "good road". However, GP is right that this is Moscow-only (maybe Saint-Petersburg, too) anyway. [1] https://a.d-cd.net/9661606s-960.jpg https://a.d-cd.net/9661606s-960.jpg
  - betaby 9y ago
    Your link looks like Montreal to me https://www.google.ca/search?q=montreal+nid+de+poule&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.ca/search?q=montreal+nid+de+poule&source=...
- Grue3 9y ago
  I live in Russia, and none of the roads outside of Moscow Ring Road have any markings at all. Yes, even big cities. At best the markings are painted in spring and disappear within a few months. Getting autonomous cars to work in these conditions is a huge challenge. There's a famous saying that Russia has two problems: fools and roads, and it's just as true as when it was first coined.
  - konart 9y ago
    Well, that's not true for at least two cities I lived in. St.Petersburg and Cheboksary. Cheboksary always had pretty good roads, even outside the city. But - yeah, this kind of vehicles won't be a thing outside of Moscow for a quite a while.

pilsetnieks 9y ago

Isn't every taxi service on-demand?

tintor 9y ago
There are taxi services that you can schedule a ride upfront and also taxi pool lines (similar to bus/tram lines).
delegate 9y ago
Yes. Also, from a passenger's perspective, it's self-driving.
- muthdra 9y ago
  I don't know how to drive. From my perspective, all cars are self-driving.

Animats 9y ago

That takes me back. That's about the level of performance we had with our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle in 1985. Driving around barrels is a basic test; we did that too. Ours worked OK at 15MPH, but faster than that we'd out-drive the LIDAR range. It's much easier now to get to that level - good multibeam LIDAR is available, GPS/INS integration is common and cheap, and powerful computers that will survive in the automotive environment are available. Progress in vision has been huge, there's good software for digesting point clouds, and 3D SLAM works. Most of the hard problems today involve dealing with other road users.

georgecmu 9y ago
> DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle in 1985 I think that date is off by two decades ;)
- muthdra 9y ago
  So they did have self driving cars in the 60's. I knew it!
  - georgecmu 9y ago
    Right. Jokes aside, though, they did have self-driving cars in the 80s: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/alv/www/ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/alv/www/ If you scroll down to the PhD theses names, there are some pretty well-known names that defended their dissertations as a part of the NavLab development. (The Second) Grand Challenge, of course, was 2005. If I remember right, vehicles didn't have to deal with other road users until 2007 (Urban Challenge).
    - cr0sh 9y ago
      They actually had "self driving cars" in the 60s, and earlier - for given values of "self driving": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_autonomous_cars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_autonomous_cars
- Animats 9y ago

salimmadjd 9y ago

Yandex has some of the best programmers in the world. This was a surprise to me, but in the past 5 years, I've been spending few months a year in Belarus with various engineering team and have been learning a lot about this region. Yandex has it's own school within the universities where they recruit the best minds early on and train them. I've heard from programmers who now work at FB. That they could pass google's interview tests, but could not pass the Yandex test at all. Add to that, Yandex Taxi is currently the second most popular on demand Taxi service in Russia. They might also be able to easily bypass many regulations we face here in US and get to a lot more driving data than google/uber/apple/lyft might have. What does that mean? I think, the self driving car might finally give Yandex team something to do with all the talent they've been recruiting. So I would not dismiss their efforts at all. They could become a real force very quickly.

wsinks 9y ago
What's the first most popular Taxi service? I haven't seen anyone using something different than Yandex.
- tetromino_ 9y ago
  Probably Gett. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gett https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gett
  - sshb 9y ago
    Yandex is the most popular taxi service in Russia https://www.ft.com/content/3fce1422-8fd0-11e6-a72e-b428cb934b78 https://www.ft.com/content/3fce1422-8fd0-11e6-a72e-b428cb934...
    - SXX 9y ago
      They have most popular mobile app, but there are other taxi aggregators that still heavily used and competitive on price.
- Grue3 9y ago

sAbakumoff 9y ago

Yandex taxi is really, really the best ride hailing service I have ever used. Wish them luck with self-driving cars, that would be a real challenge to start such a thing in Russia where drivers could be insanely careless about safety rules. For example a couple of times Russian taxi drivers asked me about WTF I buckle up for - is it a traumatic experience or something? :D

batat 9y ago