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Wow, never thought about it that way. That would be awesome. Why limit it to US And Europe. The world might soon be a better place. Imagine Starting out in Ber

Wow, never thought about it that way. That would be awesome. Why limit it to US And Europe. The world might soon be a better place. Imagine Starting out in Berlin Then over a couple of months go to Turkey, then India, Vietnam and beyond and then back without ever driving a single km. Just let it drive while you sleep.

thanksgiving 9y ago
Is anyone even talking about let alone demoing self-driving in a seemingly chaotic urban driving in India and elsewhere? My uneducated guess is we are decades away from being able to navigate anything real world like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLUm3Q-7iZA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLUm3Q-7iZA If you zoom out, you'll see that there's a method to the madness but a lone driving car that's not a part of a fleet doesn't have such luxuries. I don't think the problem is solely image processing and machine learning. I just don't get self driving and how we're supposed to wow the logic. You have to be aggressive to drive in a city or people will constantly cut you off for hours. This means you will hold up traffic making the situation worse for everyone. However, you can't be too aggressive. Imagine the damage we will cause to the "optics" of self driving if we run over (at a slow 10 mph) stubborn people who cut us off. That will just look like murder.
- avip 9y ago
  The idea that a self-driving car would even make it to Turkey in the first place is laughable. Let's see how it goes in Italy or the Balkans first. But it's ok to dream...
  - ggggtez 9y ago
    I don't think it can pump it's own gas lol.
    - xiphias 9y ago
      Tesla is working on self-charging, but a simpler option is to contract the gas stations and have the workers there fill up the tank
    - purple-again 9y ago
      I have one less coffee than I had at the start of your post but it seems my mechanical keyboard survived so still worth!
- cornholio 9y ago
  Considering the route takes you through Iran and Pakistan, and a few 100s Km from Afghanistan, Indian trafic is the least of your worries. I'm considering driving the same trip but it seems a detour through Caucasus is a much safer choice.
- moosekaka 9y ago
  haphazard traffic flow due to lack of traffic safety awareness and road discipline by pedestrians and drivers alike are not exclusive to just India. we have a large Indian population in Malaysia and Singapore... go to their Little India enclaves and you see the same free for all situation... perhaps just a little better then shown in the video.
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago
  Having driven in similar "chaotic" traffic, it's not different that how we move on feet in a crowded area. This explains it better: https://highwayflocking.github.io/ https://highwayflocking.github.io/ A self driving car can have much better "perception" of the surrounding area and reaction times under 100ms, making it potentially very good at flocking safely.
- majani 9y ago
  there are many examples of countries that have been able to leapfrog certain steps in development. Case in point: most 3rd world countries skipped over desktop computing, straight into mobile. Maybe self driving cars will somehow take over the world exponentially like smartphones have, and developing countries skip over human policing of traffic into a majority self-drive reality.
- kjksf 9y ago
  Based on economics, self-driving cars are not necessarily attractive in India. Consider that in US the cheapest ZipCar is ~$8/hr. Adding even the cheapest human driver working at minimum wage is ~$15/hr. Adding a human driver in US makes the trip 3x more expensive. Or to put it another way: a self-driving trip can be 3x less expensive. Or to put it another way: a $30 trip from SF downtown to airport becomes $10 trip which is competitive with BART prices. I don't know what is the minimum wage in India, but per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_India per capita income is $1670 / year which is probably less than $1 per hour. In other words: self-driving cars only make economic sense in countries where humans are expensive.
  - thanksgiving 9y ago
    > Or to put it another way: a $30 trip from SF downtown to airport becomes $10 trip which is competitive with BART prices. I looked up BART because of what you said and it looks pretty bad. https://github.com/enjalot/bart/blob/master/data/bart-comp-all.csv https://github.com/enjalot/bart/blob/master/data/bart-comp-a... 175 people make six figures in base pay. The total cost of employment is ridiculously high. I don't know anything about BART but they clearly need to lay off a lot of people. This is ridiculous.
sharpercoder 9y ago
It seems that the most "developed" areas in combination with predictable weather gets roll-out first. This means that non-western countries will get them later; or, depending on the situation, maybe never at all at 100% area coverage. I can totally imagine robotic car software parking right after a the highway intersection and subsequentially handing over driving to a human. Traffic in lesser developed countries may be too complex to ever have self driving cars to ride on.
- mtgx 9y ago
  And what does that tell us? It tells us that Waymo is nowhere close to "Level 5" or even to the levels Google and the latest cherry-picked "tests" (where they don't count "disengagements" as a problem) would like you to believe it is at. Level 5 is supposed to be virtually perfect self-driving in any environment or on any type of road, for which we haven't even properly tested in simulations yet, let alone in the real-world. I said it before, because of marketing and an incentive to be misleading about their capabilities, "Level 5" will be the "4G" wireless of 2011 (and by that I mean "3G+", in case it wasn't clear). That's actually held true since "Level 2" self-driving. For every level carmakers have been patting themselves on the back for reaching, they're at least one level behind in the real-world. They quickly discover this, too, after trying out their "Level X" cars in the real-world for a while, but they "forget" to tell us about it, after making the big announcement previously, or it doesn't get as much attention in the media. So, I guess I'll wait for Level 6 or Level 7, before I get into one of these. Level 7 will probably be Level 6 cars that actually can't get hacked, unlike all the cars progressing through the previous levels. Carmakers won't even care that much about security and will only prioritize getting to adequate self-driving capabilities first and will "deal with security later", because we all know it's so much easier to fix security issues and redesign architectures later.
  - pnut 9y ago
    Meh... Insurance considerations practically guarantee you are statistically safer in one of these vs. a human operated vehicle, and that advantage will only multiply as the ratio of autonomous to human operated vehicles increases. As a resident of a first-world country, it's not really my problem if India needs to wait a few decades or modernize their urban transport infrastructure to see the benefit of this technology. I haven't seen it in person, but the reputation is that Street-level activity in those environments is deadly and chaotic, regardless of whether you are a pedestrian, cyclist, or motorist. Not exactly a situation worth preserving from anyone's perspective...
flexie 9y ago
Would be awesome! I do fear that he political hurdles humanity would have to overcome for that route to be safe are larger than the technical ones, though.
kaybe 9y ago
Maybe it would be a good idea to only allow this technology if it entirely powered by renewable energy.
- fastball 9y ago
  I mean, Tesla has already announced / demoed an electric semi-truck that will probably be able to drive itself pretty soon, so I don't think that's much of a worry.
arbuge 9y ago
It will be even better once the Bering Strait is bridged (again).
make3 9y ago
good luck going through all those places with different legislations on self driving cars without getting arrested a billion times, even twenty years from now, I'm sure

thanksgiving 9y ago

Is anyone even talking about let alone demoing self-driving in a seemingly chaotic urban driving in India and elsewhere? My uneducated guess is we are decades away from being able to navigate anything real world like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLUm3Q-7iZA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLUm3Q-7iZA If you zoom out, you'll see that there's a method to the madness but a lone driving car that's not a part of a fleet doesn't have such luxuries. I don't think the problem is solely image processing and machine learning. I just don't get self driving and how we're supposed to wow the logic. You have to be aggressive to drive in a city or people will constantly cut you off for hours. This means you will hold up traffic making the situation worse for everyone. However, you can't be too aggressive. Imagine the damage we will cause to the "optics" of self driving if we run over (at a slow 10 mph) stubborn people who cut us off. That will just look like murder.

avip 9y ago
The idea that a self-driving car would even make it to Turkey in the first place is laughable. Let's see how it goes in Italy or the Balkans first. But it's ok to dream...
- ggggtez 9y ago
  I don't think it can pump it's own gas lol.
  - xiphias 9y ago
    Tesla is working on self-charging, but a simpler option is to contract the gas stations and have the workers there fill up the tank
  - purple-again 9y ago
    I have one less coffee than I had at the start of your post but it seems my mechanical keyboard survived so still worth!
cornholio 9y ago
Considering the route takes you through Iran and Pakistan, and a few 100s Km from Afghanistan, Indian trafic is the least of your worries. I'm considering driving the same trip but it seems a detour through Caucasus is a much safer choice.
moosekaka 9y ago
haphazard traffic flow due to lack of traffic safety awareness and road discipline by pedestrians and drivers alike are not exclusive to just India. we have a large Indian population in Malaysia and Singapore... go to their Little India enclaves and you see the same free for all situation... perhaps just a little better then shown in the video.
eeZah7Ux 9y ago
Having driven in similar "chaotic" traffic, it's not different that how we move on feet in a crowded area. This explains it better: https://highwayflocking.github.io/ https://highwayflocking.github.io/ A self driving car can have much better "perception" of the surrounding area and reaction times under 100ms, making it potentially very good at flocking safely.
majani 9y ago
there are many examples of countries that have been able to leapfrog certain steps in development. Case in point: most 3rd world countries skipped over desktop computing, straight into mobile. Maybe self driving cars will somehow take over the world exponentially like smartphones have, and developing countries skip over human policing of traffic into a majority self-drive reality.
kjksf 9y ago
Based on economics, self-driving cars are not necessarily attractive in India. Consider that in US the cheapest ZipCar is ~$8/hr. Adding even the cheapest human driver working at minimum wage is ~$15/hr. Adding a human driver in US makes the trip 3x more expensive. Or to put it another way: a self-driving trip can be 3x less expensive. Or to put it another way: a $30 trip from SF downtown to airport becomes $10 trip which is competitive with BART prices. I don't know what is the minimum wage in India, but per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_India per capita income is $1670 / year which is probably less than $1 per hour. In other words: self-driving cars only make economic sense in countries where humans are expensive.
- thanksgiving 9y ago
  > Or to put it another way: a $30 trip from SF downtown to airport becomes $10 trip which is competitive with BART prices. I looked up BART because of what you said and it looks pretty bad. https://github.com/enjalot/bart/blob/master/data/bart-comp-all.csv https://github.com/enjalot/bart/blob/master/data/bart-comp-a... 175 people make six figures in base pay. The total cost of employment is ridiculously high. I don't know anything about BART but they clearly need to lay off a lot of people. This is ridiculous.

sharpercoder 9y ago

It seems that the most "developed" areas in combination with predictable weather gets roll-out first. This means that non-western countries will get them later; or, depending on the situation, maybe never at all at 100% area coverage. I can totally imagine robotic car software parking right after a the highway intersection and subsequentially handing over driving to a human. Traffic in lesser developed countries may be too complex to ever have self driving cars to ride on.

mtgx 9y ago
And what does that tell us? It tells us that Waymo is nowhere close to "Level 5" or even to the levels Google and the latest cherry-picked "tests" (where they don't count "disengagements" as a problem) would like you to believe it is at. Level 5 is supposed to be virtually perfect self-driving in any environment or on any type of road, for which we haven't even properly tested in simulations yet, let alone in the real-world. I said it before, because of marketing and an incentive to be misleading about their capabilities, "Level 5" will be the "4G" wireless of 2011 (and by that I mean "3G+", in case it wasn't clear). That's actually held true since "Level 2" self-driving. For every level carmakers have been patting themselves on the back for reaching, they're at least one level behind in the real-world. They quickly discover this, too, after trying out their "Level X" cars in the real-world for a while, but they "forget" to tell us about it, after making the big announcement previously, or it doesn't get as much attention in the media. So, I guess I'll wait for Level 6 or Level 7, before I get into one of these. Level 7 will probably be Level 6 cars that actually can't get hacked, unlike all the cars progressing through the previous levels. Carmakers won't even care that much about security and will only prioritize getting to adequate self-driving capabilities first and will "deal with security later", because we all know it's so much easier to fix security issues and redesign architectures later.
- pnut 9y ago
  Meh... Insurance considerations practically guarantee you are statistically safer in one of these vs. a human operated vehicle, and that advantage will only multiply as the ratio of autonomous to human operated vehicles increases. As a resident of a first-world country, it's not really my problem if India needs to wait a few decades or modernize their urban transport infrastructure to see the benefit of this technology. I haven't seen it in person, but the reputation is that Street-level activity in those environments is deadly and chaotic, regardless of whether you are a pedestrian, cyclist, or motorist. Not exactly a situation worth preserving from anyone's perspective...

flexie 9y ago

Would be awesome! I do fear that he political hurdles humanity would have to overcome for that route to be safe are larger than the technical ones, though.

kaybe 9y ago

Maybe it would be a good idea to only allow this technology if it entirely powered by renewable energy.

fastball 9y ago
I mean, Tesla has already announced / demoed an electric semi-truck that will probably be able to drive itself pretty soon, so I don't think that's much of a worry.

arbuge 9y ago

It will be even better once the Bering Strait is bridged (again).

make3 9y ago

good luck going through all those places with different legislations on self driving cars without getting arrested a billion times, even twenty years from now, I'm sure