3 ms·

The head of Google's self driving program has publicly stated that fully autonomous cars that can handle challenging conditions are decades away. https://web.a

The head of Google's self driving program has publicly stated that fully autonomous cars that can handle challenging conditions are decades away. https://web.archive.org/web/20160422140357/https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/google-selfdriving-car-will-be-ready-soon-for-some-in-decades-for-others https://web.archive.org/web/20160422140357/https://spectrum.... Does that make Google's program a failure? Apple decided it didn't make sense to work on building a car when the software to control such a car isn't close to being there, and moved their focus to software.

forgot-my-pw 8y ago
In the last keynote they mentioned that they have solved some snow problems: https://youtu.be/ogfYd705cRs?t=6177 https://youtu.be/ogfYd705cRs?t=6177 :)
Animats 8y ago
That's Chris Urmson's talk at SXSW in 2016 [1], which has been widely viewed. It's one of the best talks on the subject. He said "How quickly can we get this into people's hands? If you read the papers, you see maybe it's three years, maybe it's thirty years. And I am here to tell you that honestly, it's a bit of both." Then he showed video of Google cars dealing with various challenging conditions. This included the famous scene where a Google self driving car encountered a woman in a powered wheelchair using a broom to chase a turkey. The software recognized this as something to avoid, even though it didn't classify it further. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj-rK8V-rik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj-rK8V-rik
- GeekyBear 8y ago
  The challenges Google thinks will take decades to overcome are those posed by streets that aren't new, extra wide, well marked, and with low traffic in an area that almost always has excellent weather conditions. Basically, they have a solution that they are willing to put into limited testing in certain parts of Arizona, just as Apple has decided to do limited testing with autonomous employee shuttle vans between their campuses. So Google has moved from "this is our moonshot program that we will solve in a couple of years" to "this will take decades of incremental progress". Given that Google and Apple have both come to the concision that this is a long range incremental software problem, and given that you say that this represents an enormous failure on the part of Apple, how is this not also an enormous failure on the part of Google?

forgot-my-pw 8y ago

In the last keynote they mentioned that they have solved some snow problems: https://youtu.be/ogfYd705cRs?t=6177 https://youtu.be/ogfYd705cRs?t=6177 :)

Animats 8y ago

That's Chris Urmson's talk at SXSW in 2016 [1], which has been widely viewed. It's one of the best talks on the subject. He said "How quickly can we get this into people's hands? If you read the papers, you see maybe it's three years, maybe it's thirty years. And I am here to tell you that honestly, it's a bit of both." Then he showed video of Google cars dealing with various challenging conditions. This included the famous scene where a Google self driving car encountered a woman in a powered wheelchair using a broom to chase a turkey. The software recognized this as something to avoid, even though it didn't classify it further. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj-rK8V-rik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj-rK8V-rik

GeekyBear 8y ago
The challenges Google thinks will take decades to overcome are those posed by streets that aren't new, extra wide, well marked, and with low traffic in an area that almost always has excellent weather conditions. Basically, they have a solution that they are willing to put into limited testing in certain parts of Arizona, just as Apple has decided to do limited testing with autonomous employee shuttle vans between their campuses. So Google has moved from "this is our moonshot program that we will solve in a couple of years" to "this will take decades of incremental progress". Given that Google and Apple have both come to the concision that this is a long range incremental software problem, and given that you say that this represents an enormous failure on the part of Apple, how is this not also an enormous failure on the part of Google?