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"the robot cars will not be unleashed without human oversight. Regulators are requiring that a backup test driver remain in the driver’s seat to take over if ne

by fergie 8y ago

"the robot cars will not be unleashed without human oversight. Regulators are requiring that a backup test driver remain in the driver’s seat to take over if necessary. Zoox is also not allowed to charge passengers, keeping the prospect of a profitable business model elusive."

Fricken 8y ago
There is another permit for fully driverless operations, which California introduced in April this year. Waymo got their fully driverless operators permit in late October, and to my knowledge they're the only company to even apply for it.
- speedplane 8y ago
  Waymo is the only driverless car company that I even remotely trust. I went to a conference where Uber was presenting, two months before the incident where they killed a pedestrian. Their entire presentation focused on providing a public service to improve safety. It was so over the top on feel-good-make-the-world-a-better-safe-place, you couldn't believe a word of it. If they really cared about safety, they would be adding safety features to cars already operated by humans (e.g., automatic breaking, warnings when you veer out of your lane, cameras, etc). They wouldn't try to take the giant step of removing the human. Their presentation was such BS, that it was clear they couldn't be trusted. Then two months later, it was confirmed.
  - mecklenberg 8y ago
    Zoox presentation in the NeurIPS Intelligent Transportation Systems workshop was similarly cringeworthy. First half was them going over the numbers of auto fatalities worldwide and how they should be eliminated, followed by very little information on how they would even come close to human level performance on the task.
    - Fricken 8y ago
      That describes everybody's safety talks and voluntary safety reports, including Waymo's. They all spout the same platitudes.
    - deepnotderp 8y ago
      Everyone does at least something like that, it's like the equivalent of "Moore's Law is ending" for semiconductor startups
  - Fricken 8y ago
    Everybody knows Uber is a shitshow. I'm not sure what it is that turned you off Zoox. Sebastien Thrun, who started the Google self-driving car project considered Jesse Levinson to be his brightest student, and Jesse is now CEO of Zoox. The thing about Waymo is that they haven't made any real progress in about 3 years. I mean, they've rolled out hundreds of new vehicles in several cities, they've racked up 10 million real world test miles and 8 billion simulated test miles, and have discovered thousands of new edge cases, but they still can't reliably navigate certain everyday driving scenarios such as left turns at uncontrolled intersections. Behavior modelling isn't sufficient to read deeply enough into the matrix of dynamic, open world driving environments for self driving cars to perform gracefully beyond a certain threshold of xomplexity. The ML knowledge of how to deal with these kinds of problems doesn't exist, that is, unless somebody has an ace up their sleeve. If anybody has an ace up their sleeve, it is likely to be either Aurora or Zoox. Though it's more likely that in a few years time we'll have a half dozen companies all bumping up against the same glass ceiling Waymo has been trying to break through for years now.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      >bumping up against the same glass ceiling Waymo has been trying to break through for years now I'd be happy to be proven wrong but I strongly suspect that over the next couple of years it's going to become apparent that tests and proof of concepts in a combination of limited and easy conditions (e.g. Chandler AZ) and other environments with a human backup are a very long way from scaling and generalizing to selling a truly self-driving car to the public. It's also possible we'll see assistive driving systems for certain conditions (e.g. selected freeways) that don't require human attention and that full autonomy will be relegated to a maybe someday future. From the perspective of the car manufacturers, full highway autonomy actually seems like a big win even if it's not as sexy as autopilot under all conditions.
      - visarga 8y ago
        If they could solve two scenarios I would be content: highways and congested city traffic (where cars mostly sit and advance a few meters at a time). Especially the congested city traffic scenario would spare me of a ton of stress. If I don't have to watch the roads I can detach emotionally and find something else to kill time.
  - gdy 8y ago
    "It was so over the top on feel-good-make-the-world-a-better-safe-place, you couldn't believe a word of it. If they really cared about safety, they would be adding safety features to cars already operated by humans (e.g., automatic breaking, warnings when you veer out of your lane, cameras, etc). They wouldn't try to take the giant step of removing the human." And yet Waymo's Sebastian Thrun, who has lost a friend in a car accident, is saying and doing the same. https://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_thrun_google_s_driverless_car https://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_thrun_google_s_driverles...
    - speedplane 8y ago
      It’s a matter of degree. Uber uses this rhetoric as a cover. Google uses it as another benefit.
phkahler 8y ago
I thought Zoox was planning to have a bidirectional car with no drivers seat. Nobody to take over.

by fergie 8y ago

Fricken 8y ago

There is another permit for fully driverless operations, which California introduced in April this year. Waymo got their fully driverless operators permit in late October, and to my knowledge they're the only company to even apply for it.

speedplane 8y ago
Waymo is the only driverless car company that I even remotely trust. I went to a conference where Uber was presenting, two months before the incident where they killed a pedestrian. Their entire presentation focused on providing a public service to improve safety. It was so over the top on feel-good-make-the-world-a-better-safe-place, you couldn't believe a word of it. If they really cared about safety, they would be adding safety features to cars already operated by humans (e.g., automatic breaking, warnings when you veer out of your lane, cameras, etc). They wouldn't try to take the giant step of removing the human. Their presentation was such BS, that it was clear they couldn't be trusted. Then two months later, it was confirmed.
- mecklenberg 8y ago
  Zoox presentation in the NeurIPS Intelligent Transportation Systems workshop was similarly cringeworthy. First half was them going over the numbers of auto fatalities worldwide and how they should be eliminated, followed by very little information on how they would even come close to human level performance on the task.
  - Fricken 8y ago
    That describes everybody's safety talks and voluntary safety reports, including Waymo's. They all spout the same platitudes.
  - deepnotderp 8y ago
    Everyone does at least something like that, it's like the equivalent of "Moore's Law is ending" for semiconductor startups
- Fricken 8y ago
  Everybody knows Uber is a shitshow. I'm not sure what it is that turned you off Zoox. Sebastien Thrun, who started the Google self-driving car project considered Jesse Levinson to be his brightest student, and Jesse is now CEO of Zoox. The thing about Waymo is that they haven't made any real progress in about 3 years. I mean, they've rolled out hundreds of new vehicles in several cities, they've racked up 10 million real world test miles and 8 billion simulated test miles, and have discovered thousands of new edge cases, but they still can't reliably navigate certain everyday driving scenarios such as left turns at uncontrolled intersections. Behavior modelling isn't sufficient to read deeply enough into the matrix of dynamic, open world driving environments for self driving cars to perform gracefully beyond a certain threshold of xomplexity. The ML knowledge of how to deal with these kinds of problems doesn't exist, that is, unless somebody has an ace up their sleeve. If anybody has an ace up their sleeve, it is likely to be either Aurora or Zoox. Though it's more likely that in a few years time we'll have a half dozen companies all bumping up against the same glass ceiling Waymo has been trying to break through for years now.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    >bumping up against the same glass ceiling Waymo has been trying to break through for years now I'd be happy to be proven wrong but I strongly suspect that over the next couple of years it's going to become apparent that tests and proof of concepts in a combination of limited and easy conditions (e.g. Chandler AZ) and other environments with a human backup are a very long way from scaling and generalizing to selling a truly self-driving car to the public. It's also possible we'll see assistive driving systems for certain conditions (e.g. selected freeways) that don't require human attention and that full autonomy will be relegated to a maybe someday future. From the perspective of the car manufacturers, full highway autonomy actually seems like a big win even if it's not as sexy as autopilot under all conditions.
    - visarga 8y ago
      If they could solve two scenarios I would be content: highways and congested city traffic (where cars mostly sit and advance a few meters at a time). Especially the congested city traffic scenario would spare me of a ton of stress. If I don't have to watch the roads I can detach emotionally and find something else to kill time.
- gdy 8y ago
  "It was so over the top on feel-good-make-the-world-a-better-safe-place, you couldn't believe a word of it. If they really cared about safety, they would be adding safety features to cars already operated by humans (e.g., automatic breaking, warnings when you veer out of your lane, cameras, etc). They wouldn't try to take the giant step of removing the human." And yet Waymo's Sebastian Thrun, who has lost a friend in a car accident, is saying and doing the same. https://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_thrun_google_s_driverless_car https://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_thrun_google_s_driverles...
  - speedplane 8y ago
    It’s a matter of degree. Uber uses this rhetoric as a cover. Google uses it as another benefit.

phkahler 8y ago

I thought Zoox was planning to have a bidirectional car with no drivers seat. Nobody to take over.