52 ms·

Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

1120 points by lemiant 9y ago

udfalkso 9y ago
Waymo’s tech requires the area to be meticulously mapped correct? Is this why the test is limited to a small geography?
- eggpy 9y ago
  Roads in Chandler are very regular (nice, wide grid), and the weather is clear and sunny the vast majority of the days. The particular geography helps isolate the number of factors the car needs to consider besides "just" driving. From a NYT article[0], >"The company did not say whether it was testing the driverless cars in environments considered challenging for autonomous vehicles, like bridges or tunnels, or more difficult conditions, like driving at night or in rain and snow — usually not a big concern in the dry Phoenix climate." [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/technology/waymo-autonomous-cars.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/technology/waymo-autonomo...
  - icey 9y ago
    So crazy to see this video shot in the neighborhood I lived in the summers as a kid. Chandler's got a lot of good things going for it as eggpy mentioned -- well marked roads, wide, very little rain. On the downside, the entire Phoenix area has some terrible drivers, which I suppose is good training for the Waymo cars. It will be interesting to see if they park the cars during monsoon season; conditions can get pretty treacherous on the first rainy days of the season -- roads get very slick, drainage isn't always the best so you can end up with large puddles of water on the road that cause hydroplaning, etc.
    - dabeeeenster 9y ago
      Everywhere has terrible drivers - that's the point!
- agumonkey 9y ago
  Probably a solved problem in the eyes of Google..
- maxerickson 9y ago
  There's little external information about how map dependent their implementation is. They certainly have meticulous maps available in areas they operate, but it is easy to imagine other reasons for that. Like they could be using the map to separately process their sensor data, producing a reliable diff and evaluating the sensor only scene based on that.
  - Animats 9y ago
    Perhaps, late at night, some autonomous vehicles will drive unmapped areas at about 25MPH, gathering mapping data. You don't need much mapping data if you drive slow.
- gervase 9y ago
  This article from Dec 2016 seems to suggest that's still the case [0]. However, it also looks like those maps can be built by the cars themselves, which should simplify expansion. [0]: https://medium.com/waymo/building-maps-for-a-self-driving-car-723b4d9cd3f4 https://medium.com/waymo/building-maps-for-a-self-driving-ca...
- theptip 9y ago
  The Ars Technica article says this is still the case: > To aid with navigation, Waymo has built high-resolution three-dimensional maps of its service area. Self-driving software in each car can compare the objects identified by sensors to objects on the map, allowing it to quickly distinguish stationary objects like trees and buildings from mobile objects like cars and pedestrians. > As Waymo expands its map and acquires more vehicles, it will also expand its service area. Before too long, Waymo expects to offer service across the entire Phoenix metropolitan area. Eventually, Waymo will extend service to other metropolitan areas using the same incremental approach. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/11/fully-driverless-cars-are-here/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/11/fully-driverless-cars-a...
- k__ 9y ago
  How much of a problem is this mapping? Huge part is up-front-work, and then? How often do streets change?
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    Not significantly more difficult than what goes into google maps, you just need a modified sensor suite, if I understand correctly. (Disclosure: googler, but I have nothing to do with maps or cars)
- rayiner 9y ago
  That's pretty terrifying that it can't read street signs and is dependent on mapping. Here in D.C., there are all sorts of fine-grained road rules, such as streets that are one-way only certain times of day, streets that reverse direction at certain times of day, turns that are legal or illegal depending on time of day, etc. That's not including random road closures. These databases apparently don't get updated that often. Recently, D.C. moved a major highway on-ramp. It used to be that you could get on 395-S heading west on H street, by taking a left onto the on-ramp. They replaced it with an underground entrance ramp on eastbound Mass. Ave., such that westbound traffic on H or Mass. Ave. could no longer use the on-ramp, and had to go several blocks south to use a different one. This was a widely-publicized move planned long in advance. And at least Apple Maps tried to steer me down the old route for awhile. Similar thing in our neighborhood just outside the Annapolis city limits. They closed our street to car traffic with barriers, so that you can get in an out but can't drive along it for more than one cross street. Whatever database Uber uses still hasn't figured this out--I'll get Uber drivers waiting for me on the other side of one of the barriers.
  - jpm_sd 9y ago
    It can read street signs, even hand-held STOP signs in the hands of construction workers. And the cars are continuously mapping their surroundings. But they ALSO use a shared, extremely high quality map database for first-level path planning. edit: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/inside-waymos-secret-testing-and-simulation-facilities/537648/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/insid...
    - aroman 9y ago
      And it can even see and understand the hand gestures (e.g. turn signs) of cyclists.
      - jacquesm 9y ago
        It's the cyclists that don't do hand gestures that are the problem. Which is - where I live - the vast majority of them.
julbaxter 9y ago
Is there a website/document that compare the status of all existing self-driving cars initiatives?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- thaunatos 9y ago
  California requires all companies with self-driving cars operating in the state to provide reports about miles driven, cars operated, number of disengagements, etc. Here's a link: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2016 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...
RingwormOne 9y ago
I'd like to see successful rain/night/snow/road construction/fog condition tests before I get in one
- dna_polymerase 9y ago
  No worries, they won't put you in a self driving car that isn't perfectly safe. Considering Alphabet sold Boston Dynamics because of PR issues (remember kicking the robots) they won't allow any human losses.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > No worries, they won't put you in a self driving car that isn't perfectly safe. That they think isn't perfectly safe. It's not about what they will allow or not. It is about what will happen. Whether or not it will happen remains to be seen, even if Waymo does not allow it.
Kiro 9y ago
How is this legal?
- gervase 9y ago
  The laws governing self-driving cars in Arizona are extremely lenient, perhaps the most in the nation. Additionally, it appears as if each ride is being monitored in real time remotely by a Waymo employee, who can intervene if something goes wrong, or if the riders request.
  - nawitus 9y ago
    Does the car have an emergency button to stop the driving?
    - kyrra 9y ago
      https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/waymo_pacifica_interior_buttonpod.png https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/waymo_p... The above image is from the inside of a Waymo minivan. There are 4 buttons on it: (1) Call/Help (2) Lock/Unlock (3) Pull Over (4) Start Ride
    - thaunatos 9y ago
      I imagine that stopping the car remotely is the least of a teledriver can do. Unless you mean, is there a button inside the car? I don't know if that is of much importance, seeing as there isn't anyone physically there to press the button.
      - grkvlt 9y ago
        What about the passenger?
- mdorazio 9y ago
  Arizona's government has deliberately taken a very pro-autonomous vehicles approach. The governor's executive order [1] specifically allows driverless vehicles on the roads within the state, provided they follow traffic laws and there is a licensed driver somewhere who will take responsibility if something goes wrong. [1] https://azgovernor.gov/file/2660/download?token=nLkPLRi1 https://azgovernor.gov/file/2660/download?token=nLkPLRi1
nwatson 9y ago
>>> "Waymo will be operating a fully autonomous ride hailing service without any humans at the wheel ... Waymo wants to broaden the geographic scope of its trial, starting with expansion in the near-term to cover the entire Phoenix metro area, which represents more acreage than the whole of the Greater London area, he noted" My family is mostly in Tempe / Mesa area (near Chandler, AZ) and during my last few visits I've seen an increasing number of these autonomous (driver-at-the-wheel) cars on the streets. Note that Uber / Lyft also are very popular in the area. Waymo's transition to a general-public/driverless service in the whole Phoenix area will be the first time that automated ride-hailing services go up against human-driven ride-hailing services. This will be a very interesting and perhaps disturbing experiment. I predict Waymo will price their service competitively, will ramp up to a large fleet, and that after a few months Uber / Lyft will be in trouble. The public will accept the perceived risks in driverless rides. Over a longer term it will be interesting to see what impact there is on car-buying, congestion ... I wonder whether Waymo will provide ride-sharing as well. EDIT: clarification; ride-sharing; car market; traffic congestion. ( Hmmm, also adding that "... after a few months Uber / Lyft will be in trouble" is probably too compressed, it realistically will take a longer time. )
- eggpy 9y ago
  I dunno I can see this remaining small-scale for a while so Waymo can gather data about how people feel about the experience. I can see the backlash now if they were to suddenly unleash a battalion of fully autonomous vehicles on the unsuspecting public. I suspect keeping the numbers relatively low will be a good way to gather just how disturbing this is to the general populace without overwhelming people and ultimately causing an unnecessary uproar and rejection based on appearance, with no regard to quality.
  - Fricken 9y ago
    The cars are a familiar sight in Phoenix, they've been testing there for a couple years now. They started up an early rider program in the spring, with real people volunteering to be guinea pigs while they refine the human UI and logistics. This isn't coming out of the blue.
samstave 9y ago
I do a hit and run on a driverless car, assume its on its way to pickup a passenger, so no humans involved. I hack a driverless car, again with no passengers, and make it do my bidding (hit that other [thing]) I follow driverless car back to its charging base and slash its tires? I rearend a driverless car then leave the scene? (same as option 1 I guess - but could be applied differently) A driverless car gets into its first fatal accident of a passenger, will that lawsuit result in the shutdown of the company? Who specifically will be held to account? Will the developer of the software? Will the engineer who didnt provide sufficient sensors? What if the driverless car looses traction due to black ice, and that results in the death of the passenger or another driver? Im ubering from place A to place B and my phone dies early in the trip and the uber ride cant bill me? What happens? There are a lot more questions that should be posed - and we should answer them all.
- mdorazio 9y ago
  You get arrested for leaving the scene of an accident, and probably sued for damages. This is no different than smashing a parked car with no occupants and then driving off, except that in this case the car's sensors guarantee that you'll get caught.
- dpiers 9y ago
  Your vehicle and face are recorded by half a dozen cameras on the self-driving car and uploaded to the local police department for the accident report.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    I think it's safe to say if someone was going to intentionally attack a Google self-driving car, say to hack it and direct it at a target, they'd bother to make a basic attempt to counteract the cameras. Something like those glasses with infrared lights that blind surveillance cams? Put some near your license plates as well perhaps, I don't know. Not that I agree with the parent this is likely, but most of the replies here seem to ignore that technology is pretty easy to mitigate if you know what you're up against.
hardtke 9y ago
What happens if these cars get in a situation where there is no legal way to move? For instance, the other day I was driving down the street and it was closed because of a Farmers market. Will they just sit there for hours? In gridlock, there is often no way to move without "blocking the box."
- stale2002 9y ago
  Probably alert Google HQ, who will then send a human to pick it up in 10 minutes? Or any number of other solutions, as I easily thought up that one in 5 seconds?
  - rayiner 9y ago
    In New York, they sometimes block all of Lexington Ave. (a major north-south throughfare) at Midtown for pedestrian activities. What happens when a hundred self-driving cars all get to Lex and stop because they can't pass?
    - joshuamorton 9y ago
      After one or two get backed up, they alert the others that traffic is stopped and to go another way? In general the answer to all of these whacky what ifs is "whatever a human driver, or group would do, but with more efficient communication".
      - rayiner 9y ago
        These aren't "wacky what ifs." I don't know what things are like in the Valley, but here on the east coast something unexpected changes my commuting route a couple of times a month (multiply that by tens of thousands of drivers). "Do whatever the human would do, but more efficient" isn't an answer. These cars can't get on WTOP the day before and listen to the warning that the Pope is visiting and X, Y, Z streets will be blocked off. One can imagine various contingency scenarios, but the devil is in actually handling all the edge cases.
FiveSquared 9y ago
Let them free, let them fly. The power is in your eyes. - Trashy Neighborhood Band
dcsommer 9y ago
I hope these cars eventually drive more aggressively than the video shows. With zero traffic they seem to inch along.
- juliesulti 9y ago
  The video shows the vehicle operating at 25 MPH in residential blocks, approaching speed bumps at 10 MPH, respecting a temporary 15 MPH school zone, and coming to a full and complete stop at stop signs and red lights. That is how you are supposed to drive a car.
  - songshu 9y ago
    Yes. The current situation is funny since it's a game of "what's the most effective limit to tell people to stick to" rather than "what's the most effective limit to stick to". Maybe once all cars drive under the limit we will decide that the limits are too low and increase them. And maybe a lot of stop signs will turn into yield signs at some point too.
    - dcsommer 9y ago
      Yeah this is precisely the point I was trying to make.
PatientTrades 9y ago
A lot of what if scenarios being asked. The key takeaway here is that anyone that drives a truck, taxi, uber, lyft, or any other vehicle for a living will highly likely be out of a job in the next 10-15 years. So roughly about 10-12% of the global workforce will be unemployed.
Ajedi32 9y ago
Wow! Waymo is now confident enough in their vehicles that they're willing to risk letting the public use them completely unsupervised? This seems like a huge milestone for self-driving car tech. I wonder what their current disengagement rates are for Chandler; at this point it has to be really close to zero, right?
- hippich 9y ago
  I hope someone was sitting there in front of live feed with big red STOP EVERYTHING button.
- harpastum 9y ago
  No public rides quite yet: "The current passengers for this test are Waymo employees, however, so it’s not as if the Alphabet-owned company is throwing caution to the wind; instead, it’s showing that it’s ready to move to the next major phase of operations after around a decade of working on this incredibly complex problem."
  - Ajedi32 9y ago
    I'm referring to this part: > while the trial is starting with employees first, it’s soon going to expand to the existing members of the Chandler driverless ride hailing service trial that Waymo kicked off at the beginning of 2017. When that happens (sometime in the next “few months,” per Krafcik, Waymo will be operating a fully autonomous ride hailing service without any humans at the wheel, a major first for the industry in terms of realizing the dream of making commercial self-driving available to the public at large
edshiro 9y ago
If Waymo's tech is years ahead of the competition (say 18-24 months ahead minimum) then I think a lot of the self-driving companies and car manufacturers in the US will be having cold sweats. This may not be a winner-take-all market (I don't know honestly...) but I see this lead up enabling Waymo to capture significant market share in the US in regions where laws towards autonomous vehicles are friendly. One way the competition could attempt to mitigate Waymo's lead is to test and launch in areas where Waymo are not currently active (other states in the US, or other countries altogether). They could of course accelerate development of their self driving tech but that's easier said than done I presume. I also worry Uber & Lyft's valuations and usage will drop with the introduction of driverless vehicles, unless they somehow manage to strike long-lasting partnerships with Waymo. Regarding OEMs (i.e. car manufacturers), I can't tell what will happen with them: do they continue shunning Waymo and pursuing their own self-driving car efforts or come back begging for some sort of deal? I presume we will see both attitudes play out depending on how confident each company feels about its own self-driving tech ability and acquisition potential. It's hard to foresee the consequences of this announcement, but I feel Waymo has upped the stakes tremendously today, and the pressure on everyone (including Waymo) to deliver is on, more than ever.
- sliverstorm 9y ago
  Do we have a good signal that truly indicates Waymo has more advanced tech? Or could they simply have a bigger appetite for risk?
  - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    Tesla seems to be the company with an appetite for risk in this area.
  - edshiro 9y ago
    They've historically played it very safe so it feels like a bold announcement coming from them. We don't know whether they have more advanced tech; there is too much opacity in this space. The best proxy we may have are the California disengagement reports[1] from last year and Waymo were doing better than anyone, by a WIDE margin. [1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2016 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...
dabeeeenster 9y ago
There's a positive feedback loop that will happen: As they get more cars on to the road, the log more real world miles, which makes the cars better, which gets more cars onto the road which log more miles... I wonder how valuable this is?
- giacaglia 9y ago
  Tesla logs more miles per day than Waymo recorded in its history, but Waymo has better software just because of their simulations of the real world. See https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/inside-waymos-secret-testing-and-simulation-facilities/537648/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/insid...
  - jacksmith21006 9y ago
    Waymo also has far better hardware than Tesla and that is the bigger difference. Google is getting 1500x Tesla also in performance. https://www.wired.com/2017/02/california-dmv-autonomous-car-disengagement/ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/california-dmv-autonomous-car-... The Numbers Don't Lie: Self-Driving Cars Are Getting Good - Wired
- s17n 9y ago
  The real challenge here is extracting valuable information - if you just dump the sensor data to disk you will consume the world's storage capacity with a handful of cars.
- dx034 9y ago
  Not sure how much that is worth. Tesla collects a huge amount of data but that doesn't help as much as some had hoped. You need to interpret all that data which is expensive and complicated.
  - kajecounterhack 9y ago
    Yep! Some data points: 1. Storing large amounts of logs data is challenging and expensive for anyone. So even if you can collect data, good luck storing it all. Think about what a self driving car has to store: images, audio, 3d point clouds, all organized by time, ideally labeled in some manner. 2. Unorganized data is not useful. For example, part of the autonomous vehicle problem is proving that the car is safe for <condition parameters>. You need simulation to ensure model changes don't incur regressions. I've heard rumors that Tesla didn't have a sim team as recently as 1.5 years ago -- a lot of people argue "you can't sim everything" but most mature players now have realized that sim is vital. If your data is not organized and accessible, or you can't afford to store the data, your development velocity is going to be really bad and/or your safety characteristics will not be provable. One argument I've heard is "well with each new model launch why not just run the model in ghost mode for all live cars on the road, and see if it causes any issues" -- many life-threatening situations are rare combinations of factors. If you don't record them, you can't count on them to happen again during your regression test period. And again, even if it worked, the time it takes you to run a regression test is now a lot longer than a team that has sim that can run O(hours-days).
bluetwo 9y ago
The interstate highway system is an enormous and expensive asset paid for by the taxpayers of the US. Shouldn't we have a conversation about the rights of citizens before allowing corporations to set a precedent that we will not be able to roll back later?
- foolfoolz 9y ago
  what rights are you worried about? commcerial vehicles operate on our highways all the time. corporations are also tax payers in the US
  - notahacker 9y ago
    If the driver of a commercial road vehicle makes a mistake which causes a serious accident or behaves in a way deemed reckless or inattentive, they can go to jail. Similarly, I was under the impression that the humans who took over Waymo vehicles according to very conservative engagement protocols (and according to Waymo's calculations prevented several accidents) had responsibility for the road vehicle Who goes to jail if Waymo vehicles behave in a similar manner? Assuming the answer is "nobody", how did this get greenlighted with so little discussion?
    - soared 9y ago
      Whats your deal with putting people in jail, and why would you assume no on will be punished if something goes wrong? Obviously there will be repercussions for accidents, but we don't know what they are or how it will play out.
      - tomjakubowski 9y ago
        > Obviously there will be repercussions for accidents, but we don't know what they are or how it will play out. The top-level comment was just asking if we could work out how this might look beforehand.
      - notahacker 9y ago
organsnyder 9y ago
I own the same model of vehicle as Waymo is using (2017 Pacifica PHEV). It's cool to see how little they've had to visibly modify the car (apart from the sensors)—the interior looks 100% stock, other than the row of buttons on the ceiling. Given the level-1 autonomous features in the vehicle (self-parking, etc.), all of the integrations are probably done over CAN-bus, with no additional hardware required (again, apart from the sensors and the computing power).
- jvolkman 9y ago
  I think there's more than that. The safety report they released recently indicates the vehicles also have redundant power systems, redundant braking systems, redundant steering systems, etc. I doubt that the stock configurations require as much redundancy.
  - organsnyder 9y ago
    Ah, that could be. Though could that be talking about redundant processing (i.e. two dependent algorithms making the same decision) rather than duplicate hardware?
    - jvolkman 9y ago
      Don't think so. You can read the descriptions on page 17 of the report: https://storage.googleapis.com/sdc-prod/v1/safety-report/waymo-safety-report-2017-10.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/sdc-prod/v1/safety-report/way... For example: The steering system features a redundant drive motor system with independent controllers and separate power supplies. Either one can manage steering in the case that a failure occurs in the other
- JibJabLab 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure there's a huge computer setup that takes up a good portion of the trunk space.
erikbye 9y ago
Does it pull over for police? And what about for police impersonators?
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  Yes and yes. https://medium.com/waymo/recognizing-the-sights-and-sounds-of-emergency-vehicles-8161e90d137e https://medium.com/waymo/recognizing-the-sights-and-sounds-o... Though one can easily imagine a system designed to prevent the latter. Preventing hijackings is more complicated than that though, since an autonomous vehicle will stop for anyone who gets in its way, not just police officers. The array of cameras, lidar sensors, etc each car comes with is probably a fairly decent deterrent against that threat already though.
  - sidcool 9y ago
    Why does Google's Waymo host a blog on Medium?
  - erikbye 9y ago
    I guess eventually police vehicles can just stop autonomous ones with the press of a button, so it doesn't have to rely on its "senses". Some two-way identification between the vehicles; avoid the issue of impersonators completely.
- carapace 9y ago
  This is an important general consideration. I designed a class of drone/robot I call "gun-hunter": They detect humans holding guns and destroy the forearm. Now immediately you have to solve "How do you NOT attack LEOs?" Because of course the obvious thing for the badguys to do would be to impersonate LEOs well enough to fool the robots. (This also applies to signals guns might emit to say they're legit/friendly.) The solution I came up with was that no one should use guns in the presence of active gun-hunters. After all, why would the police need guns if the crooks can't use them?
rwmj 9y ago
Throws money at screen Having said that I do love seeing these wide, straight American roads and wonder how well this will do on the tiny (often single track) winding country roads around here.
- asteli 9y ago
  staying on the road isn't the hard part. all that can be mapped, even in areas with poor road markings. dealing with other road users and abusers is far harder
  - rwmj 9y ago
    Indeed. A day doesn't go by when I don't see drivers looking at their mobile phones, vans parked in the road on a blind bend, tractors which are wider than a single lane (or people who just think that because it's a country road they "should" straddle the middle of the road) etc.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  Just as good as the narrow curvy American country roads: Not at all. All the self-driving fanboys are living in la la land if they think this tech is any way near practical for general use.
davidkuhta 9y ago
Excited about the technology and expected this news eventually, but in less of a "Bam, we did it" and more of a "Coming Dec 2017... look for new autonomous vehicles, they'll be bright orange with flashing lights". Following-up on the "How is this legal" question below, can anyone comment on: 1. For the 'autonomous engineers/technologists': a) Is the technology mature enough that it can be utilized without an on-board driver such that public isn't at risk? b) Does the sensor system provide the remote "monitor" have enough situational awareness? c) What happens if whatever up-link that the vehicle is connected to disconnects? (for example: They're using Comcast) 2. For the 'lawyers': a) Who's responsible if someone gets hurt or the vehicle breaks a law? b) Is an Executive Order from the Governor the ideal channel for introducing the technology to the public (versus legislative action)? [I know subjective but curious] 3. For the 'marketers': a) Any examples of technologies prematurely introduced that had negative impact on their growth or contributed to their demise? Note: I realize some of these are subjective but thought would make for some great discussion.
- StreamBright 9y ago
  I think the question is what happens when the first accident happens caused by autonomous car. US law is not really forgiving in this regard.
  - tempestn 9y ago
    People assumed it would be huge news the first time a car crashed while driving autonomously too though, and it turned out people barely noticed. I'm sure this stuff will need to get figured out, but I don't think it will necessarily be a huge incident the first time there's an accident without someone in the driver's seat. Presumably the first of these vehicles to be deployed will be fleet cars and such and will have specially tailored insurance policies; by the time it's individual owners, the legality will probably be somewhat settled (although there probably will eventually be elements litigated).
  - dx034 9y ago
    In that case the manufacturer (or their insurance) will pay for it. Let that be $10m if someone dies, maybe a bit less if someone gets seriously hurt. Even if it's a multiple of that, that's in no relation to the cost of the programme. As long as they demonstrate that their cars are still a magnitude safer than other cars, paying fines will be enough.
aecs99 9y ago
This, indeed, is a major step for Waymo. While some people may be skeptical about the safety of these rides, we all saw this coming. This has been a part of the ambitious goal most self-driving companies set out when they start. The reason I say "part of the goal", is because the end goal is L5 - to handle more complex scenarios which I assume Waymo is still working on. Taking the ninety-ninety rule or the rule of credibility into consideration, the remaining 10% of development will probably take 90% of the time. By this, I mean that reaching a stage where L5 cars are owned by consumers can take a long time (if at all people want to buy instead of sharing, but that's a separate topic). For example, running this project in Pittsburgh, Boston, or SF is much more difficult than in suburbs of Arizona. Conditions with rain, snow, uneven terrain, high population density are still difficult to handle. Several challenges still remain, from both technical and legal perspectives. However, any of that may not undermine the tremendous opportunities for Waymo (or its partners). There are several areas/markets that are ready for this technology (e.g., ride sharing in suburbs, transportation of non-dangerous goods over passengers, etc.)
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  Why would self-ownership ever be the goal though? I can see people just moving en-masse to Lyft/Uber type services that use a mix of people and machines, with people eventually being phased out, and simply giving up their own cars (except for those who genuinely enjoy driving).
  - milesokeefe 9y ago
    Immediate access to the vehicle and monetary returns from renting it out when not using it.
    - robotresearcher 9y ago
      Those goals interfere with each other.
  - visarga 9y ago
    By combining SDC with electric I think the cost of owning a car could be lowered significantly.
debt 9y ago
I think they're massively underestimating the general public's reaction to something like this. I as a nerdy tech dude think this is very tight and if I was much younger this would blow my mind, but I think this also might frighten many people. I don't know if that's being considered at all here or maybe the transition will be slow enough to allow people to cope with the change.
- ilaksh 9y ago
  They have been doing a series of incremental steps and press releases over the last several months. They started the early rider program in April. Recently they have been ramping up the press and public information program. They released a large 'safety report'. They have been working on self-driving education programs with organizations like MADD and NSC. They even put up billboards in Phoenix related to self-driving safety/education. They also did a big press event just recently inviting like 40 major media outlets including NY Times, WSJ etc. to their test track to give journalists rides and announce they would be launching soon. Surprised you haven't heard about this stuff. They have been working pretty hard to publicize and market it.
ersiees 9y ago
I was really excited, until I read that the change they made is not to have no employee in the car at all. They moved the safety employee from the front to the back.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  Less dramatic, but it makes a lot of sense. If nothing else, a human presence is probably still useful for common cases like a human rear-ending the car. I haven't really seen anyone with a plan for handling all the non-driving issues cars regularly face.
  - TillE 9y ago
    Yeah good point. Until they have the full infrastructure set up for handling exceptional situations remotely, it's probably a lot easier to have someone there at all times just in case.
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  > until I read that the change they made is not to have no employee in the car at all Where does it say this? Going by this article, it sounds like the only employees involved will be those using the service themselves during the trial period. (And those working in the customer service call center.)
- r00fus 9y ago
  Why is that not exciting? It means Waymo is confident enough to have the driver seat unoccupied. It's really a "look ma, no hands... I can do this all day" kind of moment.
- ilaksh 9y ago
  Yeah, I have been waiting for them to announce that everyone in Chandler could download the Waymo app and hail a Waymo when they wanted and there would be no employee in the car. I think they are just doing all of the incremental announcements and steps that they can think of though. I would guess that the next step would be to remove the employee entirely from the car and just have a remote human monitor all the time. Then after that they would remove the continuous remote monitoring, and then the next one would be to maybe open it up to the public via the app. If its 600 or 900 cars or whatever, I can imagine people will be so curious to try it out that they might be swamped. If its cheaper than Uber or Lyft then that will almost certainly be the case barring some major incident. The fleet could be fully booked almost all of the time. Anyway I think that the truly open to public no safety driver service will come in the next month or so unless there is a setback or someone talks Krafcik out of it.
a9a 9y ago
It will be interesting to see how Lyft's partnership with Waymo evolves given this tech announcement and Waymo's acknowledgment that they plan to offer their own ridesharing service. Lyft's approach to self-driving partnerships in general seems to rest on the assumption that self-driving providers will catch up to each other before any of them can fully handle everything a human driver can do. If this assumption is correct, Lyft ends up in the great position of being compatible with all major self-driving providers before any of them can feasibly launch a standalone service without Lyft's driver network (who wants to take a car service that doesn't take you downtown? Or doesn't work in the rain?). Ideally, this means Lyft can negotiate favorable terms with all the providers and maintain their position as marketplace brokering between riders and ride providers (either human or robot). But, if this announcement means Waymo is truly way ahead of the competition, is Lyft aiding and abetting its own demise by covering Waymo's short-term holes (weather, urban areas, etc) up until the day that Waymo can cut Lyft out and run their own service? If Waymo is the only self-driving game in town, and they solve the urban case, why do they need Lyft? I wonder if we'll see any tension develop between the two if leadership at Lyft starts to get concerned about this scenario being a likely outcome.
- sudhirj 9y ago
  Think it's unlikely that Waymo will build out and operate a full fledged ride service - there's a lot of other factors to work out like scheduling, routing, supply-demand management, optimal vehicle distribution, pooling etc that they could just delegate to Lyft for. They might just build a service to the extent of push a button and a vehicle will come, and take you where you tap. That's enough to work inside a controlled town environment. As times goes by there'll likely be a merger with an actual ride sharing company.
  - strin 9y ago
    > there's a lot of other factors to work out like scheduling, routing, supply-demand management, optimal vehicle distribution, pooling etc These things come along the way. If there is a service that's 10x cheaper than Lyft, I could imagine most people would churn to that service. The technology shift from human to completely autonomous driving is so huge that it could just disrupt the current market structure.
mattpk 9y ago
The cars could be subject to vandalism, or at the very least really aggressive driving. The predictability of the driving and the lack of a driver is going to result in weird interactions with people.
esfandia 9y ago
What simulators, if any, do these self-driving car companies use for testing and development? Is any of these simulators available to the general public (I'm guessing probably not)? I read about something called Carcraft in Waymo's case, but it doesn't seem available.
- shitals 9y ago
  We at Microsoft Research have been developing this: https://github.com/microsoft/airsim https://github.com/microsoft/airsim. It has car model to test self-driving algorithms.
strin 9y ago
Levels of driving automation is an ill-defined concept. For example, L4 is defined as "mind-off". According to Wikipedia, "the driver may safely go to sleep or leave the driver's seat. Self driving is supported only in limited areas (geofenced) or under special circumstances, like traffic jams. Outside of these areas or circumstances, the vehicle must be able to safely abort the trip, i.e. park the car, if the driver does not retake control." However, the difficulty of driving varies so much from case to case. City is significantly more complex than urban areas. If some company geofence the cars in urban areas and achieve level 4, it might be less impressive say a Level-3 system that works in complex city scenarios and extreme weather conditions.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > the driver may safely go to sleep or leave the driver's seat That's going to be hard to do while you are wearing a seatbelt and I don't see seatbelt laws rescinded just because a vehicle is self driving until car accidents are exceedingly rare.
  - sangnoir 9y ago
    That's because the current seats and belts are not designed for comfortable sleeping. This can change if the vehicle has L4 autonomy - the interior can be redesigned to from the ground-up to accommodate sleeping. Airplanes seats have set the precedence of having seat-belts whilst allowing for sleep.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      Airplane seatbelts are only mandatory during take-off and landing as well as turbulence. It will be a very long time before any kind of driving is as safe as commercial air travel.
      - sangnoir 9y ago
        I wasn't talking about the laws, I was referring to the comfort baked into the design: I have slept while flying with my seat-belt on; it's not uncomfortable. While not legally mandated, most airlines encourage people to keep their seat-belts on during cruise - this is good advice that I take to heart because turbulence is unpredictable; sudden loss of elevation are known to happen.
pasta 9y ago
I think it's also interesting that they are developing a car for this purpose alone. No steering wheel, no pedals. As far as I know there is no other brand that does this.
lafar6502 9y ago
But who cares? They convinced us somehow that self driving cars are important, but it’s just self-important, gets the investors attention and money. Now time to move on to the next big thing.
- davidcbc 9y ago
  You don't think self driving cars are important? Can you elaborate on why not?
  - lafar6502 9y ago
    No need to rush it. Companies developing the tech might say it’s important to have it now but mostly because they need money now to survive. And they dont have any product to make the business real. So, they sell the hype, I would not pay attention to that. Maybe do a reality check every 5 years instead of jumping up at every ‘breakthrough’ news from the ceos.
    - davidcbc 9y ago
      Of all the companies doing driverless cars Waymo has the resources of Alphabet. They don't need the money to survive and aren't looking for their next round of VC money. If a driverless ride hailing service isn't worth paying attention to what is?
frankus 9y ago
Neither here nor there, but I found that the construction "hard to understate" is either wrong or super confusing. Apparently I'm not alone http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=11177 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=11177
mentos 9y ago
Are any self driving solutions considering letting the passenger pilot after the car has arrived autonomously?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
emerongi 9y ago
Why are the videos always done in perfect conditions? I like drive.ai's approach a lot more where they demonstrated the capabilities at night and in heavy rain. It's much more impressive.
- kajecounterhack 9y ago
  What looks impressive in a video is often smoke and mirrors. Just because your car is working in inclement weather for the duration of a video doesn't mean it's safe or that the behavior scales to all situations. Proving that it doesn't cause catastrophic problems is even harder (you need sim). FWIW most autonomous cars work great at night. As for weather, nobody has heavy rain completely solved (yet) (afaik). It messes with both camera and lasers.
- IshKebab 9y ago
  Probably because nobody is behind the wheel. Given that this is the first time a company is willing to do that it's not surprising that it's at 20mph in sunny weather on the quietest most spacious roads in the world. I haven't looked but I'd guess drive.ai's is no-way near reliable enough to be without a backup driver in the rain at night on a road with road-side parking etc.
punnerud 9y ago
The self driving (small)cars will almost be gone from every motorway within 20 years is my prediction. They will be replaced by self driving busses, trains and boats combined with a smart docking system where you automatically change “vehicle” at speed. This way we can travel at a fraction of the cost/emissions. We will se the first docking system on highway within 10 years, and the first prototypes within 5.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  We already have self driving trains in much of the world. It's a solve problem and cars can't even remotely touch the capacity of a train line. Self driving cars are not a solution and yes, America needs to see a huge car reduction within the next 20 years to deal with gridlock. I've written about it before: http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the-transportation-problem/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-sol...
foota 9y ago
Imagine a world where every car crash is investigated as thoroughly as plane accidents today.
uneven 9y ago
Great discussion, but what about the more human-based issues? Like what happens if I forget my phone in one of these ride-sharing vehicles and someone else had jumped in right after me? What happens when someone trashes a vehicle? Are there going to be cameras in these vehicles to track bad behavior? If so, what about the privacy implications? I don't have answers to any of these questions, but I'd be interested to see what you all think
- titzer 9y ago
  > Are there going to be cameras in these vehicles to track bad behavior? I don't think you really need that. You just need a feature to "send back" a vehicle that has been damaged or soiled and it should be easy for the provider to attribute the damage to a previous user.
- solipsism 9y ago
  What happens when you leave your phone on the bus or train? You hope some Good Samaritan finds a way to return it to you, or hope the people who manage the vehicle find it whenever they do cleaning or maintenance. Why would this be any different? Regarding a trashed vehicle, one imagines the next rider will have a way to note that in the app or in-vehicle UI. Cameras... Maybe, depends on how people tolerate it.
ashayh 9y ago
Are these companies working on a Waze for self driving cars. Shouldn't these companies, the DMV and other parties involved agree on a standard for inter-car communications? Why should we wait for Lidar to tell my car about a crash 3 turns away, if a shared broadcast/receive system can do it faster?
greedo 9y ago
Considering how often Google/Alphabet orphans products, I'm not holding my breath for this to occur in my lifetime, not counting all the technical issues that get handwaved away in any discussion of autonomous vehicles.
dwg 9y ago
road rage will never be the same
jpster 9y ago
> Waymo chose the Phoenix area for its favorable weather, its wide, well-maintained streets, and the relative lack of pedestrians. [1] These are not very common conditions. So what is Waymo's plan for the rest of the world? And what wizardry is needed to make it happen? 1. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/10/report-waymo-aiming-to-launch-commercial-driverless-service-this-year/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/10/report-waymo-aiming-to-...
asafira 9y ago
Has anyone driven in one?
MarkMc 9y ago
Wow. Yesterday it seemed that most people on HN felt level 4 self driving on public roads was at least 5 years away. Today that estimate needs to be revised. Seems the future is coming faster than we thought.
KaoruAoiShiho 9y ago
Lyft and Uber either beats the big tech or big auto to self driving tech... or they are dead. I'm putting my money on the latter.
chrischen 9y ago
It'd be interesting to see how this compares in overall efficiency to properly implemented and comprehensive mass transit systems in a dense urban environment. The Tokyo metro alone (not including the JR trains, Tokyo Subway—a separate but compatible subway system, and other train transit systems which totals over 40 million daily users) handles 6.8 million passengers daily just in one city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Greater_Tokyo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Greater_Tokyo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway It seems like if it scaled to the point where even there are no drivers, there's no way such a system can support a large number of users in a dense area at the same efficiency of a train. For Taxi's the issue isn't the cost of the driver, but actually the space and traffic constraints. Medallion supplies weren't constrained due to corruption and cronyism but to prevent the overpopulation of Taxis. Removing the driver may lower costs of Taxi's but there will still be a minimum floor to Taxi prices as you can't just infinitely supply a city with driverless cars. The area where I do see driverless taxis flourishing is suburban point-to-point transport. The current use case in SF where basically Uber and Lyfts have supplanted public transit is unique to the city, flush with money and short on public transit options.
- ashleyn 9y ago
  The immediate benefit I can envision is being on the highway more than the city. I regularly do a three hour drive between two states and automating the highway portion alone would be a godsend. I've actually considered getting a Volvo S90 for this purpose, but apparently the tech still isn't really where I want it to be, which is: get on the highway, press a button, don't touch anything until the final exit.
  - matt_wulfeck 9y ago
    You need a Tesla!
  - dx034 9y ago
    The Audi A8 appears to be the one with the most advanced system sold this year. From the reports I read, auto pilot functions are a step ahead of Tesla. The big difference is that they don't require you to pay direct attention as they define the system as a level 3 car.
nmstoker 9y ago
Just a small point, but I'm curious if the road rights of way are significantly different there to the UK. I ask because in the video there's a bit near the end where the car pulls out of a smaller road in front of a red car that I'd normally have considered to have the right of way. Obviously they left it in intentionally, so is that kind of manouver simply not against the right of way there?
- gabelevi 9y ago
  The red car had a stop sign too. You can see the back of the hexagonal stop sign.
BurningFrog 9y ago
They're driving on public roads, without a human backup driver, among random regular unaffiliated drivers. So in what sense is this a test?
risingsky 9y ago
I can't wait to see Lyft's reaction to this development!
arthurofbabylon 9y ago
Yo I have the best hands-free, no-attention transit system. Already. It’s called the fucking train.
VesnaOgneva 9y ago
Usually new technologies has bugs :) It' great that there is such tech, but it's anyway tricky
fastball 9y ago
I just want a self-driving RV with 1Gbps internet.
SomeRandomDev 9y ago
I saw they were/are offering free rides to anyone who wants to be one of the testers in my metro area. I'm all for free but I'm not too sure about being a human beta test lol.
thepompano 9y ago
So did they solve the Trolley Problem?
- tim333 9y ago
  That's always been more of a philosophical idea than a real problem. I've been driving a few decades and don't often run into Trolley situations.

1120 points by lemiant 9y ago

udfalkso 9y ago

Waymo’s tech requires the area to be meticulously mapped correct? Is this why the test is limited to a small geography?

eggpy 9y ago
Roads in Chandler are very regular (nice, wide grid), and the weather is clear and sunny the vast majority of the days. The particular geography helps isolate the number of factors the car needs to consider besides "just" driving. From a NYT article[0], >"The company did not say whether it was testing the driverless cars in environments considered challenging for autonomous vehicles, like bridges or tunnels, or more difficult conditions, like driving at night or in rain and snow — usually not a big concern in the dry Phoenix climate." [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/technology/waymo-autonomous-cars.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/technology/waymo-autonomo...
- icey 9y ago
  So crazy to see this video shot in the neighborhood I lived in the summers as a kid. Chandler's got a lot of good things going for it as eggpy mentioned -- well marked roads, wide, very little rain. On the downside, the entire Phoenix area has some terrible drivers, which I suppose is good training for the Waymo cars. It will be interesting to see if they park the cars during monsoon season; conditions can get pretty treacherous on the first rainy days of the season -- roads get very slick, drainage isn't always the best so you can end up with large puddles of water on the road that cause hydroplaning, etc.
  - dabeeeenster 9y ago
    Everywhere has terrible drivers - that's the point!
agumonkey 9y ago
Probably a solved problem in the eyes of Google..
maxerickson 9y ago
There's little external information about how map dependent their implementation is. They certainly have meticulous maps available in areas they operate, but it is easy to imagine other reasons for that. Like they could be using the map to separately process their sensor data, producing a reliable diff and evaluating the sensor only scene based on that.
- Animats 9y ago
  Perhaps, late at night, some autonomous vehicles will drive unmapped areas at about 25MPH, gathering mapping data. You don't need much mapping data if you drive slow.
gervase 9y ago
This article from Dec 2016 seems to suggest that's still the case [0]. However, it also looks like those maps can be built by the cars themselves, which should simplify expansion. [0]: https://medium.com/waymo/building-maps-for-a-self-driving-car-723b4d9cd3f4 https://medium.com/waymo/building-maps-for-a-self-driving-ca...
theptip 9y ago
The Ars Technica article says this is still the case: > To aid with navigation, Waymo has built high-resolution three-dimensional maps of its service area. Self-driving software in each car can compare the objects identified by sensors to objects on the map, allowing it to quickly distinguish stationary objects like trees and buildings from mobile objects like cars and pedestrians. > As Waymo expands its map and acquires more vehicles, it will also expand its service area. Before too long, Waymo expects to offer service across the entire Phoenix metropolitan area. Eventually, Waymo will extend service to other metropolitan areas using the same incremental approach. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/11/fully-driverless-cars-are-here/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/11/fully-driverless-cars-a...
k__ 9y ago
How much of a problem is this mapping? Huge part is up-front-work, and then? How often do streets change?
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  Not significantly more difficult than what goes into google maps, you just need a modified sensor suite, if I understand correctly. (Disclosure: googler, but I have nothing to do with maps or cars)
rayiner 9y ago
That's pretty terrifying that it can't read street signs and is dependent on mapping. Here in D.C., there are all sorts of fine-grained road rules, such as streets that are one-way only certain times of day, streets that reverse direction at certain times of day, turns that are legal or illegal depending on time of day, etc. That's not including random road closures. These databases apparently don't get updated that often. Recently, D.C. moved a major highway on-ramp. It used to be that you could get on 395-S heading west on H street, by taking a left onto the on-ramp. They replaced it with an underground entrance ramp on eastbound Mass. Ave., such that westbound traffic on H or Mass. Ave. could no longer use the on-ramp, and had to go several blocks south to use a different one. This was a widely-publicized move planned long in advance. And at least Apple Maps tried to steer me down the old route for awhile. Similar thing in our neighborhood just outside the Annapolis city limits. They closed our street to car traffic with barriers, so that you can get in an out but can't drive along it for more than one cross street. Whatever database Uber uses still hasn't figured this out--I'll get Uber drivers waiting for me on the other side of one of the barriers.
- jpm_sd 9y ago
  It can read street signs, even hand-held STOP signs in the hands of construction workers. And the cars are continuously mapping their surroundings. But they ALSO use a shared, extremely high quality map database for first-level path planning. edit: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/inside-waymos-secret-testing-and-simulation-facilities/537648/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/insid...
  - aroman 9y ago
    And it can even see and understand the hand gestures (e.g. turn signs) of cyclists.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      It's the cyclists that don't do hand gestures that are the problem. Which is - where I live - the vast majority of them.

julbaxter 9y ago

Is there a website/document that compare the status of all existing self-driving cars initiatives?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
thaunatos 9y ago
California requires all companies with self-driving cars operating in the state to provide reports about miles driven, cars operated, number of disengagements, etc. Here's a link: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2016 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...

RingwormOne 9y ago

I'd like to see successful rain/night/snow/road construction/fog condition tests before I get in one

dna_polymerase 9y ago
No worries, they won't put you in a self driving car that isn't perfectly safe. Considering Alphabet sold Boston Dynamics because of PR issues (remember kicking the robots) they won't allow any human losses.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > No worries, they won't put you in a self driving car that isn't perfectly safe. That they think isn't perfectly safe. It's not about what they will allow or not. It is about what will happen. Whether or not it will happen remains to be seen, even if Waymo does not allow it.

Kiro 9y ago

How is this legal?

gervase 9y ago
The laws governing self-driving cars in Arizona are extremely lenient, perhaps the most in the nation. Additionally, it appears as if each ride is being monitored in real time remotely by a Waymo employee, who can intervene if something goes wrong, or if the riders request.
- nawitus 9y ago
  Does the car have an emergency button to stop the driving?
  - kyrra 9y ago
    https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/waymo_pacifica_interior_buttonpod.png https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/waymo_p... The above image is from the inside of a Waymo minivan. There are 4 buttons on it: (1) Call/Help (2) Lock/Unlock (3) Pull Over (4) Start Ride
  - thaunatos 9y ago
    I imagine that stopping the car remotely is the least of a teledriver can do. Unless you mean, is there a button inside the car? I don't know if that is of much importance, seeing as there isn't anyone physically there to press the button.
    - grkvlt 9y ago
      What about the passenger?
mdorazio 9y ago
Arizona's government has deliberately taken a very pro-autonomous vehicles approach. The governor's executive order [1] specifically allows driverless vehicles on the roads within the state, provided they follow traffic laws and there is a licensed driver somewhere who will take responsibility if something goes wrong. [1] https://azgovernor.gov/file/2660/download?token=nLkPLRi1 https://azgovernor.gov/file/2660/download?token=nLkPLRi1

nwatson 9y ago

>>> "Waymo will be operating a fully autonomous ride hailing service without any humans at the wheel ... Waymo wants to broaden the geographic scope of its trial, starting with expansion in the near-term to cover the entire Phoenix metro area, which represents more acreage than the whole of the Greater London area, he noted" My family is mostly in Tempe / Mesa area (near Chandler, AZ) and during my last few visits I've seen an increasing number of these autonomous (driver-at-the-wheel) cars on the streets. Note that Uber / Lyft also are very popular in the area. Waymo's transition to a general-public/driverless service in the whole Phoenix area will be the first time that automated ride-hailing services go up against human-driven ride-hailing services. This will be a very interesting and perhaps disturbing experiment. I predict Waymo will price their service competitively, will ramp up to a large fleet, and that after a few months Uber / Lyft will be in trouble. The public will accept the perceived risks in driverless rides. Over a longer term it will be interesting to see what impact there is on car-buying, congestion ... I wonder whether Waymo will provide ride-sharing as well. EDIT: clarification; ride-sharing; car market; traffic congestion. ( Hmmm, also adding that "... after a few months Uber / Lyft will be in trouble" is probably too compressed, it realistically will take a longer time. )

eggpy 9y ago
I dunno I can see this remaining small-scale for a while so Waymo can gather data about how people feel about the experience. I can see the backlash now if they were to suddenly unleash a battalion of fully autonomous vehicles on the unsuspecting public. I suspect keeping the numbers relatively low will be a good way to gather just how disturbing this is to the general populace without overwhelming people and ultimately causing an unnecessary uproar and rejection based on appearance, with no regard to quality.
- Fricken 9y ago
  The cars are a familiar sight in Phoenix, they've been testing there for a couple years now. They started up an early rider program in the spring, with real people volunteering to be guinea pigs while they refine the human UI and logistics. This isn't coming out of the blue.

samstave 9y ago

I do a hit and run on a driverless car, assume its on its way to pickup a passenger, so no humans involved. I hack a driverless car, again with no passengers, and make it do my bidding (hit that other [thing]) I follow driverless car back to its charging base and slash its tires? I rearend a driverless car then leave the scene? (same as option 1 I guess - but could be applied differently) A driverless car gets into its first fatal accident of a passenger, will that lawsuit result in the shutdown of the company? Who specifically will be held to account? Will the developer of the software? Will the engineer who didnt provide sufficient sensors? What if the driverless car looses traction due to black ice, and that results in the death of the passenger or another driver? Im ubering from place A to place B and my phone dies early in the trip and the uber ride cant bill me? What happens? There are a lot more questions that should be posed - and we should answer them all.

mdorazio 9y ago
You get arrested for leaving the scene of an accident, and probably sued for damages. This is no different than smashing a parked car with no occupants and then driving off, except that in this case the car's sensors guarantee that you'll get caught.
dpiers 9y ago
Your vehicle and face are recorded by half a dozen cameras on the self-driving car and uploaded to the local police department for the accident report.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  I think it's safe to say if someone was going to intentionally attack a Google self-driving car, say to hack it and direct it at a target, they'd bother to make a basic attempt to counteract the cameras. Something like those glasses with infrared lights that blind surveillance cams? Put some near your license plates as well perhaps, I don't know. Not that I agree with the parent this is likely, but most of the replies here seem to ignore that technology is pretty easy to mitigate if you know what you're up against.

hardtke 9y ago

What happens if these cars get in a situation where there is no legal way to move? For instance, the other day I was driving down the street and it was closed because of a Farmers market. Will they just sit there for hours? In gridlock, there is often no way to move without "blocking the box."

stale2002 9y ago
Probably alert Google HQ, who will then send a human to pick it up in 10 minutes? Or any number of other solutions, as I easily thought up that one in 5 seconds?
- rayiner 9y ago
  In New York, they sometimes block all of Lexington Ave. (a major north-south throughfare) at Midtown for pedestrian activities. What happens when a hundred self-driving cars all get to Lex and stop because they can't pass?
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    After one or two get backed up, they alert the others that traffic is stopped and to go another way? In general the answer to all of these whacky what ifs is "whatever a human driver, or group would do, but with more efficient communication".
    - rayiner 9y ago
      These aren't "wacky what ifs." I don't know what things are like in the Valley, but here on the east coast something unexpected changes my commuting route a couple of times a month (multiply that by tens of thousands of drivers). "Do whatever the human would do, but more efficient" isn't an answer. These cars can't get on WTOP the day before and listen to the warning that the Pope is visiting and X, Y, Z streets will be blocked off. One can imagine various contingency scenarios, but the devil is in actually handling all the edge cases.

FiveSquared 9y ago

Let them free, let them fly. The power is in your eyes. - Trashy Neighborhood Band

dcsommer 9y ago

I hope these cars eventually drive more aggressively than the video shows. With zero traffic they seem to inch along.

juliesulti 9y ago
The video shows the vehicle operating at 25 MPH in residential blocks, approaching speed bumps at 10 MPH, respecting a temporary 15 MPH school zone, and coming to a full and complete stop at stop signs and red lights. That is how you are supposed to drive a car.
- songshu 9y ago
  Yes. The current situation is funny since it's a game of "what's the most effective limit to tell people to stick to" rather than "what's the most effective limit to stick to". Maybe once all cars drive under the limit we will decide that the limits are too low and increase them. And maybe a lot of stop signs will turn into yield signs at some point too.
  - dcsommer 9y ago
    Yeah this is precisely the point I was trying to make.

PatientTrades 9y ago

A lot of what if scenarios being asked. The key takeaway here is that anyone that drives a truck, taxi, uber, lyft, or any other vehicle for a living will highly likely be out of a job in the next 10-15 years. So roughly about 10-12% of the global workforce will be unemployed.

Ajedi32 9y ago

Wow! Waymo is now confident enough in their vehicles that they're willing to risk letting the public use them completely unsupervised? This seems like a huge milestone for self-driving car tech. I wonder what their current disengagement rates are for Chandler; at this point it has to be really close to zero, right?

hippich 9y ago
I hope someone was sitting there in front of live feed with big red STOP EVERYTHING button.
harpastum 9y ago
No public rides quite yet: "The current passengers for this test are Waymo employees, however, so it’s not as if the Alphabet-owned company is throwing caution to the wind; instead, it’s showing that it’s ready to move to the next major phase of operations after around a decade of working on this incredibly complex problem."
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  I'm referring to this part: > while the trial is starting with employees first, it’s soon going to expand to the existing members of the Chandler driverless ride hailing service trial that Waymo kicked off at the beginning of 2017. When that happens (sometime in the next “few months,” per Krafcik, Waymo will be operating a fully autonomous ride hailing service without any humans at the wheel, a major first for the industry in terms of realizing the dream of making commercial self-driving available to the public at large

edshiro 9y ago

If Waymo's tech is years ahead of the competition (say 18-24 months ahead minimum) then I think a lot of the self-driving companies and car manufacturers in the US will be having cold sweats. This may not be a winner-take-all market (I don't know honestly...) but I see this lead up enabling Waymo to capture significant market share in the US in regions where laws towards autonomous vehicles are friendly. One way the competition could attempt to mitigate Waymo's lead is to test and launch in areas where Waymo are not currently active (other states in the US, or other countries altogether). They could of course accelerate development of their self driving tech but that's easier said than done I presume. I also worry Uber & Lyft's valuations and usage will drop with the introduction of driverless vehicles, unless they somehow manage to strike long-lasting partnerships with Waymo. Regarding OEMs (i.e. car manufacturers), I can't tell what will happen with them: do they continue shunning Waymo and pursuing their own self-driving car efforts or come back begging for some sort of deal? I presume we will see both attitudes play out depending on how confident each company feels about its own self-driving tech ability and acquisition potential. It's hard to foresee the consequences of this announcement, but I feel Waymo has upped the stakes tremendously today, and the pressure on everyone (including Waymo) to deliver is on, more than ever.

sliverstorm 9y ago
Do we have a good signal that truly indicates Waymo has more advanced tech? Or could they simply have a bigger appetite for risk?
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  Tesla seems to be the company with an appetite for risk in this area.
- edshiro 9y ago
  They've historically played it very safe so it feels like a bold announcement coming from them. We don't know whether they have more advanced tech; there is too much opacity in this space. The best proxy we may have are the California disengagement reports[1] from last year and Waymo were doing better than anyone, by a WIDE margin. [1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2016 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...

dabeeeenster 9y ago

There's a positive feedback loop that will happen: As they get more cars on to the road, the log more real world miles, which makes the cars better, which gets more cars onto the road which log more miles... I wonder how valuable this is?

giacaglia 9y ago
Tesla logs more miles per day than Waymo recorded in its history, but Waymo has better software just because of their simulations of the real world. See https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/inside-waymos-secret-testing-and-simulation-facilities/537648/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/insid...
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  Waymo also has far better hardware than Tesla and that is the bigger difference. Google is getting 1500x Tesla also in performance. https://www.wired.com/2017/02/california-dmv-autonomous-car-disengagement/ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/california-dmv-autonomous-car-... The Numbers Don't Lie: Self-Driving Cars Are Getting Good - Wired
s17n 9y ago
The real challenge here is extracting valuable information - if you just dump the sensor data to disk you will consume the world's storage capacity with a handful of cars.
dx034 9y ago
Not sure how much that is worth. Tesla collects a huge amount of data but that doesn't help as much as some had hoped. You need to interpret all that data which is expensive and complicated.
- kajecounterhack 9y ago
  Yep! Some data points: 1. Storing large amounts of logs data is challenging and expensive for anyone. So even if you can collect data, good luck storing it all. Think about what a self driving car has to store: images, audio, 3d point clouds, all organized by time, ideally labeled in some manner. 2. Unorganized data is not useful. For example, part of the autonomous vehicle problem is proving that the car is safe for <condition parameters>. You need simulation to ensure model changes don't incur regressions. I've heard rumors that Tesla didn't have a sim team as recently as 1.5 years ago -- a lot of people argue "you can't sim everything" but most mature players now have realized that sim is vital. If your data is not organized and accessible, or you can't afford to store the data, your development velocity is going to be really bad and/or your safety characteristics will not be provable. One argument I've heard is "well with each new model launch why not just run the model in ghost mode for all live cars on the road, and see if it causes any issues" -- many life-threatening situations are rare combinations of factors. If you don't record them, you can't count on them to happen again during your regression test period. And again, even if it worked, the time it takes you to run a regression test is now a lot longer than a team that has sim that can run O(hours-days).

bluetwo 9y ago

The interstate highway system is an enormous and expensive asset paid for by the taxpayers of the US. Shouldn't we have a conversation about the rights of citizens before allowing corporations to set a precedent that we will not be able to roll back later?

foolfoolz 9y ago
what rights are you worried about? commcerial vehicles operate on our highways all the time. corporations are also tax payers in the US
- notahacker 9y ago
  If the driver of a commercial road vehicle makes a mistake which causes a serious accident or behaves in a way deemed reckless or inattentive, they can go to jail. Similarly, I was under the impression that the humans who took over Waymo vehicles according to very conservative engagement protocols (and according to Waymo's calculations prevented several accidents) had responsibility for the road vehicle Who goes to jail if Waymo vehicles behave in a similar manner? Assuming the answer is "nobody", how did this get greenlighted with so little discussion?
  - soared 9y ago
    Whats your deal with putting people in jail, and why would you assume no on will be punished if something goes wrong? Obviously there will be repercussions for accidents, but we don't know what they are or how it will play out.
    - tomjakubowski 9y ago
      > Obviously there will be repercussions for accidents, but we don't know what they are or how it will play out. The top-level comment was just asking if we could work out how this might look beforehand.
    - notahacker 9y ago

organsnyder 9y ago

I own the same model of vehicle as Waymo is using (2017 Pacifica PHEV). It's cool to see how little they've had to visibly modify the car (apart from the sensors)—the interior looks 100% stock, other than the row of buttons on the ceiling. Given the level-1 autonomous features in the vehicle (self-parking, etc.), all of the integrations are probably done over CAN-bus, with no additional hardware required (again, apart from the sensors and the computing power).

jvolkman 9y ago
I think there's more than that. The safety report they released recently indicates the vehicles also have redundant power systems, redundant braking systems, redundant steering systems, etc. I doubt that the stock configurations require as much redundancy.
- organsnyder 9y ago
  Ah, that could be. Though could that be talking about redundant processing (i.e. two dependent algorithms making the same decision) rather than duplicate hardware?
  - jvolkman 9y ago
    Don't think so. You can read the descriptions on page 17 of the report: https://storage.googleapis.com/sdc-prod/v1/safety-report/waymo-safety-report-2017-10.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/sdc-prod/v1/safety-report/way... For example: The steering system features a redundant drive motor system with independent controllers and separate power supplies. Either one can manage steering in the case that a failure occurs in the other
JibJabLab 9y ago
I'm pretty sure there's a huge computer setup that takes up a good portion of the trunk space.

erikbye 9y ago

Does it pull over for police? And what about for police impersonators?

Ajedi32 9y ago
Yes and yes. https://medium.com/waymo/recognizing-the-sights-and-sounds-of-emergency-vehicles-8161e90d137e https://medium.com/waymo/recognizing-the-sights-and-sounds-o... Though one can easily imagine a system designed to prevent the latter. Preventing hijackings is more complicated than that though, since an autonomous vehicle will stop for anyone who gets in its way, not just police officers. The array of cameras, lidar sensors, etc each car comes with is probably a fairly decent deterrent against that threat already though.
- sidcool 9y ago
  Why does Google's Waymo host a blog on Medium?
- erikbye 9y ago
  I guess eventually police vehicles can just stop autonomous ones with the press of a button, so it doesn't have to rely on its "senses". Some two-way identification between the vehicles; avoid the issue of impersonators completely.
carapace 9y ago
This is an important general consideration. I designed a class of drone/robot I call "gun-hunter": They detect humans holding guns and destroy the forearm. Now immediately you have to solve "How do you NOT attack LEOs?" Because of course the obvious thing for the badguys to do would be to impersonate LEOs well enough to fool the robots. (This also applies to signals guns might emit to say they're legit/friendly.) The solution I came up with was that no one should use guns in the presence of active gun-hunters. After all, why would the police need guns if the crooks can't use them?

rwmj 9y ago

Throws money at screen Having said that I do love seeing these wide, straight American roads and wonder how well this will do on the tiny (often single track) winding country roads around here.

asteli 9y ago
staying on the road isn't the hard part. all that can be mapped, even in areas with poor road markings. dealing with other road users and abusers is far harder
- rwmj 9y ago
  Indeed. A day doesn't go by when I don't see drivers looking at their mobile phones, vans parked in the road on a blind bend, tractors which are wider than a single lane (or people who just think that because it's a country road they "should" straddle the middle of the road) etc.
kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
Just as good as the narrow curvy American country roads: Not at all. All the self-driving fanboys are living in la la land if they think this tech is any way near practical for general use.

davidkuhta 9y ago

Excited about the technology and expected this news eventually, but in less of a "Bam, we did it" and more of a "Coming Dec 2017... look for new autonomous vehicles, they'll be bright orange with flashing lights". Following-up on the "How is this legal" question below, can anyone comment on: 1. For the 'autonomous engineers/technologists': a) Is the technology mature enough that it can be utilized without an on-board driver such that public isn't at risk? b) Does the sensor system provide the remote "monitor" have enough situational awareness? c) What happens if whatever up-link that the vehicle is connected to disconnects? (for example: They're using Comcast) 2. For the 'lawyers': a) Who's responsible if someone gets hurt or the vehicle breaks a law? b) Is an Executive Order from the Governor the ideal channel for introducing the technology to the public (versus legislative action)? [I know subjective but curious] 3. For the 'marketers': a) Any examples of technologies prematurely introduced that had negative impact on their growth or contributed to their demise? Note: I realize some of these are subjective but thought would make for some great discussion.

StreamBright 9y ago
I think the question is what happens when the first accident happens caused by autonomous car. US law is not really forgiving in this regard.
- tempestn 9y ago
  People assumed it would be huge news the first time a car crashed while driving autonomously too though, and it turned out people barely noticed. I'm sure this stuff will need to get figured out, but I don't think it will necessarily be a huge incident the first time there's an accident without someone in the driver's seat. Presumably the first of these vehicles to be deployed will be fleet cars and such and will have specially tailored insurance policies; by the time it's individual owners, the legality will probably be somewhat settled (although there probably will eventually be elements litigated).
- dx034 9y ago
  In that case the manufacturer (or their insurance) will pay for it. Let that be $10m if someone dies, maybe a bit less if someone gets seriously hurt. Even if it's a multiple of that, that's in no relation to the cost of the programme. As long as they demonstrate that their cars are still a magnitude safer than other cars, paying fines will be enough.

aecs99 9y ago

This, indeed, is a major step for Waymo. While some people may be skeptical about the safety of these rides, we all saw this coming. This has been a part of the ambitious goal most self-driving companies set out when they start. The reason I say "part of the goal", is because the end goal is L5 - to handle more complex scenarios which I assume Waymo is still working on. Taking the ninety-ninety rule or the rule of credibility into consideration, the remaining 10% of development will probably take 90% of the time. By this, I mean that reaching a stage where L5 cars are owned by consumers can take a long time (if at all people want to buy instead of sharing, but that's a separate topic). For example, running this project in Pittsburgh, Boston, or SF is much more difficult than in suburbs of Arizona. Conditions with rain, snow, uneven terrain, high population density are still difficult to handle. Several challenges still remain, from both technical and legal perspectives. However, any of that may not undermine the tremendous opportunities for Waymo (or its partners). There are several areas/markets that are ready for this technology (e.g., ride sharing in suburbs, transportation of non-dangerous goods over passengers, etc.)

peoplewindow 9y ago
Why would self-ownership ever be the goal though? I can see people just moving en-masse to Lyft/Uber type services that use a mix of people and machines, with people eventually being phased out, and simply giving up their own cars (except for those who genuinely enjoy driving).
- milesokeefe 9y ago
  Immediate access to the vehicle and monetary returns from renting it out when not using it.
  - robotresearcher 9y ago
    Those goals interfere with each other.
- visarga 9y ago
  By combining SDC with electric I think the cost of owning a car could be lowered significantly.

debt 9y ago

I think they're massively underestimating the general public's reaction to something like this. I as a nerdy tech dude think this is very tight and if I was much younger this would blow my mind, but I think this also might frighten many people. I don't know if that's being considered at all here or maybe the transition will be slow enough to allow people to cope with the change.

ilaksh 9y ago
They have been doing a series of incremental steps and press releases over the last several months. They started the early rider program in April. Recently they have been ramping up the press and public information program. They released a large 'safety report'. They have been working on self-driving education programs with organizations like MADD and NSC. They even put up billboards in Phoenix related to self-driving safety/education. They also did a big press event just recently inviting like 40 major media outlets including NY Times, WSJ etc. to their test track to give journalists rides and announce they would be launching soon. Surprised you haven't heard about this stuff. They have been working pretty hard to publicize and market it.

ersiees 9y ago

I was really excited, until I read that the change they made is not to have no employee in the car at all. They moved the safety employee from the front to the back.

Bartweiss 9y ago
Less dramatic, but it makes a lot of sense. If nothing else, a human presence is probably still useful for common cases like a human rear-ending the car. I haven't really seen anyone with a plan for handling all the non-driving issues cars regularly face.
- TillE 9y ago
  Yeah good point. Until they have the full infrastructure set up for handling exceptional situations remotely, it's probably a lot easier to have someone there at all times just in case.
Ajedi32 9y ago
> until I read that the change they made is not to have no employee in the car at all Where does it say this? Going by this article, it sounds like the only employees involved will be those using the service themselves during the trial period. (And those working in the customer service call center.)
r00fus 9y ago
Why is that not exciting? It means Waymo is confident enough to have the driver seat unoccupied. It's really a "look ma, no hands... I can do this all day" kind of moment.
ilaksh 9y ago
Yeah, I have been waiting for them to announce that everyone in Chandler could download the Waymo app and hail a Waymo when they wanted and there would be no employee in the car. I think they are just doing all of the incremental announcements and steps that they can think of though. I would guess that the next step would be to remove the employee entirely from the car and just have a remote human monitor all the time. Then after that they would remove the continuous remote monitoring, and then the next one would be to maybe open it up to the public via the app. If its 600 or 900 cars or whatever, I can imagine people will be so curious to try it out that they might be swamped. If its cheaper than Uber or Lyft then that will almost certainly be the case barring some major incident. The fleet could be fully booked almost all of the time. Anyway I think that the truly open to public no safety driver service will come in the next month or so unless there is a setback or someone talks Krafcik out of it.

a9a 9y ago

It will be interesting to see how Lyft's partnership with Waymo evolves given this tech announcement and Waymo's acknowledgment that they plan to offer their own ridesharing service. Lyft's approach to self-driving partnerships in general seems to rest on the assumption that self-driving providers will catch up to each other before any of them can fully handle everything a human driver can do. If this assumption is correct, Lyft ends up in the great position of being compatible with all major self-driving providers before any of them can feasibly launch a standalone service without Lyft's driver network (who wants to take a car service that doesn't take you downtown? Or doesn't work in the rain?). Ideally, this means Lyft can negotiate favorable terms with all the providers and maintain their position as marketplace brokering between riders and ride providers (either human or robot). But, if this announcement means Waymo is truly way ahead of the competition, is Lyft aiding and abetting its own demise by covering Waymo's short-term holes (weather, urban areas, etc) up until the day that Waymo can cut Lyft out and run their own service? If Waymo is the only self-driving game in town, and they solve the urban case, why do they need Lyft? I wonder if we'll see any tension develop between the two if leadership at Lyft starts to get concerned about this scenario being a likely outcome.

sudhirj 9y ago
Think it's unlikely that Waymo will build out and operate a full fledged ride service - there's a lot of other factors to work out like scheduling, routing, supply-demand management, optimal vehicle distribution, pooling etc that they could just delegate to Lyft for. They might just build a service to the extent of push a button and a vehicle will come, and take you where you tap. That's enough to work inside a controlled town environment. As times goes by there'll likely be a merger with an actual ride sharing company.
- strin 9y ago
  > there's a lot of other factors to work out like scheduling, routing, supply-demand management, optimal vehicle distribution, pooling etc These things come along the way. If there is a service that's 10x cheaper than Lyft, I could imagine most people would churn to that service. The technology shift from human to completely autonomous driving is so huge that it could just disrupt the current market structure.

mattpk 9y ago

The cars could be subject to vandalism, or at the very least really aggressive driving. The predictability of the driving and the lack of a driver is going to result in weird interactions with people.

esfandia 9y ago

What simulators, if any, do these self-driving car companies use for testing and development? Is any of these simulators available to the general public (I'm guessing probably not)? I read about something called Carcraft in Waymo's case, but it doesn't seem available.

shitals 9y ago
We at Microsoft Research have been developing this: https://github.com/microsoft/airsim https://github.com/microsoft/airsim. It has car model to test self-driving algorithms.

strin 9y ago

Levels of driving automation is an ill-defined concept. For example, L4 is defined as "mind-off". According to Wikipedia, "the driver may safely go to sleep or leave the driver's seat. Self driving is supported only in limited areas (geofenced) or under special circumstances, like traffic jams. Outside of these areas or circumstances, the vehicle must be able to safely abort the trip, i.e. park the car, if the driver does not retake control." However, the difficulty of driving varies so much from case to case. City is significantly more complex than urban areas. If some company geofence the cars in urban areas and achieve level 4, it might be less impressive say a Level-3 system that works in complex city scenarios and extreme weather conditions.

jacquesm 9y ago
> the driver may safely go to sleep or leave the driver's seat That's going to be hard to do while you are wearing a seatbelt and I don't see seatbelt laws rescinded just because a vehicle is self driving until car accidents are exceedingly rare.
- sangnoir 9y ago
  That's because the current seats and belts are not designed for comfortable sleeping. This can change if the vehicle has L4 autonomy - the interior can be redesigned to from the ground-up to accommodate sleeping. Airplanes seats have set the precedence of having seat-belts whilst allowing for sleep.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Airplane seatbelts are only mandatory during take-off and landing as well as turbulence. It will be a very long time before any kind of driving is as safe as commercial air travel.
    - sangnoir 9y ago
      I wasn't talking about the laws, I was referring to the comfort baked into the design: I have slept while flying with my seat-belt on; it's not uncomfortable. While not legally mandated, most airlines encourage people to keep their seat-belts on during cruise - this is good advice that I take to heart because turbulence is unpredictable; sudden loss of elevation are known to happen.

pasta 9y ago

I think it's also interesting that they are developing a car for this purpose alone. No steering wheel, no pedals. As far as I know there is no other brand that does this.

lafar6502 9y ago

But who cares? They convinced us somehow that self driving cars are important, but it’s just self-important, gets the investors attention and money. Now time to move on to the next big thing.

davidcbc 9y ago
You don't think self driving cars are important? Can you elaborate on why not?
- lafar6502 9y ago
  No need to rush it. Companies developing the tech might say it’s important to have it now but mostly because they need money now to survive. And they dont have any product to make the business real. So, they sell the hype, I would not pay attention to that. Maybe do a reality check every 5 years instead of jumping up at every ‘breakthrough’ news from the ceos.
  - davidcbc 9y ago
    Of all the companies doing driverless cars Waymo has the resources of Alphabet. They don't need the money to survive and aren't looking for their next round of VC money. If a driverless ride hailing service isn't worth paying attention to what is?

frankus 9y ago

Neither here nor there, but I found that the construction "hard to understate" is either wrong or super confusing. Apparently I'm not alone http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=11177 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=11177

mentos 9y ago

Are any self driving solutions considering letting the passenger pilot after the car has arrived autonomously?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

emerongi 9y ago

Why are the videos always done in perfect conditions? I like drive.ai's approach a lot more where they demonstrated the capabilities at night and in heavy rain. It's much more impressive.

kajecounterhack 9y ago
What looks impressive in a video is often smoke and mirrors. Just because your car is working in inclement weather for the duration of a video doesn't mean it's safe or that the behavior scales to all situations. Proving that it doesn't cause catastrophic problems is even harder (you need sim). FWIW most autonomous cars work great at night. As for weather, nobody has heavy rain completely solved (yet) (afaik). It messes with both camera and lasers.
IshKebab 9y ago
Probably because nobody is behind the wheel. Given that this is the first time a company is willing to do that it's not surprising that it's at 20mph in sunny weather on the quietest most spacious roads in the world. I haven't looked but I'd guess drive.ai's is no-way near reliable enough to be without a backup driver in the rain at night on a road with road-side parking etc.

punnerud 9y ago

The self driving (small)cars will almost be gone from every motorway within 20 years is my prediction. They will be replaced by self driving busses, trains and boats combined with a smart docking system where you automatically change “vehicle” at speed. This way we can travel at a fraction of the cost/emissions. We will se the first docking system on highway within 10 years, and the first prototypes within 5.

djsumdog 9y ago
We already have self driving trains in much of the world. It's a solve problem and cars can't even remotely touch the capacity of a train line. Self driving cars are not a solution and yes, America needs to see a huge car reduction within the next 20 years to deal with gridlock. I've written about it before: http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the-transportation-problem/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-sol...

foota 9y ago

Imagine a world where every car crash is investigated as thoroughly as plane accidents today.

uneven 9y ago

Great discussion, but what about the more human-based issues? Like what happens if I forget my phone in one of these ride-sharing vehicles and someone else had jumped in right after me? What happens when someone trashes a vehicle? Are there going to be cameras in these vehicles to track bad behavior? If so, what about the privacy implications? I don't have answers to any of these questions, but I'd be interested to see what you all think

titzer 9y ago
> Are there going to be cameras in these vehicles to track bad behavior? I don't think you really need that. You just need a feature to "send back" a vehicle that has been damaged or soiled and it should be easy for the provider to attribute the damage to a previous user.
solipsism 9y ago
What happens when you leave your phone on the bus or train? You hope some Good Samaritan finds a way to return it to you, or hope the people who manage the vehicle find it whenever they do cleaning or maintenance. Why would this be any different? Regarding a trashed vehicle, one imagines the next rider will have a way to note that in the app or in-vehicle UI. Cameras... Maybe, depends on how people tolerate it.

ashayh 9y ago

Are these companies working on a Waze for self driving cars. Shouldn't these companies, the DMV and other parties involved agree on a standard for inter-car communications? Why should we wait for Lidar to tell my car about a crash 3 turns away, if a shared broadcast/receive system can do it faster?

greedo 9y ago

Considering how often Google/Alphabet orphans products, I'm not holding my breath for this to occur in my lifetime, not counting all the technical issues that get handwaved away in any discussion of autonomous vehicles.

dwg 9y ago

road rage will never be the same

jpster 9y ago

> Waymo chose the Phoenix area for its favorable weather, its wide, well-maintained streets, and the relative lack of pedestrians. [1] These are not very common conditions. So what is Waymo's plan for the rest of the world? And what wizardry is needed to make it happen? 1. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/10/report-waymo-aiming-to-launch-commercial-driverless-service-this-year/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/10/report-waymo-aiming-to-...

asafira 9y ago

Has anyone driven in one?

MarkMc 9y ago

Wow. Yesterday it seemed that most people on HN felt level 4 self driving on public roads was at least 5 years away. Today that estimate needs to be revised. Seems the future is coming faster than we thought.

KaoruAoiShiho 9y ago

Lyft and Uber either beats the big tech or big auto to self driving tech... or they are dead. I'm putting my money on the latter.

chrischen 9y ago

It'd be interesting to see how this compares in overall efficiency to properly implemented and comprehensive mass transit systems in a dense urban environment. The Tokyo metro alone (not including the JR trains, Tokyo Subway—a separate but compatible subway system, and other train transit systems which totals over 40 million daily users) handles 6.8 million passengers daily just in one city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Greater_Tokyo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Greater_Tokyo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway It seems like if it scaled to the point where even there are no drivers, there's no way such a system can support a large number of users in a dense area at the same efficiency of a train. For Taxi's the issue isn't the cost of the driver, but actually the space and traffic constraints. Medallion supplies weren't constrained due to corruption and cronyism but to prevent the overpopulation of Taxis. Removing the driver may lower costs of Taxi's but there will still be a minimum floor to Taxi prices as you can't just infinitely supply a city with driverless cars. The area where I do see driverless taxis flourishing is suburban point-to-point transport. The current use case in SF where basically Uber and Lyfts have supplanted public transit is unique to the city, flush with money and short on public transit options.

ashleyn 9y ago
The immediate benefit I can envision is being on the highway more than the city. I regularly do a three hour drive between two states and automating the highway portion alone would be a godsend. I've actually considered getting a Volvo S90 for this purpose, but apparently the tech still isn't really where I want it to be, which is: get on the highway, press a button, don't touch anything until the final exit.
- matt_wulfeck 9y ago
  You need a Tesla!
- dx034 9y ago
  The Audi A8 appears to be the one with the most advanced system sold this year. From the reports I read, auto pilot functions are a step ahead of Tesla. The big difference is that they don't require you to pay direct attention as they define the system as a level 3 car.

nmstoker 9y ago

Just a small point, but I'm curious if the road rights of way are significantly different there to the UK. I ask because in the video there's a bit near the end where the car pulls out of a smaller road in front of a red car that I'd normally have considered to have the right of way. Obviously they left it in intentionally, so is that kind of manouver simply not against the right of way there?

gabelevi 9y ago
The red car had a stop sign too. You can see the back of the hexagonal stop sign.

BurningFrog 9y ago

They're driving on public roads, without a human backup driver, among random regular unaffiliated drivers. So in what sense is this a test?

risingsky 9y ago

I can't wait to see Lyft's reaction to this development!

arthurofbabylon 9y ago

Yo I have the best hands-free, no-attention transit system. Already. It’s called the fucking train.

VesnaOgneva 9y ago

Usually new technologies has bugs :) It' great that there is such tech, but it's anyway tricky

fastball 9y ago

I just want a self-driving RV with 1Gbps internet.

SomeRandomDev 9y ago

I saw they were/are offering free rides to anyone who wants to be one of the testers in my metro area. I'm all for free but I'm not too sure about being a human beta test lol.

thepompano 9y ago

So did they solve the Trolley Problem?

tim333 9y ago
That's always been more of a philosophical idea than a real problem. I've been driving a few decades and don't often run into Trolley situations.