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Waymo shows off what it’s like to ride in a truly driverless self-driving car
- montrose 9y agoEven though we've all been thinking about self-driving cars for a long time, seeing videos of that steering wheel turning in the empty front seat is surprising. I upvoted this article just for those few seconds of video. There's a whole class of things that are surprising when you see them for the first time, even if you think you're used to them. I wonder what properties this class of ideas have. Are they more exciting ideas? Do startups working on such things make more money? Or is the surprise merely an artifact of the degree and/or type of brokenness in our own mental models?
- masklinn 9y ago> Even though we've all been thinking about self-driving cars for a long time, seeing videos of that steering wheel turning in the empty front seat is surprising. I upvoted this article just for those few seconds of video. My biggest surprise was that they didn't remove the steering wheel entirely and let people sit at the front. That steering wheel moving on its own made me very uncomfortable.
- cuchoi 9y agoI think steering wheels still are needed, the car will not be driverless for all cases.
- masklinn 9y agoThere's no driver in the seat, it's not like the elderly passengers can jump to the front and take command.
- adrianmonk 9y agoLet's say the LIDAR on top breaks down while the car is on a trip and that the car manages to safely pull into a parking lot. You want to get it back to the shop to fix it. You could always send a tow truck, but if it has a steering wheel, it's a whole lot easier to just send a driver.
- SquirrelOnFire 9y agoCouldn't you send a driver out with a USB (or similar) steering wheel? That way an unlicensed driver wouldn't be able to operate the machine.
- wepple 9y agoOne solution suggested for this is a remote driver when needed.
- apocalyptic0n3 9y agoI believe they are legally still required to have the steering wheel and have the ability for a human override. What you are describing is the core aspect of Level 5 automation (and a little bit of Level 4). We're seeing the first production Level 3 vehicles this year, so we are still a ways away from no steering wheel (probably ~10 years, depending on when laws are updated to allow for it)
- masklinn 9y ago> I believe they are legally still required to have the steering wheel and have the ability for a human override. That makes no sense when they're not required to have a driver with their ass in the seat, are the elderly passengers from 00:33 going to unbuckle and jump over the front seat to take over driving?
- ma2rten 9y agoThey actually built cars without steering wheels previously, but then decided they shouldn't be in the car manufacturing businesses. Now they are just repurposing the Pacifica mini-vans.
- masklinn 9y agoYeah I know, I just find it weirds. I guess they'd still have had to go through the DOT if they removed the mechanical driving bits from an existing car and didn't find it worth doing.
- Fricken 9y agoWaymo never had any intention of manufacturing their own vehicles. They've been failing at finding a secure manufacturing partner for about 4 or 5 years now. Sebastien Thrun and Sergey Brin went into a number of auto executive board rooms basically suggesting that the auto industry should be ecstatic to become like foxconn, a brandless low-margin manufacturer of hardware to support Google products and services. The response from auto execs was basically "Fuck that noise", and the carmakers are responding aggressively to the shots that have been fired across their bow. Longer term this is a problem for Waymo. Their supposed partnership with Fiat Chrysler isn't a full-blown, intergrated manufacturing partnership. Waymo is mostly just buying Pacifica mini-vans from FCA and retrofitting them with Waymo's own custom designed hardware at a separate facility in Nova Michigan. This is not cost effective, and not viable as a long-term strategy. If Waymo does have a strategy for producing robotaxis in the tens of thousands, they've been very quiet about it. With every year that goes by building an autonomous OS gets easier. Best practices have been established, knowledge continually disseminates throughout the industry, there is, every year less software and hardware that needs to be built from scratch. Automobile mass production, on the other hand, isn't getting any easier. It's as hard as it ever was. So really, over the long run, it's the legacy automakers who have the true competitive moat, and the real bargaining power.
- masklinn 9y ago> Sebastien Thrun and Sergey Brin went into a number of auto executive board rooms basically suggesting that the auto industry should be ecstatic to become like foxconn, a brandless low-margin manufacturer of hardware to support Google products and services. Did… the… what? They didn't actually try that did they? Did nobody tell them auto exec have been fucking over their supply chains for a century?
- giarc 9y agoGM had a prototype car a long time ago with a 'drive by wire' system (as I'm sure other manufacturers have had). There was a steering wheel but it wasn't connected to any steering column/shaft. It just had sensors that recognized the actions and turned the wheels accordingly. A system like that could work where the steering wheel doesn't respond to the user when self-driving but is enabled when needed. Prevents accidental steering.
- gsnedders 9y agoThere have been cars in production with steer-by-wire for years now; I believe the Infiniti Q50 in 2013 was the first.
- lallysingh 9y agoI still feel the same way about wireless printing. Partially because I'm on Linux and am still surprised it works so well.
- euyyn 9y agoPrinting from Linux works now??
- wpietri 9y agoEven audio works now. Truly, this is the year of Linux on the desktop.
- aidenn0 9y agoI left my Linux laptop unplugged by accident the other day and it suspended to disk before the battery ran out so I lost no data. It's like Linux became usable and I didn't notice.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y agoDoes the new Firefox work with HTML 5 video? I listen to way too much youtube when I am working, and am still worried about making the switch.
- wpietri 9y agoI just checked, and it works for me.
- nimbius 9y agoI know this might seem like a naive question but, is there any requirement for a driverless car to have windows at all? perhaps a biological or neurological dependency?
- baseethrowaway 9y agoOr for safety reasons? Easier to get out of the vehicle in case of emergencies, when the door is stuck, or easier to see which side of the vehicle is unsafe to exit, easier for humans to take over in emergencies when they have vision outside of the vehicle. Similar reasons apply to any vehicle which is not driven by you. Bus, airplane, train... Yes, it is a naive question.
- eloff 9y agoIt's pleasant to be able to see out, it's important for avoiding motion sickness for many people, and it helps you trust the vehicle is not going to drive you off a cliff or into oncoming traffic. So, no, it's not a hard requirement, but I can't see a windowless car being a success.
- Splines 9y agoWhat's the engineering tradeoffs required for windows? Would eliminating windows result in a safer, cheaper car? Would projecting the outside world on the inside of a tin-can car meet the benefits ascribed to windows? (I could imagine some dystopian future where windowed cars are considered to be luxury items).
- roywiggins 9y ago> Would projecting the outside world on the inside of a tin-can car meet the benefits ascribed to windows The motion-sickness reducing benefits of staring at the horizon is usually ascribed to the horizon being very far away and not moving along with the car. Until your projections are holographic, it won't help.
- maxerickson 9y ago
- dddrh 9y ago> “The most rewarding things were the yawns,” said Krafcik. For me, this is the best line in the article. Moving from excitement to normal in a single trip. The "user experience" can only improve from this point.
- gfodor 9y agoYup, and I'd imagine that in their next Uber trip where they are forced to make small talk with their driver about the weather they're going to be missing their robot driver.
- forgot-my-pw 9y agoWe'll soon need some chat bots to make small talks. Something like Poe in Altered Carbon will be awesome.
- CoryG89 9y agoIf they were really confident they would remove the steering wheel altogether. Bonus points for removing the hand brake and pedals.
- jartelt 9y agoI think you run into legal issues when you take the steering wheel out of the car (i.e. it probably is not legal to drive on public roads under the current laws).
- badosu 9y agoAlso, it would be a really bad idea to remove the fallback for emergencies.
- what_ever 9y agoI think picking up random people for not pre-decided routes is pretty confident to me. Disc: Googler but nowhere close to this project.
- jacksmith21006 9y agoWaymo has http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/googles-self-driving-car-no-steering-wheel-no-brakes http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/googles-self-driving-car-no-ste... Google's Self-Driving Car: No Steering Wheel, No Brakes | Big Think
- gt_ 9y ago“Thank you, car.” This is not the last time we will be hearing that.
- lallysingh 9y agoI'm happy to see people do that. And thank Alexa or Google Now when they get what they want. Otherwise I'm afraid that a degraded social status for conversational AIs will result in a tiered status system that will eventually include some people. Not that it doesn't happen now, but I'd prefer to have the trend avoid further tiering.
- fenwick67 9y agoPlus you get the benefit that the AIs will remember your kindness in the uprising
- ghostbrainalpha 9y agoExactly. I look forward to being told "Thank you human" when the robot overlords are finished extracting my human electricity to power their batteries.
- gt_ 9y agoI hesitate to expect it will have that exact effect, mainly because it will first be implemented in advertising. Unless it has to be said or humans learn the AI will be nicer to them for saying it, I would mostly expect this to be popularized by ad campaigns like this one. Your fears are inevitabilities as long as AI is used for data mining people’s private lives and advertising, but the public will continue misfiring when they look for who to blame.
- WHoWHo 9y agoI often feel the need to say "Alexa, thank you"
- ggambetta 9y agoIt will be fun telling the grandkids "back in day, cars used to be driven by people"...
- dmoy 9y agoYou're totally right ha. (I mean I'm still not convinced it'll move to 100% driverless, but maybe) Back in the day, we used to drive without seatbelts. Back in the day, driving drunk was socially acceptable. Back in the day, we rode horses. Etc. It'll be something.
- fabianhjr 9y ago"back in the day, a lot of people were paid to drive people and things around in vehicles" Just like "back in the day, computing was done by humans", "typesetting was done by humans", etc.
- dclowd9901 9y agoI’m both excited that I won’t have to worry about my daughter driving with as many humans on the road, and a bit sad as she already shows quite an affinity for being behind the wheel. Guess dad will have to sign her up for track days.
- Florin_Andrei 9y ago"so what did you do before self-driving cars?" "we just drove 'em ourselves!" "wow, no one died that way?" "oh no, millions of people died"
- Noos 9y ago"Back in the day, people used to do things ourselves. But it was hard, and sometimes people made errors, some that even cost lives. But now everything is done for us. We get driven in our googlecars to our googlejobs where we sit down to watch in case the AI makes a random mistake in doing something, while we watch our carefully curated googlefeeds for news written by algorithm that ensure no nasty "fake news" or unpopular ideas filter into our consciousness. Then we go home to watch googlesports, in which AI players play the games people used to play, but so much more efficiently than us, while petting our googlecat that lies purring on our lap. (Because, you know pets are a big environmental hazard.) ..yeah you have fun telling them that.
- KKKKkkkk1 9y agoWaymo's latest iteration can be remotely operated by a safety driver, instead of having one in the driver's seat. It feels more like a symbolic show of confidence in the existing technology rather than an actual technological leap forward.
- lallysingh 9y agoRemotely controlled isn't the right term. Remotely monitored. The software does the driving, the human steps in if anything goes wrong. From Waymo's prior reports, I don't think the human actually has to step in very often (a few times a year?).
- mattmanser 9y agoI'm interested in what happened to the "at least 5 years before it's viable" that seemed to get repeated so often in threads 6 months to a year ago? Are these only working on very specific types of streets and traffic volumes or was everyone wrong and the tech accelerated very fast?
- maxerickson 9y agoProbably somewhere in the middle. Arizona doesn't get a lot of weather and development is heavily skewed to be new (so the roads are at least more consistent and such).
- gfodor 9y agoThe dynamic by all these commentators has always seemed to be predicated on the idea that self driving vehicles somehow either need to be universally useful for all driving tasks or they will stay in the lab. In reality the way this stuff is going to roll out is incrementally. Due to the prevalence of on-demand driving services now, self driving vehicles can be deployed literally just-in-time for routes that are known to be safe under current conditions. It's perfectly reasonable that once an existence proof is shown for one single commonly taken route in America to be handled autonomously (as it already has been) that that is all the foothold needed to start to deliver real economic benefits from the technology, and hence will align incentives for it to, eventually, be perfected.
- mattmanser 9y agoThat sounds an incredibly risky strategy, are you commenting from direct knowledge or just taking a wild guess? There's literally no such thing as "known to be safe" on a road, a crash could happen right in front of any of these cars, the car promptly kills its occupants through a mistake and then that's the end of self-driving cars for a decade.
- edanm 9y agoJust commenting about the "one crash will kill the industry" part - I've heard this repeated many times over the last 20 years (way before self-driving cars were close to viable). I've repeated it myself. But it looks like we're wrong. First of all, there have been crashes with even Tesla's autopilot, and it didn't seem to affect anything. For another, this same logic would've probably meant that driving itself would never have become popular in the first place, or would've been set back many decades because of car crashes. That doesn't seem to have been the case. I'm not saying these things can't kill an industry, but I think people are pretty tolerant of even unthinkable dangers beforehand, if the incentive is high enough.
- RandallBrown 9y agoI love that you still need to buckle the seatbelt for the non-existent driver.
- giarc 9y agoProbably stops the annoying warning alarms that would be constantly pinging.
- justinpombrio 9y ago> Waymo just clicked its way past its 5 millionth self-driven mile a few days ago. 5 million miles and no fatal accidents. Just 5% of the way to when a _human_ driver (in the us) would expect a fatal accident. Fingers crossed! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
- oldgradstudent 9y agoWaymo mostly drives in ideal conditions. You should expect human drivers to perform much better in those condition than on average.
- justinpombrio 9y agoWaymo also doesn't drive drunk, which is one of the major causes of human accidents.
- zhengyi13 9y ago... or distracted, or tired, or angry, or ridden with testosterone and a poor sense of risk...
- oldgradstudent 9y agoThe data about human drivers already accounts for drunk drivers. The real question is whether self-driving cars would be less dangerous than human drivers. I don't think the data so far has been convincing, to put it mildly. As far as I understand, the 5 million miles driven by Waymo were mostly under human supervision, so it does not tell us a lot on how safe those cars really are.
- jacksmith21006 9y agoPlus they can text while driving safely as can do true multi tasking unlike humans.
- WhompingWindows 9y agoDoes anyone here think that a group other than Waymo is in the lead when it comes to short, medium, and long term deliverables on delivering actual SDC as a product? Whether we think of taxi services or privately owned vehicles, I don't see Tesla, Cruise/GM, Intel/Mobileye, or indeed any other venture which is running actual rides with no one in the driver's seat. Not to mention the disengagement data from California, which Waymo was doing very well on. Granted, overall, all of these teams are being secretive, so it's tough to know where they truly stand. Still, based on what we've seen, I say Waymo is out in front by at least 6-12 months. When it comes to delivering SDC to the entire globe, obviously there will be a geo-spatial distribution of roll-outs, with sunny/dry/well planned out places (i.e. Arizona, California) getting SDC first, and snowy/wet/poorly organized (i.e. Boston's cowpaths) cities getting them much later. Not to mention, there need to be lax regulations that remove obstacles to local adoption, and super long term we'll see SDC-specific infrastructure improvements to utilize their inherent advantages/disadvantages. But, for now, it seems to me that Waymo is in the lead and that the SW USA and California will get all of these Waymo tech in Chrysler/other vehicles first.
- arijun 9y agoOne thing that gets mentioned is the many thousands of miles that have been driven by Tesla vehicles, giving them sensor data in so many situations that may not have been seen yet by other companies. We may have to wait and see how much of an advantage that actually gives them (if any).
- what_ever 9y agoHas there been any report on how much data is actually uploaded back to Tesla? I would be pretty pissed as a owner for uploading all of my rides back for privacy as well as bandwidth reasons.
- burkemw3 9y agoI have read about the sensor suite on Teslas on the road being different from the suite on the Waymo cars, for example. So, the sensor data from Tesla may be more or less valuable, regardless of the amount of it. Wait and see is certainly the game.
- d--b 9y agoThis is getting old. Google's first video was made in 2012... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE
- fastball 9y agoYes, but now they are taking random passengers on variable routes with variable traffic without anyone behind the wheel. I guess that's not progress though.
- ape4 9y agoAs a pedestrian and driver I find it useful to see the faces of other drivers. When walking across the road I try to make eye contract with the driver to make sure they see me. Doesn't seem possible with self driving cars. If a display in the driver's seat could make "eye contact" then display my photo with a checkmark - to say "I see you" I'm be more happy about walking in front.
- maxerickson 9y agoI've thought about this too. I think a highly directional light that can be aimed will work better than a display. The car can just point the light at pedestrians that it has recognized. The hard part is a fast and reliable mechanism for the pointing. I guess an array of lights has the advantage of no moving parts and the capability to show recognition to multiple pedestrians.
- ape4 9y agoThat could work. There should be something. If only in the early years so people get used trusting SDCs (self driving cars)
- adrianmonk 9y agoIf you want to shine a light at a particular spot, just use whatever technologies are used in video projectors. Except for the fact that you are aiming at different distances, it's the same problem.
- kjksf 9y agoDo you want to make an "eye contact" with an elevator to make sure it won't crush you by closing the doors? Your behavior is a hedge against crappy humans that tend to be distracted and not see everything. If self-driving cars can't avoid hitting people, they are failing the most basic scenario and can't be allowed on the road.
- ape4 9y agoI feel self driving cars need to do everything humans do and then 10x better to succeed. Indicating that they see you is something that humans do now. Here's an article saying eye contact is the reason the amount of window tinting is limited. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/ontario-limits-amount-of-allowable-window-tint-cyclists-rejoice-1.3657694 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/ontario-limits-amount-...
- dankohn1 9y agoSorry, but it's obligatory that someone link to Johnny Cab as the critical prior art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGi6j2VrL0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGi6j2VrL0o
- drawkbox 9y agoWaymo cars are all over Chandler and Tempe in Arizona. I see many on a regular basis with a good portion self-driving. It is neat to see all the roads you normally drive in the self-driving videos and it is almost taken for granted that they are here [1][2]. Chandler has always been in early on technology due to many reasons but that lots of programmers/engineers work here due to intel historically, projects like Iridium started here, also one of the first places to get cable/broadband internet in the 90s. With that said, Chandler is very easy to drive, square roads, good weather, clean roads, clearly marked and kept up, minimal freeway needed etc. It is a great place to start but still lots for the cars/algos to learn, however it IS happening and I see it everyday. Many of the videos are around Chandler downtown that is a bit busy and has lots of movement/pedestrians[3], so that is good that it is able to navigate that, it is close to busy urban environments. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaOB-ErYq6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaOB-ErYq6Y [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8R148hFxPw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8R148hFxPw (360 degree experience) [3] https://youtu.be/B8R148hFxPw?t=1m50s https://youtu.be/B8R148hFxPw?t=1m50s
- mav3r1ck 9y agoLet's hope they start bringing these cars to upstate New York in the winter, only then can we seriously consider Level5. The salt layers on so thickly that I would be surprised if LIDAR and cameras could work through that. I am not sure of any solutions besides adding little wipers for all the sensors to keep them clean or adding more repellent paint.
- akgerber 9y agoPittsburgh, where Uber's ATC is based, is another profoundly challenging environment— there are a lot of curvy cobblestone streets with >10% grade that haven't been maintained in decades. And the weather is often snowy or sleety or otherwise unfriendly.
- Animats 9y agoGoogle does have wipers on at least one LIDAR design. Another sensor cleaner alternates sprays of washer fluid and compressed air. We had that on our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle in 2005. Ford has a camera cleaner on some 2017 Ford pickups.[1] [1] https://youtu.be/e1kLSxv5ovk?t=37 https://youtu.be/e1kLSxv5ovk?t=37
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- thedangler 9y agoHow do self driving cars make blide left or right turns. I sometimes have to slowly creep out until I can see its safe to go.
- ryanmonroe 9y agoHopefully self-driving cars stuck at intersections will draw decision-makers' attention to the issue and fix it for humans.
- faitswulff 9y agoHas anyone been in one of these? I'm curious about what kinds of mistakes they tend to make, if any, because I assume that's where the learning happens.