9 ms·

Apollo – An open autonomous driving platform

246 points by KKKKkkkk1 9y ago

kensoh 9y ago
Interesting, surprised that this isn't submitted yet. This is the project by Baidu. Thanks OP!
bradhe 9y ago
How many more projects are going to get launched with the name "apollo"?
- lgas 9y ago
  Millions.
- heretoo 9y ago
  Only until we have an ApolloGate scandal.
  - kbaker 9y ago
    Or until the Apollo 1 release....
- lwansbrough 9y ago
  Hey guys, we need a new name. Start calling out names from mythology and we'll pick the coolest sounding/most applicable one! So creative!
  - aussieguy123 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legendary_creatures_(A) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legendary_creatures_(A...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
rwmj 9y ago
These open source driving platforms are an interesting way to test out the limits of liability disclaimers on software. This license has: 8. Limitation of Liability. In no event and under no legal theory, whether in tort (including negligence), contract, or otherwise, unless required by applicable law (such as deliberate and grossly negligent acts) or agreed to in writing, shall any Contributor be liable to You for damages, including any direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages of any character arising as a result of this License or out of the use or inability to use the Work (including but not limited to damages for loss of goodwill, work stoppage, computer failure or malfunction, or any and all other commercial damages or losses), even if such Contributor has been advised of the possibility of such damages.
- nsxwolf 9y ago
  Count me out on ever contributing to a project like this. I really don't want to be a test case.
  - yzmtf2008 9y ago
    Most open source projects have a disclaimer like this. You don't want to be responsible for the usage of whichever random programmer either.
    - weberc2 9y ago
      I hope there is a difference in liability between a self-driving car library and it's left-pad dependency.
      - jhall1468 9y ago
        There isn't when your the one using the software on your hardware.
  - mwfunk 9y ago
    This isn't because it's unreliable or because you (the developer) would be a test case. I mean, I don't know anything about this project so I can't vouch for it, but pretty much every open source project in this area is obligated to have this kind of verbiage and it has nothing to do with the quality of the project. This is so you can contribute to an open source project without worrying about some random person suing you. This is to protect the contributors, which includes anyone who submits changes, which would include you. If you see an autonomous driving project that doesn't have language like this, that's the project you want to stay away from, not this one.
Animats 9y ago
Autonomous driving based purely on machine learning from vision is scary. Machine learning is, after all, a statistical method. It's going to do really great most of the time, and really badly once in a while.
- pd0wm 9y ago
  The exact same can be said about human drivers. Why do we demand that autonomous driving is 100% safe? I would be completely fine with autonomous cars that sometimes crash, but are still less likely to do so than with human drivers.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - nsxwolf 9y ago
    We accept that human drivers kill thousands upon thousands of people. We won't tolerate deaths from automation even in the single digits. That may not be rational but it's also unlikely to change.
    - weberc2 9y ago
      I think it's a matter of sussing out liability.
    - oxryly1 9y ago
      The rational fear is of automation introducing systemic failures. Imagine a "flash crash"[1] type event applied to widely deployed self-driving vehicles. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash
    - devy 9y ago
      Yet, Robots and automated machines (not the autonomous vehicles) still killed/injured a few dozen people since 1984 according to U.S. Department of Labor. [1] [1]: https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/AccidentSearch.search?acc_keyword=%22Robot%22&keyword_list=on https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/AccidentSearch.search?acc_keyw... Worldwide stats will be far more than that. We've accepted it, haven't we?
beachbum8029 9y ago
Awesome. Now to just get a couple LIDAR cameras...
- donpdonp 9y ago
  $500 lidar toy platform https://www.seeedstudio.com/SDP-Mini-RPlidar-Experimental-Platform-p-2905.html https://www.seeedstudio.com/SDP-Mini-RPlidar-Experimental-Pl... using the "RPLidar A2" https://www.slamtec.com/en/Lidar https://www.slamtec.com/en/Lidar looks interesting.
- dbcurtis 9y ago
  Cheapest Lidar I know of with reasonable quality is a Neato vacuum cleaner. Go to Target, get a vacuum, give it a lidar-ectomy, throw away the sucky parts, and you still have the cheapest LIDAR in town. 350 pionts, 5HZ scan rate. Indoor range about 5m, outdoor 2+m with a sun shade, accuracy at 5m about +/- 2cm. Great for hobby robots. Totally not sufficient to drive a car at highway speeds.
vswar 9y ago
An open autonomous driving platform - seems great.
ingenieroariel 9y ago
The list of partners looks quite interesting, including Ford, Bosch and Delphi. It is apparently based on ROS like Autoware.
- sbarre 9y ago
  And so many Chinese automotive companies I'd never heard of!
acover 9y ago
Would this work on an electric bicycle? Edit: or more stable tri-cycle/quad-cycle
- sbierwagen 9y ago
  There have been various autonomous 2-wheeled vehicles, though riding an autonomous vehicle that uses lean steering, like a bike, would seem to entail a little bit more excitement than I'd want to have.
  - sharpercoder 9y ago
    Imagine a driverless bicycle driving back to its base after being used byw the renter. A flywheel keeps its balance while stopped before traffic (lights), the electromotor thrusts it.
- arthursw 9y ago
  A team at the University of Washington Bothell (UWB) is already working on such thing : https://readwrite.com/2016/10/19/autonomous-tricycle-tl4/ https://readwrite.com/2016/10/19/autonomous-tricycle-tl4/ http://newatlas.com/uwb-autonomous-trikes/45946/ http://newatlas.com/uwb-autonomous-trikes/45946/
alexhornbake 9y ago
Maybe I'm missing something, is this is a platform strictly for developing ML techniques? Or is it intended to actual run in a vehicle... on ubuntu, in a docker container? I'm no expert, but I would think you'd want a realtime OS for this. Right?
- sgillen 9y ago
  More likely is that the car would have a Linux box running this software that connects to one or more micro controllers. The micro controllers handle any sensors/actuators with real time requirements, and may be running an RTOS or just bare metal.
  - alexhornbake 9y ago
    Hmmm, thanks for the additional info. Still seems like a bad idea. Based on your assertion, what happens when the RTOS/microcontroller does not receive a "decision" before the scheduling deadline? Many things can hang a Linux box... the reason why RTOS exists is because nothing can stop the scheduler. I would be very curious to hear from the Apollo developers. What is the intended platform and developer audience? Is this intended to actually run in a vehicle?
    - zaro 9y ago
      There are way to make Linux an RTOS, including work on pushing RT deterministic scheduler in the mainline[1]. [1] https://rt.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page https://rt.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page
      - alexhornbake 9y ago
        Ahhh... Found it... The project has it's own Kernel. I stand corrected. This is super cool. https://github.com/ApolloAuto/apollo-kernel https://github.com/ApolloAuto/apollo-kernel
the_common_man 9y ago
This is by the Baidu AI team.
rottyguy 9y ago
I'd imagine this could work on a small fleet of miniature cars (rc size?). A model town/city could be built with various obstacles for training a large amount of the ai, I would think.
- cr0sh 9y ago
  Why do that, when you could train in a computer simulation?
  - thealexbaron 9y ago
    Cooler, cuter, funner.
- dbcurtis 9y ago
  The autonomous racing league that meets in Oakland is doing exactly that. Typically the R/C car uses wifi to connect back to an AWS instance for the heavy lifting.
  - jnbiche 9y ago
    > Typically the R/C car uses wifi to connect back to an AWS instance for the heavy lifting. Wow, and the latency is manageable for the task?
    - koffiezet 9y ago
      Well, the average human reaction time is 215ms, which would be considered unacceptable in online-gaming, where 50ms would already be on the high side of things, I normally see 30ms or so. Let's assume 50ms or 20 updates per second, and a car driving at 40m/s or about 145kmh / 90mph, the reaction time of the of the computer is after the car moved 2 meters (about 6.5 feet). A human would only react after about 8.5 meters (about 28 feet) - quite the difference.
- chplushsieh 9y ago
  Related: http://duckietown.mit.edu/ http://duckietown.mit.edu/
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nnm 9y ago
Is it functional as of today? The perception directory is almost empty (only skeleton).
siliconc0w 9y ago
It'd be cool to have some sort of independent 'weissman score' style benchmark for these systems. Maybe just RMSE or similar against ground truth steering/throttle over a battery of different environments/weather/terrain. It looks like it uses LIDAR and Baidu has a pretty impressive AI team so it'd be really interesting to see how they stack up against, say, Comma AI's openpilot or Tesla's autopilot.

246 points by KKKKkkkk1 9y ago

kensoh 9y ago

Interesting, surprised that this isn't submitted yet. This is the project by Baidu. Thanks OP!

bradhe 9y ago

How many more projects are going to get launched with the name "apollo"?

lgas 9y ago
Millions.
heretoo 9y ago
Only until we have an ApolloGate scandal.
- kbaker 9y ago
  Or until the Apollo 1 release....
lwansbrough 9y ago
Hey guys, we need a new name. Start calling out names from mythology and we'll pick the coolest sounding/most applicable one! So creative!
- aussieguy123 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legendary_creatures_(A) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legendary_creatures_(A...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

rwmj 9y ago

These open source driving platforms are an interesting way to test out the limits of liability disclaimers on software. This license has: 8. Limitation of Liability. In no event and under no legal theory, whether in tort (including negligence), contract, or otherwise, unless required by applicable law (such as deliberate and grossly negligent acts) or agreed to in writing, shall any Contributor be liable to You for damages, including any direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages of any character arising as a result of this License or out of the use or inability to use the Work (including but not limited to damages for loss of goodwill, work stoppage, computer failure or malfunction, or any and all other commercial damages or losses), even if such Contributor has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

nsxwolf 9y ago
Count me out on ever contributing to a project like this. I really don't want to be a test case.
- yzmtf2008 9y ago
  Most open source projects have a disclaimer like this. You don't want to be responsible for the usage of whichever random programmer either.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    I hope there is a difference in liability between a self-driving car library and it's left-pad dependency.
    - jhall1468 9y ago
      There isn't when your the one using the software on your hardware.
- mwfunk 9y ago
  This isn't because it's unreliable or because you (the developer) would be a test case. I mean, I don't know anything about this project so I can't vouch for it, but pretty much every open source project in this area is obligated to have this kind of verbiage and it has nothing to do with the quality of the project. This is so you can contribute to an open source project without worrying about some random person suing you. This is to protect the contributors, which includes anyone who submits changes, which would include you. If you see an autonomous driving project that doesn't have language like this, that's the project you want to stay away from, not this one.

Animats 9y ago

Autonomous driving based purely on machine learning from vision is scary. Machine learning is, after all, a statistical method. It's going to do really great most of the time, and really badly once in a while.

pd0wm 9y ago
The exact same can be said about human drivers. Why do we demand that autonomous driving is 100% safe? I would be completely fine with autonomous cars that sometimes crash, but are still less likely to do so than with human drivers.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- nsxwolf 9y ago
  We accept that human drivers kill thousands upon thousands of people. We won't tolerate deaths from automation even in the single digits. That may not be rational but it's also unlikely to change.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    I think it's a matter of sussing out liability.
  - oxryly1 9y ago
    The rational fear is of automation introducing systemic failures. Imagine a "flash crash"[1] type event applied to widely deployed self-driving vehicles. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash
  - devy 9y ago
    Yet, Robots and automated machines (not the autonomous vehicles) still killed/injured a few dozen people since 1984 according to U.S. Department of Labor. [1] [1]: https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/AccidentSearch.search?acc_keyword=%22Robot%22&keyword_list=on https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/AccidentSearch.search?acc_keyw... Worldwide stats will be far more than that. We've accepted it, haven't we?

beachbum8029 9y ago

Awesome. Now to just get a couple LIDAR cameras...

donpdonp 9y ago
$500 lidar toy platform https://www.seeedstudio.com/SDP-Mini-RPlidar-Experimental-Platform-p-2905.html https://www.seeedstudio.com/SDP-Mini-RPlidar-Experimental-Pl... using the "RPLidar A2" https://www.slamtec.com/en/Lidar https://www.slamtec.com/en/Lidar looks interesting.
dbcurtis 9y ago
Cheapest Lidar I know of with reasonable quality is a Neato vacuum cleaner. Go to Target, get a vacuum, give it a lidar-ectomy, throw away the sucky parts, and you still have the cheapest LIDAR in town. 350 pionts, 5HZ scan rate. Indoor range about 5m, outdoor 2+m with a sun shade, accuracy at 5m about +/- 2cm. Great for hobby robots. Totally not sufficient to drive a car at highway speeds.

vswar 9y ago

An open autonomous driving platform - seems great.

ingenieroariel 9y ago

The list of partners looks quite interesting, including Ford, Bosch and Delphi. It is apparently based on ROS like Autoware.

sbarre 9y ago
And so many Chinese automotive companies I'd never heard of!

acover 9y ago

Would this work on an electric bicycle? Edit: or more stable tri-cycle/quad-cycle

sbierwagen 9y ago
There have been various autonomous 2-wheeled vehicles, though riding an autonomous vehicle that uses lean steering, like a bike, would seem to entail a little bit more excitement than I'd want to have.
- sharpercoder 9y ago
  Imagine a driverless bicycle driving back to its base after being used byw the renter. A flywheel keeps its balance while stopped before traffic (lights), the electromotor thrusts it.
arthursw 9y ago
A team at the University of Washington Bothell (UWB) is already working on such thing : https://readwrite.com/2016/10/19/autonomous-tricycle-tl4/ https://readwrite.com/2016/10/19/autonomous-tricycle-tl4/ http://newatlas.com/uwb-autonomous-trikes/45946/ http://newatlas.com/uwb-autonomous-trikes/45946/

alexhornbake 9y ago

Maybe I'm missing something, is this is a platform strictly for developing ML techniques? Or is it intended to actual run in a vehicle... on ubuntu, in a docker container? I'm no expert, but I would think you'd want a realtime OS for this. Right?

sgillen 9y ago
More likely is that the car would have a Linux box running this software that connects to one or more micro controllers. The micro controllers handle any sensors/actuators with real time requirements, and may be running an RTOS or just bare metal.
- alexhornbake 9y ago
  Hmmm, thanks for the additional info. Still seems like a bad idea. Based on your assertion, what happens when the RTOS/microcontroller does not receive a "decision" before the scheduling deadline? Many things can hang a Linux box... the reason why RTOS exists is because nothing can stop the scheduler. I would be very curious to hear from the Apollo developers. What is the intended platform and developer audience? Is this intended to actually run in a vehicle?
  - zaro 9y ago
    There are way to make Linux an RTOS, including work on pushing RT deterministic scheduler in the mainline[1]. [1] https://rt.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page https://rt.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page
    - alexhornbake 9y ago
      Ahhh... Found it... The project has it's own Kernel. I stand corrected. This is super cool. https://github.com/ApolloAuto/apollo-kernel https://github.com/ApolloAuto/apollo-kernel

the_common_man 9y ago

This is by the Baidu AI team.

rottyguy 9y ago

I'd imagine this could work on a small fleet of miniature cars (rc size?). A model town/city could be built with various obstacles for training a large amount of the ai, I would think.

cr0sh 9y ago
Why do that, when you could train in a computer simulation?
- thealexbaron 9y ago
  Cooler, cuter, funner.
dbcurtis 9y ago
The autonomous racing league that meets in Oakland is doing exactly that. Typically the R/C car uses wifi to connect back to an AWS instance for the heavy lifting.
- jnbiche 9y ago
  > Typically the R/C car uses wifi to connect back to an AWS instance for the heavy lifting. Wow, and the latency is manageable for the task?
  - koffiezet 9y ago
    Well, the average human reaction time is 215ms, which would be considered unacceptable in online-gaming, where 50ms would already be on the high side of things, I normally see 30ms or so. Let's assume 50ms or 20 updates per second, and a car driving at 40m/s or about 145kmh / 90mph, the reaction time of the of the computer is after the car moved 2 meters (about 6.5 feet). A human would only react after about 8.5 meters (about 28 feet) - quite the difference.
chplushsieh 9y ago
Related: http://duckietown.mit.edu/ http://duckietown.mit.edu/

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

nnm 9y ago

Is it functional as of today? The perception directory is almost empty (only skeleton).

siliconc0w 9y ago

It'd be cool to have some sort of independent 'weissman score' style benchmark for these systems. Maybe just RMSE or similar against ground truth steering/throttle over a battery of different environments/weather/terrain. It looks like it uses LIDAR and Baidu has a pretty impressive AI team so it'd be really interesting to see how they stack up against, say, Comma AI's openpilot or Tesla's autopilot.