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Isn't this how most experiments are supposed to work? You start with a broad assumption and work towards it. Then you find issues and start scaling things down

Isn't this how most experiments are supposed to work? You start with a broad assumption and work towards it. Then you find issues and start scaling things down to focus on some finer issues. In the meantime, business executives and media work hand-in-hand to try and hype everything and promising stuff which cannot be delivered in a short amount of time.

Fricken 9y ago
The thing is Volvo's experiments haven't been going as well as others. In the race to build a functional autonomous vehicle some companies are getting it done, and others, in spite of big promises, several years of effort, and scaled, well capitalized operations have very little to show for their efforts. Everybody still has a lot of work to do, but the operations that can, at the very least, demonstrate as proof of concept their cars handling just a few miles of of uninterrupted driving in dynamic environments have cleared the biggest hurdle. Following that big hurdle is the validation process, which is tens of thousands of smaller hurdles stretching out as far as the eye can see, but so long as they've cleared the first, biggest hurdles, you can be reasonably confident they'll get to a minimum viable product eventually so long as they keep at it. I have confidence in Waymo, GM, and Zoox. With everyone else it's either too soon to tell, or I don't have enough information, or they're sucking: https://youtu.be/jClxcSBNwcw https://youtu.be/jClxcSBNwcw
- jamesblonde 9y ago
  I think you are on the right track here. I know some of the people hired by Volvo cars to work on this, and I am not aware of them recruiting top ML researchers to work on this and I suspect they are just not good enough people there. Waymo, on the other hand, will probably get it done, and done really well.
  - im_down_w_otp 9y ago
    That's because Volvo's AV software position is a joint venture w/ Autoliv called Zenuity. https://www.zenuity.com https://www.zenuity.com So if you're looking for CV/ML people working on the perception part of the stack, look there. FWIW, I work in this field now and I have fairly low confidence in the non-ML parts of the software stack across the industry. There's a lot more to this problem than well manicured computer-vision demos, and Volvo is a lot less cavalier about loss of human life than almost anyone else, so it's fairly heartening to see them realign around realistic expectations.
- justin66 9y ago
  > The thing is Volvo's experiments haven't been going as well as others. Where have the results of their experiments been published such that you feel confident in stating that?
  - Fricken 9y ago
    I'm at a loss as to what it is about Volvo's progress (or lack thereof) that is non-obvious enough to warrant investigation into published experiments that don't exist.
    - justin66 9y ago
      Was your statement the thing is Volvo's experiments haven't been going as well as others based on any knowledge whatsoever? I'm just trying to understand what you are basing that on and how well-founded it is.
      - Fricken 9y ago
        Did you read the same article as me? It's not like I made an outrageous claim.

Fricken 9y ago

The thing is Volvo's experiments haven't been going as well as others. In the race to build a functional autonomous vehicle some companies are getting it done, and others, in spite of big promises, several years of effort, and scaled, well capitalized operations have very little to show for their efforts. Everybody still has a lot of work to do, but the operations that can, at the very least, demonstrate as proof of concept their cars handling just a few miles of of uninterrupted driving in dynamic environments have cleared the biggest hurdle. Following that big hurdle is the validation process, which is tens of thousands of smaller hurdles stretching out as far as the eye can see, but so long as they've cleared the first, biggest hurdles, you can be reasonably confident they'll get to a minimum viable product eventually so long as they keep at it. I have confidence in Waymo, GM, and Zoox. With everyone else it's either too soon to tell, or I don't have enough information, or they're sucking: https://youtu.be/jClxcSBNwcw https://youtu.be/jClxcSBNwcw

jamesblonde 9y ago
I think you are on the right track here. I know some of the people hired by Volvo cars to work on this, and I am not aware of them recruiting top ML researchers to work on this and I suspect they are just not good enough people there. Waymo, on the other hand, will probably get it done, and done really well.
- im_down_w_otp 9y ago
  That's because Volvo's AV software position is a joint venture w/ Autoliv called Zenuity. https://www.zenuity.com https://www.zenuity.com So if you're looking for CV/ML people working on the perception part of the stack, look there. FWIW, I work in this field now and I have fairly low confidence in the non-ML parts of the software stack across the industry. There's a lot more to this problem than well manicured computer-vision demos, and Volvo is a lot less cavalier about loss of human life than almost anyone else, so it's fairly heartening to see them realign around realistic expectations.
justin66 9y ago
> The thing is Volvo's experiments haven't been going as well as others. Where have the results of their experiments been published such that you feel confident in stating that?
- Fricken 9y ago
  I'm at a loss as to what it is about Volvo's progress (or lack thereof) that is non-obvious enough to warrant investigation into published experiments that don't exist.
  - justin66 9y ago
    Was your statement the thing is Volvo's experiments haven't been going as well as others based on any knowledge whatsoever? I'm just trying to understand what you are basing that on and how well-founded it is.
    - Fricken 9y ago
      Did you read the same article as me? It's not like I made an outrageous claim.