4 ms·

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

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.
  - vasilipupkin 8y ago
    I call bullshit on this assertion. Plenty of companies? You mean like 3 ? also, why does it have to be vision only and no maps? the goal is not some pissing contest of who has the cleverest algo, the goal is a working product. Of course, it's going to include maps.
    - vladislav 8y ago
      Way more than 3 companies. The reason I'd want to see a vision-only mappless demo is because Lidar and HD maps are a crutch, which make it easy to create a 90% functional demo, yet are insufficient to cover the long tail end, which is inherently a computer vision problem. There is not enough information density or semantics in Lidar data to make high level judgements, which makes it useless for many relevant corner cases. Meanwhile, vision has all the information but it's a hard yet necessary AI problem to extract it. The goal is a working product indeed, but if it involves teleoperation, human annotation for maps, and over-relies on Lidar, it will be a slow and unreliable AI granny driver, which will penetrate at most 1% of the market. There is a whole lot of unscalable human effort being swept under the rug in most autonomous demos, so don't believe everything you read in the media.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

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.
- vasilipupkin 8y ago
  I call bullshit on this assertion. Plenty of companies? You mean like 3 ? also, why does it have to be vision only and no maps? the goal is not some pissing contest of who has the cleverest algo, the goal is a working product. Of course, it's going to include maps.
  - vladislav 8y ago
    Way more than 3 companies. The reason I'd want to see a vision-only mappless demo is because Lidar and HD maps are a crutch, which make it easy to create a 90% functional demo, yet are insufficient to cover the long tail end, which is inherently a computer vision problem. There is not enough information density or semantics in Lidar data to make high level judgements, which makes it useless for many relevant corner cases. Meanwhile, vision has all the information but it's a hard yet necessary AI problem to extract it. The goal is a working product indeed, but if it involves teleoperation, human annotation for maps, and over-relies on Lidar, it will be a slow and unreliable AI granny driver, which will penetrate at most 1% of the market. There is a whole lot of unscalable human effort being swept under the rug in most autonomous demos, so don't believe everything you read in the media.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]