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Waymo Applies to Put Autonomous Cars on CA Roads Without Safety Drivers
- KKKKkkkk1 9y agoThe original article from the SF Chronicle has some more info. Specifically, it contains the following very strange paragraph Sources said that Waymo does not plan on operating its cars remotely — even in difficult situations — but it will remotely monitor them during tests. If one of the cars encounters something it doesn’t understand, such as complicated road construction, the car will contact Waymo for help recognizing the situation. After human testers give it feedback, the car will then decide how to navigate the situation. https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Exclusive-Waymo-appplies-for-no-driver-testing-12832425.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Exclusive-Waymo...
- jvolkman 9y agoWhat do you find strange about this?
- rrdharan 9y agoIt seems like the round trip time for that type of operation would be pretty challenging for situations where you have, for example, six seconds to avoid crashing into a road barrier..
- mikeash 9y agoCan that happen? You can come to a stop within 2-3 seconds.
- alonmower 9y agoI’m not sure throwing control to a remote human in this situation would be much better given that they’d need to be able to immediately act correctly. I guess they’re confident about their abilities at speed. I would guess this is probably more to address “there’s an ambulance parked in the intersection, can I go around it or should I turn around and find another way” type questions
- TulliusCicero 9y agoI don't think it's for that kind of situation. It's probably more for, like, a weird construction setup where the car needs to be told when it's okay to cross over the normal lines painted on the ground, or a parking garage where the car has to be told where it's okay to park (e.g. different sections may have different rules).
- jvolkman 9y agoThis is not video game style remote driving. The car is always in control, and its primitive object avoidance routines won't let it crash into a barrier. This is presumably to allow humans to help make higher-level decisions. For example, maybe the car asks something like "this road is blocked. I could cross the double yellow line to get around, or I could reverse and go a different way. Both of these options are suboptimal, can you help me choose?" The most extreme type of assistance could maybe be a human drawing or modifying the vehicle's planned path (if you watch any of the Waymo example videos, you'll see the immediate path that the vehicle is planning to take). But even in this scenario, the car is still responsible for navigating that path and avoiding any obstacles.
- JetSpiegel 9y ago> The car is always in control, and its primitive object avoidance routines won't let it crash into a barrier.The car is always in control, and its primitive object avoidance routines won't let it crash into a barrier. Of course, how inconceivable that a self driving car could crash into a static barrier! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6QCF8tVqM3I https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6QCF8tVqM3I
- Dibes 9y agoWhile I agree, yes it has been proven with Tesla's technology that it could happen, I believe that Waymo would not be so callous as to apply for this permit if it had not 100% proven that its technology would not do something as blatantly bad as that. I could be wrong, but I certainly feel through their various reports and showcases that they have by far and away the best grasp on fully autonomous vehicles. I have yet to read that in their millions of miles of fully autonomous driving there was a crash that was worse than cosmetic damage to either vehicle or caused injury [1]. They also seem ready to take responsibility for any of their mistakes and use them as a learning experience to further improve their technology. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waymo#Crashes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waymo#Crashes
- buvanshak 9y ago
- jteppinette 9y agoWhat if for 8 hours a day your job was to avoid crashes in remote vehicles... every 6 seconds your monitor changes feed to a near accident and you have to react, your decision saves the vehicle and passengers or there is a crash.. next.. next..
- merkaloid 9y agothanks for next season black mirror spoilers dude
- raverbashing 9y agoIf I had to guess I think it will probably stop and wait for the remote assistance.
- KKKKkkkk1 9y agoWhat is the difference between operating a car remotely and "giving it feedback"?
- aquadrop 9y agoWhen someone ask you how to get somewhere, it's same difference as between giving directions and getting behind the wheel to drive them there. I think car will still be in control, you just will tell it "drive slowly here, then here"
- dragonwriter 9y ago> What is the difference between operating a car remotely and "giving it feedback"? The same as the difference between what a driver does and what a driving instructor sitting in the passenger seat does, only both remote...
- craftyguy 9y agoRelevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1897/ https://xkcd.com/1897/
- userbinator 9y agoIf one of the cars encounters something it doesn’t understand, such as complicated road construction, the car will contact Waymo for help recognizing the situation Hopefully well in advance of actually hitting anything, but therein lies the problem: what does it do if it's moving at speed and figures out that it doesn't know what to do? If it continues moving, it might hit something, and if it tries to stop suddenly, it might get hit and cause a multi-car chain collision. Imagine you're following a car on a highway, in a situation where no other cars are around, a situation in which a human driver would practically never stop, and suddenly it brakes to a stop very rapidly because of some perturbation in the road that confuses it, but a human would have no trouble with. Drivers are taught to look beyond the car in front and try to anticipate what it might do; and something so contrary to expectations is going to lead to problems.
- cbhl 9y agoIn my opinion, the safe thing to do is probably not to "stop very suddenly", but to "pull over and stop in a safe manner, and have the blinkers on". I think it would also be possible to mitigate this problem by not driving on the freeway at all for the first iterations. (Feasible if you only drive within Mountain View, and not e.g. MV <-> SF.)
- toast0 9y agoWhat do you do if you're driving along and realize you don't know what to do? Do you slam on the brakes for an emergency stop? Probably not. A safer choice is to remove throttle input and consider gently applying the brakes while you figure out what's going on, and check to see if there's enough space behind you to brake harder or to pull off to the side of the road. I would expect a fully autonomous vehicle to constantly be planning for emergency and graceful stops, and to slow down if it doesn't have a confident plan for both types of stopping and forward progress. It should also have plans for when critical equipment fails, such as sensors or actuators as well as normal car systems like brakes, tires, engine, steering.
- jacksmith21006 9y agoGreat to see. Lets get the revolution going.
- _Fricken 9y agoPeople will die if GM/Cruise takes the safety driver out of the car. Anyone familiar with Cruise Automation's software will agree to this statement. Hopefully Waymo has done a better job.
- sseth 9y agoWaymo does nearly 5500 miles per disengagement, GM seems to be at about 1200 or so as per the California submissions for 2017. Of course this does not tell us the quality of the miles - it is easier to achieve a lower rate of disengagement on the highway for example, but perhaps it serves as an indicator. All others testing in California are 300 or fewer miles per disengagement.
- Eridrus 9y agoInterestingly not the first account I've seen on here bad mouthing Cruise: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tmpnam1234567 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tmpnam1234567
- SingleShotDetec 9y agoAnd: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/inside-cruises-bumpy-ride-the-limits-of-self-driving-cars https://www.theinformation.com/articles/inside-cruises-bumpy...
- _Fricken 9y agoYeah. Cruise is an engineering disaster zone.
- buvanshak 9y agoWhy in the world! are people allowing this without making the cars pass any sort of road worthiness test? For example, make a robotic dummy walk in front of the car without notice. Does the car break and avoid a collision? Such basic things can be formulated into a test and have the cars pass them before allowing them (even with a driver) on the roads.. It amazes me that people just stand by and allow these "tests" to happen within an unsuspecting population...
- _wmd 9y agoIf the vehicle emissions scandal taught us anything, standardized tests of this sort are trivially defeated
- bo1024 9y agoAmazing that humans need a license to drive legally, but algorithms don't.
- imtringued 9y agoThat's exactly what Waymo does... >“We’ve staged people jumping out of canvas bags or porta-potties on the side of the road, skateboarders lying on their boards, and thrown stacks of paper in front of our sensors,” Waymo said in its report. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/waymos-ceo-on-fatal-autonomous-uber-crash-our-car-would-have-been-able-to-handle-it/2018/03/25/4cc97550-3046-11e8-8abc-22a366b72f2d_story.html?utm_term=.42e52d4957bb https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/way... >For media day, they put on three of them. In one, a Honda convertible abruptly cut off one of the Pacificas just past an intersection, and the Pacifica braked to avoid it. In another, a car obscured by two parked vehicles suddenly backed out of a driveway. Again, the Pacifica came to a halt. The third was a faux moving-day scene, with a couch in the street and boxes tumbling into the lane, just as another car approached from the opposite direction. The Pacifica knew better than to swerve into the car. It braked until the coast was clear. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/a-glimpse-inside-the-secret-site-where-driverless-cars-undergo-20000-tests/2017/11/04/874e083c-bf15-11e7-97d9-bdab5a0ab381_story.html?utm_term=.e3fbef88d5ee https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/a-g...
- Animats 9y agoThis is forward progress. Waymo has worked towards this point for years, reporting every disconnect and minor fender-bender. Now they're going to test, cautiously, in Mountain View. As we've seen with Uber and Tesla, the "safety driver" doesn't add much safety. The "safety driver" is mostly there to drive manually in situations where the automation stops the vehicle and asks for help.
- oculusthrift 9y agoWhy do they not need the safety driver? i’m sure google can afford them. i just don’t see the benefit of no safety driver. especially living in mountain view and seeing the recent tesla crash.
- puzzle 9y agoI'd imagine because that means no steering wheel, no manual controls, etc. All that weight can be replaced with redundant everything: engines, brakes...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- londons_explore 9y agoBecause it demonstrates to senior management and the public the progress the team has made. It also lowers barriers to an eventual widespread uber-like service. That service wouldn't be financially viable with safety drivers in each car.
- buvanshak 9y ago> Because it demonstrates to senior management and the public the progress the team has made. Public is not asking them anything. Public does not sign up being part of a beta/alpha or what ever test, for sake of "senior management"...
- buvanshak 9y ago