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Indeed. They're able to raise lots of cash with presentation skills, but in reality their business plan is completely bottlenecked on super reliable perception/

Indeed. They're able to raise lots of cash with presentation skills, but in reality their business plan is completely bottlenecked on super reliable perception/intent prediction AI, on which they aren't showing evidence of an advantage.

vasilipupkin 8y ago
the reporter claims that the car drove without human assistance through San Francisco. If true, and it's a big if, it's fucking impressive if you ask me. Go ahead, ask me.
- theossuary 8y ago
  Do that 100,000 times in different weather and road conditions and it's impressive, doing it once is just dangerous.
  - cornellwright 8y ago
    I'm not sure that most skilled drivers to could reliably drive through SF 100,000 times in all weather without some sort of incident. Autonomous would be more impressive.
  - vasilipupkin 8y ago
    hmmm. Presumably, they did it more than once before putting a reporter in the car and risking having him or her killed. how many companies that you know of that are working on self-driving cars have done this? had a reporter do a similar route in a car driving itself? I know nothing of this company but they are either completely insane or have a high degree of confidence in their product, or the reporter is lying. I have no reason to suspect the reporter of lying in this case.
- lettergram 8y ago
  I've seen autonomous cars in SF before, even saw an Uber one run a red light... for what it's worth. They definitely test in SF.
- vladislav 8y ago
  Meh. It's a demo. Doesn't prove reliability. With an HD map, slow speed and plenty of Lidar sensors, it's like a car on rails. Doesn't tell you what happens at the very long tail end, for instance when that HD map is not correct, making eye contact with a pedestrian is required to infer intent, or distinguishing a tumbleweed from a rock is required to make a driving decision at high speed. Fully autonomous driving may be AI-complete for all we know, and these one off demos are child's play in comparison.
  - tgtweak 8y ago
    Also it had visible issues merging onto the highway and stopping in the middle of the street while turning.
    - prawn 8y ago
      The merge 'issue' was because the adjacent car paced them and then pulled ahead at the last second. They merged successfully even as they ran out of lane - just as almost every human would've done. What was wrong with the turn? They had to wait until they could confirm that the second oncoming car would actually slow and complete their turn before it was safe to continue. That's how many humans would handle that situation too IMO.
  - CardenB 8y ago
    Did you read the article? Zoox reportedly drive from Menlo Park to SF including high speed driving on 101 and crowded city driving in SF.
    - vladislav 8y ago
      Yeah. I'm saying there are plenty of companies capable of this particular technical feat given the offline HD mapping + Lidar, so it doesn't justify the amount invested in and valuation of Zoox. This technology was available years ago. If say, they did this with vision only and no HD maps, maybe then I'd be impressed.
      - 8y ago
- cjensen 8y ago
  Did I miss a thing? I didn't see the reporter say it drove without human assistance. It's frankly sloppy that the reporter doesn't mention it. He also incorrectly reports that Waymo only tests in places like Arizona.
  - vasilipupkin 8y ago
    yes, he does "Overall, the vehicle performs so well that you forget no one is driving."
    - cjensen 8y ago
      That's a no. He literally does not say it did not disengage. Given the sloppiness of the story, there's no way to infer whether or not he saw zero disengagements or twenty. All I know is there reporter was impressed, but I don't know how knowledgable the reporter is.
      - Fricken 8y ago
        Ashlee Vance has been covering autonomous vehicles for years. Zoox did years of closed course testing before rolling out on public roads last summer, and last fall they held a press event and took a dozen or two journalists out for 10 minute rides around SF, all the journalists had good things to say about it. Jesse Levinson, the guy leading autonomy at Zoox is a big scoop, he gets huge respect in the robotics community. When you got a top talent like that, it tends to attract more top talent. I'm really impressed by how much Zoox has accomplished with so little. Last I heard they had about a dozen test vehicles noodling around parts of San Francisco, but with this new cash injection you'll probably be seeing a lot more sensor riddled flat black Toyota Highlanders in the Bay Area in the coming months. It should be emphasized that fully validating an autonomous vehicle well enough to remove the driver is no small feat and they have a long way to go, I'm betting against their 2020 target for a commercial rollout.
        argonaut 8y ago
        Ashlee Vance is a general technology reporter, not some autonomous car expert. The article was pretty obviously arranged for by Zoox and meant for PR. I'm not affirmatively saying they faked the demo, but it is still a demo for a journalist. They have every incentive to make it look good. So given that the journalist didn't go out and say outright that there were no interventions or human inputs, you really cannot just take the demo at its word.

vasilipupkin 8y ago

the reporter claims that the car drove without human assistance through San Francisco. If true, and it's a big if, it's fucking impressive if you ask me. Go ahead, ask me.

theossuary 8y ago
Do that 100,000 times in different weather and road conditions and it's impressive, doing it once is just dangerous.
- cornellwright 8y ago
  I'm not sure that most skilled drivers to could reliably drive through SF 100,000 times in all weather without some sort of incident. Autonomous would be more impressive.
- vasilipupkin 8y ago
  hmmm. Presumably, they did it more than once before putting a reporter in the car and risking having him or her killed. how many companies that you know of that are working on self-driving cars have done this? had a reporter do a similar route in a car driving itself? I know nothing of this company but they are either completely insane or have a high degree of confidence in their product, or the reporter is lying. I have no reason to suspect the reporter of lying in this case.
lettergram 8y ago
I've seen autonomous cars in SF before, even saw an Uber one run a red light... for what it's worth. They definitely test in SF.
vladislav 8y ago
Meh. It's a demo. Doesn't prove reliability. With an HD map, slow speed and plenty of Lidar sensors, it's like a car on rails. Doesn't tell you what happens at the very long tail end, for instance when that HD map is not correct, making eye contact with a pedestrian is required to infer intent, or distinguishing a tumbleweed from a rock is required to make a driving decision at high speed. Fully autonomous driving may be AI-complete for all we know, and these one off demos are child's play in comparison.
- tgtweak 8y ago
  Also it had visible issues merging onto the highway and stopping in the middle of the street while turning.
  - prawn 8y ago
    The merge 'issue' was because the adjacent car paced them and then pulled ahead at the last second. They merged successfully even as they ran out of lane - just as almost every human would've done. What was wrong with the turn? They had to wait until they could confirm that the second oncoming car would actually slow and complete their turn before it was safe to continue. That's how many humans would handle that situation too IMO.
- CardenB 8y ago
  Did you read the article? Zoox reportedly drive from Menlo Park to SF including high speed driving on 101 and crowded city driving in SF.
  - vladislav 8y ago
    Yeah. I'm saying there are plenty of companies capable of this particular technical feat given the offline HD mapping + Lidar, so it doesn't justify the amount invested in and valuation of Zoox. This technology was available years ago. If say, they did this with vision only and no HD maps, maybe then I'd be impressed.
    - 8y ago
cjensen 8y ago
Did I miss a thing? I didn't see the reporter say it drove without human assistance. It's frankly sloppy that the reporter doesn't mention it. He also incorrectly reports that Waymo only tests in places like Arizona.
- vasilipupkin 8y ago
  yes, he does "Overall, the vehicle performs so well that you forget no one is driving."
  - cjensen 8y ago
    That's a no. He literally does not say it did not disengage. Given the sloppiness of the story, there's no way to infer whether or not he saw zero disengagements or twenty. All I know is there reporter was impressed, but I don't know how knowledgable the reporter is.
    - Fricken 8y ago
      Ashlee Vance has been covering autonomous vehicles for years. Zoox did years of closed course testing before rolling out on public roads last summer, and last fall they held a press event and took a dozen or two journalists out for 10 minute rides around SF, all the journalists had good things to say about it. Jesse Levinson, the guy leading autonomy at Zoox is a big scoop, he gets huge respect in the robotics community. When you got a top talent like that, it tends to attract more top talent. I'm really impressed by how much Zoox has accomplished with so little. Last I heard they had about a dozen test vehicles noodling around parts of San Francisco, but with this new cash injection you'll probably be seeing a lot more sensor riddled flat black Toyota Highlanders in the Bay Area in the coming months. It should be emphasized that fully validating an autonomous vehicle well enough to remove the driver is no small feat and they have a long way to go, I'm betting against their 2020 target for a commercial rollout.
      - argonaut 8y ago
        Ashlee Vance is a general technology reporter, not some autonomous car expert. The article was pretty obviously arranged for by Zoox and meant for PR. I'm not affirmatively saying they faked the demo, but it is still a demo for a journalist. They have every incentive to make it look good. So given that the journalist didn't go out and say outright that there were no interventions or human inputs, you really cannot just take the demo at its word.