6 ms·

Waymo heads to Atlanta to test its self-driving cars

85 points by Element_ 9y ago

dpflan 9y ago
This should be interesting. I'd like to see the "driver profiles" created for each city, assuming that's possible to create from observing traffic in different cities.
- ghaff 9y ago
  It's an interesting point. The level of aggression needed to get cross-town in Manhattan at rush hour is clearly very different from how you drive in a smaller city with modest traffic. I'm still of the opinion that this is pretty far out except maybe on highways but good to see experimentation under a variety of conditions.
- wh-uws 9y ago
  This would be amazing. Then we could have real data on who the best and worse driving cities are.
- izuchukwu 9y ago
  Very interesting—a sort of geographic and time-of-day based gradient across the parameters of the vehicle’s “profile” would be something very intriguing to hear more about.
- cm2187 9y ago
  Like a self driving car that honks a lot in Rome or Mumbai?
  - dpflan 9y ago
    Change the classic saying: "When autonomously driving in Rome..."
- Fricken 9y ago
  Cruise Automation estimated it would take them about 6 months to learn a new city in preparation for a commercial deployment, which would include mapping, learning the quirks of specific intersections, signage, and presumably adapting their planning algorithms to local driving customs.
Judgmentality 9y ago
It seems like Waymo is well ahead of everyone else, but they had a mass talent exodus 2 years ago (many went to Nuro, Aurora, Otto, Argo, etcetera). I can't imagine that many smart engineers, already making good money even by Bay Area engineering standards, would quit to compete unless they really thought they had a chance. There's just so much about the competition in this space I find fascinating.
- londons_explore 9y ago
  Many were bored - they'd been working on it 5 years already. Some thought the direction was wrong - not gathering enough test data (unlike Tesla). Some thought they didn't have a big enough slice of the pie, and by moving to a startup and replicating the work they could earn way more through an acquisition by a carmaker. Some saw the tech as fairly old. Remember much of Waymo's code was written by Urmson 10 years ago. Probably all C/C++. Not very nimble and quick to extend. Some saw the fundamental approach wrong. Why not use neural nets for path planning and decision making rather than hand coded rules which will never cover enough cases to be good enough? Some didn't want to be part of Googles risky approach. Too much pressure to get the cars on the road could kill people, and killing people, or the threat of it, is rather bad for morale. The leaders had this "even if it isn't perfect, it's better than current drivers" approach. Thats little comfort if it was your off by one error which caused the car to plough into a group of schoolchildren.
  - Judgmentality 9y ago
    > Some saw the tech as fairly old. Remember much of Waymo's code was written by Urmson 10 years ago. Probably all C/C++. Not very nimble and quick to extend. There was a rumor that Urmson stole code from the Urban Challenge and took it to Google, but Carnegie Mellon and GM never pursued a lawsuit. Or were you just being lax with your timeline?
    - WillReplyfFood 9y ago
      In the eyes of FOSS everyone in a company is a codethief from the public so nothing to see here.
an4rchy 9y ago
I am hoping that partnerships with ridesharing companies help with the data collection aspect. If Lyft/Uber could lease a few cars from all/some of these companies, which would probably pay them to be driven around, it might be a win-win for both the consumers and the companies. Also, faster data collection at scale might reduce the time taken to "learn a city"
- kuba77 9y ago
  Not really. Uber has its own stake in self-driving so it wouldn't make sense for them to help competition with data collection for short term gains.
ilaksh 9y ago
That's nice but when are they launching to the public in Phoenix? Everytime I see Waymo news I hope it's about that Phoenix launch and then am disappointed when it isn't.
- Judgmentality 9y ago
  Supposedly they're launching in February, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
  - gibybo 9y ago
    Where did you hear that?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
tabeth 9y ago
I recall taking an Uber once and hearing the driver mention that he wished he could remotely drive the car. Was this idea ever taken seriously? I'm sure latency and creating the actual interface would be big problems. [/digression] From a political perspective, what's necessary until the safety drivers are no longer legally required? I believe there are a couple places that don't require them now, actually.
- ufmace 9y ago
  > From a political perspective, what's necessary until the safety drivers are no longer legally required? I believe there are a couple places that don't require them now, actually. Essentially, the legislature of the state in question passes a law defining what's required for truly autonomous operation. That can be pretty much anything they want. The really interesting stuff starts happening when there's enough of these things driving around that we start getting accidents. How will insurance companies or the sponsor companies deal with that? What will happen in any lawsuits resulting from any accidents? I guess we'll have to wait and see. It's a bit sad, but it's probably for the best that there's big companies with deep pockets and big legal departments behind this.
- asteli 9y ago
  your visual system is finely tuned to be able to judge things like "how far away is that child in the crosswalk?" you possess an internal IMU that provides instant and accurate feedback on acceleration and rotation. you lose out on both of those when you perceive the world through any kind of display, whether that be a screen or even a VR headset. think about your field of view when you look out the windshield of a car. including peripheral vision that's a 150° field of view. compress that fov to a screen, even a really good one. maybe three of them set side by side. can you still make out a street sign with 6" tall text from 200 feet away?
jeremymcanally 9y ago
If they can navigate which of the 800 Peachtree-named streets the car is on and which one it should go down next (minding all the crazy one way streets in downtown) without crashing into anything or anyone, they'll be doing better than most humans.
BatFastard 9y ago
As an Atlanta resident, I can say that they have chosen some of the most challenging roads in the nation. The roads in Atlanta are a classic lava pattern. Many are literally the cow paths from town to town. And we have some of the most aggressive drivers in the US. edit: spelling.

85 points by Element_ 9y ago

This should be interesting. I'd like to see the "driver profiles" created for each city, assuming that's possible to create from observing traffic in different cities.

ghaff 9y ago
It's an interesting point. The level of aggression needed to get cross-town in Manhattan at rush hour is clearly very different from how you drive in a smaller city with modest traffic. I'm still of the opinion that this is pretty far out except maybe on highways but good to see experimentation under a variety of conditions.
wh-uws 9y ago
This would be amazing. Then we could have real data on who the best and worse driving cities are.
izuchukwu 9y ago
Very interesting—a sort of geographic and time-of-day based gradient across the parameters of the vehicle’s “profile” would be something very intriguing to hear more about.
cm2187 9y ago
Like a self driving car that honks a lot in Rome or Mumbai?
- dpflan 9y ago
  Change the classic saying: "When autonomously driving in Rome..."
Fricken 9y ago
Cruise Automation estimated it would take them about 6 months to learn a new city in preparation for a commercial deployment, which would include mapping, learning the quirks of specific intersections, signage, and presumably adapting their planning algorithms to local driving customs.

Judgmentality 9y ago

It seems like Waymo is well ahead of everyone else, but they had a mass talent exodus 2 years ago (many went to Nuro, Aurora, Otto, Argo, etcetera). I can't imagine that many smart engineers, already making good money even by Bay Area engineering standards, would quit to compete unless they really thought they had a chance. There's just so much about the competition in this space I find fascinating.

londons_explore 9y ago
Many were bored - they'd been working on it 5 years already. Some thought the direction was wrong - not gathering enough test data (unlike Tesla). Some thought they didn't have a big enough slice of the pie, and by moving to a startup and replicating the work they could earn way more through an acquisition by a carmaker. Some saw the tech as fairly old. Remember much of Waymo's code was written by Urmson 10 years ago. Probably all C/C++. Not very nimble and quick to extend. Some saw the fundamental approach wrong. Why not use neural nets for path planning and decision making rather than hand coded rules which will never cover enough cases to be good enough? Some didn't want to be part of Googles risky approach. Too much pressure to get the cars on the road could kill people, and killing people, or the threat of it, is rather bad for morale. The leaders had this "even if it isn't perfect, it's better than current drivers" approach. Thats little comfort if it was your off by one error which caused the car to plough into a group of schoolchildren.
- Judgmentality 9y ago
  > Some saw the tech as fairly old. Remember much of Waymo's code was written by Urmson 10 years ago. Probably all C/C++. Not very nimble and quick to extend. There was a rumor that Urmson stole code from the Urban Challenge and took it to Google, but Carnegie Mellon and GM never pursued a lawsuit. Or were you just being lax with your timeline?
  - WillReplyfFood 9y ago
    In the eyes of FOSS everyone in a company is a codethief from the public so nothing to see here.

an4rchy 9y ago

I am hoping that partnerships with ridesharing companies help with the data collection aspect. If Lyft/Uber could lease a few cars from all/some of these companies, which would probably pay them to be driven around, it might be a win-win for both the consumers and the companies. Also, faster data collection at scale might reduce the time taken to "learn a city"

kuba77 9y ago
Not really. Uber has its own stake in self-driving so it wouldn't make sense for them to help competition with data collection for short term gains.

ilaksh 9y ago

That's nice but when are they launching to the public in Phoenix? Everytime I see Waymo news I hope it's about that Phoenix launch and then am disappointed when it isn't.

Judgmentality 9y ago
Supposedly they're launching in February, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
- gibybo 9y ago
  Where did you hear that?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

tabeth 9y ago

I recall taking an Uber once and hearing the driver mention that he wished he could remotely drive the car. Was this idea ever taken seriously? I'm sure latency and creating the actual interface would be big problems. [/digression] From a political perspective, what's necessary until the safety drivers are no longer legally required? I believe there are a couple places that don't require them now, actually.

ufmace 9y ago
> From a political perspective, what's necessary until the safety drivers are no longer legally required? I believe there are a couple places that don't require them now, actually. Essentially, the legislature of the state in question passes a law defining what's required for truly autonomous operation. That can be pretty much anything they want. The really interesting stuff starts happening when there's enough of these things driving around that we start getting accidents. How will insurance companies or the sponsor companies deal with that? What will happen in any lawsuits resulting from any accidents? I guess we'll have to wait and see. It's a bit sad, but it's probably for the best that there's big companies with deep pockets and big legal departments behind this.
asteli 9y ago
your visual system is finely tuned to be able to judge things like "how far away is that child in the crosswalk?" you possess an internal IMU that provides instant and accurate feedback on acceleration and rotation. you lose out on both of those when you perceive the world through any kind of display, whether that be a screen or even a VR headset. think about your field of view when you look out the windshield of a car. including peripheral vision that's a 150° field of view. compress that fov to a screen, even a really good one. maybe three of them set side by side. can you still make out a street sign with 6" tall text from 200 feet away?

jeremymcanally 9y ago

If they can navigate which of the 800 Peachtree-named streets the car is on and which one it should go down next (minding all the crazy one way streets in downtown) without crashing into anything or anyone, they'll be doing better than most humans.

BatFastard 9y ago

As an Atlanta resident, I can say that they have chosen some of the most challenging roads in the nation. The roads in Atlanta are a classic lava pattern. Many are literally the cow paths from town to town. And we have some of the most aggressive drivers in the US. edit: spelling.