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The problem with self-driving cars is you can get most of the way to a working solution but that’s not good enough. If the solution is flawed even a little bit

The problem with self-driving cars is you can get most of the way to a working solution but that’s not good enough. If the solution is flawed even a little bit, people will die. That will give self-driving cars a bad reputation and people will be unwilling to ride in them. If you are going to geofence self-driving cars it is questionable whether they are better than trains and buses. I think the best we can hope for in the next 10 years is better driver assistance systems, like GM Super Cruise or Tesla’s Autopilot (if they can make it stop crashing into things).

mrweasel 8y ago
Beyond the geo-fenced solution, and system like Super Cruise, I doubt that we'll see truly self-driving cars for another 30 - 40 years. What fascinates me is that company like Uber believe that they can use their current business model to finance the development of a self-driving car and the start to make profit when those cars a ready. That would mean investors pumping money into the company for at least 25 years more. It makes more sense to slowly develop self-driving cars for technologies like Autopilot and Super Cruise. Gradually improving the solution until one day it can safely navigate a leaf covers dirt road.
- rcxdude 8y ago
  Strategies like Autopilot are the worst of both worlds: They don't free up the driver and they are still susceptable to faults. Driving aids which engage to prevent an accident are a useful way to improve safety, driving aids which mean the driver is not in control and is just monitoring the system in case something goes wrong increases the likelihood of accident significantly.
  - Retric 8y ago
    > just monitoring the system in case something goes wrong increases the likelihood of accident significantly. That depends on the rate of system failure. I used an early form of autopilot and you quickly started to pay attention to where the system would fail. It was like cruse control where you look for situations where you can turn it on but never stop paying attention. At the other end with really safe systems they are going to default to safer than a human driver. So, there might be a significantly deadlier middle ground, but no company has deployed anything like that yet.
    - cr0sh 8y ago
      > I used an early form of autopilot and you quickly started to pay attention to where the system would fail. It was like cruse control where you look for situations where you can turn it on but never stop paying attention. You may do this, but I bet the majority of people do not. I know that Google has data about it's self-driving cars that they know their "safety drivers" simply don't pay attention. In Uber's case - here in the Phoenix area last year - this inattention helped to cause an arguably avoidable fatal accident. These were people supposedly trained not to do this - yet they did. As far as cruise control is concerned - there've been more than a few accidents of people thinking it did more than it does, and not pay attention to the road in front of them. Tesla's autopilot system, while better than simple cruise control, has - because of this better system (and poor marketing) - caused people to think it does more than it can, and has led them to sleeping in their vehicles while it "drove", to being completely inattentive, etc. It is pretty well known at this point that those "middle levels" of self-driving technologies are things that shouldn't be implemented, because people either misunderstand them, or misuse them, leading to often fatal accidents.
      - Retric 8y ago
        When I mean early I am talking a system that stops working every 60 seconds or so. The constant failure instilled a fair amount of paranoia, and did not give enough time to cause boredom. Google’s cars are in that middle ground, but Google has also not released their system. Presumably they are going to wait until it’s as safe as the average driver before releasing it.
  - thorrr 8y ago
    I've been wondering: why don't the self-driving car companies build a system that requires a person to drive it but assures the human can't crash the car? In other words, if the self-driving models predict that the human inputs will result in a crash it forcefully overrides the throttle, brakes, or steering wheel. The sensation would be like driving one of those tracked cars at an amusement park. Try and slam the wheel hard to the right to steer into a guard rail? Computer would physically block it from turning past the point that you would leave your own lane. This system would: * force human drivers to drive the car 100% of the time * allow real world testing and enhancement of self driving capabilities (data gathering, model backtesting, etc.) * be strictly better than both fully automated and existing non-automated systems We have the beginnings of this with the new auto-stop capabilities that are showing up in new cars. Why not build this hybrid system as a stopgap until full level 5 automation is working?
    - marshray 8y ago
      > requires a person to drive it but assures the human can't crash the car? Because the 'not crashing' part is the hard part, the rest is just navigation.
    - dTal 8y ago
      Because now you have the worst of both worlds. The computer still has the final say in what the car does, but now you have a fallible human in the loop at all times as well. If the computer really can predict crashes better than the human, then have the computer drive the car. If it can't, then letting it override the human isn't a good idea. Example: you slam the wheel to the right to steer into a guard rail. The computer overrides you and you remain in your lane. You flatten the toddler you were trying to avoid, that the computer didn't see.
- ulldoitforever 8y ago
  Uber knows the routes ahead of time. They can decide if the route and time of day is safe enough for the limited self driving technology they employ or send a human driver if their SDCs can't handle it.
- StreamBright 8y ago
  Unfortunately too many people subscribe the idea of startups bringing disruptive changes into car transportation because other startups could do the same with entirely different problems. Just because Elon Musk created Paypal it does not mean that he will be able to jump the hoops to get self driving cars on the roads by end of this year. Many people who are intimately familiar with self driving car technologies predict that we need at least 10 years and several innovations before we can seriously consider this as an option.
  - DennisP 8y ago
    Of course you're correct that they might not pull it off, but it's not like people are basing any confidence on Musk's Paypal background. Tesla already brought disruptive change to car transportation by making electric cars popular. And Musk brought a third big change by commercializing reusable rockets.
- throwaay4343 8y ago
  I wonder what the model of survival is for Uber's regional competition like Didi and Ola. I can't speak for China, but driving in India is way way difficult than in the US.
mcorning 8y ago
It is seeming more likely by the year that Tesla is one of the biggest over estimators when it come self-driving cars. Musk has repeatedly promised "autonomous vehicles", and even promised to have a fully autonomous vehicle by the end of this year. He is notorious for his rather bold and exciting predictions, but fewer and fewer seem to come to fruition with each passing year. It seems especially unlikely considering Tesla doesn't even test any autonomous vehicles on public roads, unlike many other companies in the space: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/96c89ec9-aca6-4910-802b-c596f2625a7f/TeslaMotors.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CVID= https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/96c89ec9-aca6-4910... It's disappointing to hear that Ford overestimated, however, it's reassuring that they publicly recognize the challenges and also put safety above being first out the door.
- Shivetya 8y ago
  disclaimer, own a TM3 with full autopilot and purchased full self driving. I have never believed they will deliver much more than level 3. I did buy the FSD package recently when it was discounted mostly for resale value; it was 2k; and not faith in the technology. Too many companies want to label it a safety feature yet for the most part it doesn't operate like most safety features. almost all demos we see are fair weather events on simple roads or in some cases systems which can operate on specific roads. so I think they focus too much of the navigation part. I am more interested in full self driving technology if it leads to more passive safety features like the forward emergency braking. as in an always on system which watches "over your back". that to me is the real value of all this research. (personal usage stuff is below) now don't get me wrong, Tesla's system is amazing for what it does do. It certainly isn't full self driving but it offers many of the features people could use to augment their driving. I used it for the majority of a six hundred mile drive both directions. It was useful in rush hour traffic, the stop and go variety, as well as the long haul. two reasons I found it valuable. first being on long drives I engage it but still maintain the presence of mind to take over when I need to. In this mode I am using it to handle situations when I am distracted. The old issue of looking in your rear view mirror and seeing a bridge you went under but don't remember. I also used it on a typical mid Western two lane road at night in the pouring rain. It helped alleviate fears caused by the constant issue of people with poorly aimed lights or not dimming high beams. The car never lost track of the lanes whereas a few times I was having to hard focus on the white line to avoid being blinded by one of those hibeam drivers.
davnicwil 8y ago
> If you are going to geofence self-driving cars it's questionable whether they are better than trains and buses They run on demand 24/7, they run point to point, you never have to stand, you don't have to share the space with people who behave antisocially, you have a range of choice of comfort options, there are unlimited competitors for the same route driving prices down and service standards up. So, quite a few game changers for me at least. If you live/work outside the geofence, this obviously doesn't apply, but if you do then you get the advantages 80% of the time, and for day to day purposes it absolutely is fundamentally better than trains and buses.
- Al-Khwarizmi 8y ago
  And they pollute much more and take more space.
  - davnicwil 8y ago
    I'm first in line to agree with you, I think cars in cities are awful because of these two problems, and honestly I support all sensible efforts to reduce the number of (current generation) cars on city streets. I'm also a daily user of public transport in a major world city, however, and whilst buses and trains work they also have the fundamental problems highlighted above that are in my view insurmountable, and which (self driving) cars solve. So I'm in a dilemma over whether I think they'd be an improvement, but I ultimately believe they would be. But yes, absolutely pollution and space saving would have to be addressed. I'm optimistic they could be: Pollution: hopefully solvable with electric. Yes, of course, there are efficiency gains that trains/buses would perhaps always have (having to move many small things rather than one big thing carrying the same number of people) but I can see electric reducing the absolute level of pollution from cars to a point where it basically doesn't matter. Maybe overly optimistic, but I hope that'll happen. Space: Driverless cars, particularly electric driverless cars, can be much smaller and can drive much closer together. Different cities have different challenges, but I don't see why we couldn't get to a situation where roads might effectively have capacity for 2x vehicles across and 2-3x vehicles along if the vehicles can be coordinated to drive closer together and are physically smaller (remember that on-demand unlocks certain design constraints - you don't have to provision for peak - if the average number of passengers is 1.5, then most cars on the road could be ultra small 2 seaters). Again lots of conjecture and optimism here, and I am probably assuming that 'manual' cars would eventually disappear or be banned at least from cities too, but nonetheless I think there is hope here.
naasking 8y ago
> If the solution is flawed even a little bit, people will die. Of course they will, but as long as it's more convenient and the death rate is lower than human drivers, they will take off.
- sorenjan 8y ago
  Will regulators allow machines to kill people? Human drivers killing themselves and others are a part of human nature, but will politicians and the public accept that people get killed through no fault of their own by mistakes machines make?
  - naasking 8y ago
    > Human drivers killing themselves and others are a part of human nature, but will politicians and the public accept that people get killed through no fault of their own by mistakes machines make? This has already happened with manufacturer defects. It's just more of the same. As long as a clear liability boundary can be established in principle, there's no problem.
    - jakeinspace 8y ago
      If autonomous driving can be delivered with accident-causing failure rates similar to those of general manufacturer defects (i.e., much lower odds than accidents caused by human error), then I think that would be sufficient. But if say we go from ~35k human-caused road deaths/year to ~10k autonomous-driving caused deaths/year, that may be seen as unacceptably high.
      - naasking 8y ago
        > But if say we go from ~35k human-caused road deaths/year to ~10k autonomous-driving caused deaths/year, that may be seen as unacceptably high. Sure, but there wouldn't be an outright ban. They'd instead establish higher standards that need to be met.
  - rhacker 8y ago
magnamerc 8y ago
I think you're discounting exponential growth. We (humans) overestimate the short term, and underestimate the longterm.
- tyree731 8y ago
  On the contrary, humans are keen on extrapolating "linearly", ignoring that progress is discrete, and that the next discrete step isn't on any guaranteed timeline. See: humanity's idea of the next twenty years of space exploration in 1970.
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - misthop 8y ago
    Humanity's ideas of space travel 1970-1990 were right on, assuming US government investment had remained the same (4.4% in 1966, <= 1.01% since 1975) https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/feb/01/nasa-budgets-us-spending-space-travel https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/feb/01/nasa-b...
- rayiner 8y ago
  Technological growth is an S curve. Exponential at first but hitting a point of diminishing returns after. The 747 is roughly equidistant from the Wright Flyer and the 787. Aviation hit the wall before we got, for example, routine supersonic flights. In computers, the 1.5 GHz Pentium IV is roughly equidistant between the 8 MHz 286 and the i9-9900k (which clocks up to 5 GHz, but that’s not even a fair comparison because the 286 dissipated under 15 watts, the Pentium 4 was a 60W chip, and the i9 is nominally a 95W chip but in reality can dissipate much more than that during boost.)
omarforgotpwd 8y ago
Agreed. Advanced driver assistance is where the market opportunity is for a considerable time. From there it can evolve closer to full self driving. However full self driving will never be “done”
- jbverschoor 8y ago
  So we want a car that we don't want to drive. It's calld a taxi.
metaphyze 8y ago
Both GM and Ford have been hiring a lot of software engineers in Detroit in the past few years. The problem is that they need NASA-style software engineers (crazy-anal nit-picky consider-every-possibility style engineers)--not engineers from the regular software industry. If your car crashes, you can't just reboot it.
- PorterDuff 8y ago
  It seems to me that there's less of that than there used to be. In days of yore, I shipped quite a few ROM-based products. Bugs were frowned upon.
- vonmoltke 8y ago
  That, and they pay shit relative to the regular software industry.
PorterDuff 8y ago
It seems to me that self-driving cars can't be just as safe as the status quo, but have to be far far better. It's an unreasonable need, but human nature. I'll bet that to really make it work well, you also need to redesign roads to suit the new cars. In any case, I'll believe it when I see widespread/universal adoption of self-driving in constrained environments (mining vehicles, warehouses, storage yards). Step two will be things like garbage trucks (slow, expensive, otherwise automated, phone home when it gets in trouble).
- xeromal 8y ago
  Humans have a tolerance for human-style accidents, but not robotic-style accidents. A dipshit that pulls in front of you to t-bone is a human-style accident that is acceptable. A tesla that sees a river and thinks it's a road is a robotic-style accident. It's going to take centuries for us to become acclimated to how machines mess things up.
  - romwell 8y ago
    Is it unreasonable? One can learn to drive defensively, and be able to spot the said dipshit in advance, decreasing the likelihood of collision. Yes, not in all cases, but there's a bell curve. As humans, we can read other humans. Robots aren't inherently bad either. I love my Roomba precisely because if it fails, it fails predictably. I can and do make my apartment Roomba-friendly. But the self-driving deep learning-driven cars don't have this feature. They fail unpredictabily, as in your example. We don't have an understanding of what really drives the decision-making there. And we keep discovering failure modes as they manifest. One day, the car might think the river is a road. Another, it will not recognize a road block as such. But only if it's a Tuesday. Or something. We really don't know. So I don't think we'll get acclimated to that. Unpredictable failure is a reasonable thing to be afraid of.
    - cblades 8y ago
      I'd argue it is unreasonable given that (afaik) no one is marketing a self-driving car that doesn't also require a driver be attentive at all times. You can learn to drive a self-driving car defensively, in the same way you learn to drive a normal car defensively. Pay attention to your surroundings, blind spots, and other cars. Maybe self-driving is a poor term to use.
segmondy 8y ago
People will die with self-driving cars. The only thing that matters is how many people are dying because of self-driving cars vs dying without. That's it. The moment it's an order of magnitude less, then self driving car will become default.
- deanclatworthy 8y ago
  That is not the only thing that matters. There is some interesting psychology at play here. One thing I see rarely discussed is the fact you are getting killed by a programming error, not a human. Of course, the humans made the said programming error, but they have no face, there is nobody (individual) to blame, no-one to apologise, no-one to mourn for their actions. At least if someone is hit by another driver, they will be prosecuted in the case of negligence, or if it's due to a mistake, be able to apologise. It's human. It's different.
  - ncallaway 8y ago
    I don't know. People still fly despite the occasional mechanical error, programming error, or other non-individual error leading to fatalities. I think if it is an order of magnitude safer that would override many of those emotional concerns. Insurance companies are decent at thinking rationally about problems. People might have emotional concerns, but I think a halved auto insurance bill would be enough to sway a critical majority of people.
    - MBCook 8y ago
      But when you fly there is still a human face ‘in control’ (even if not to a sufficient degree) you can blame: the pilot.
      - ncallaway 8y ago
        That's a good point. Pilots are still an important psychological factor that makes it easier for people to fly.
  - 8y ago
bluGill 8y ago
People die today. Self driving cars just need to improve on that but a significant amount. I predict that despite not being perfect (which might not even be a reachable bar) they will become mandatory for all cars in the near future because they are that much better than humans.
- mhermher 8y ago
  Who's going to be liable for those deaths? The manufacturer? I don't think they'll be so hot on that. So really, they need to be orders of magnitude safer than humans, to the point that they are close to flawless.
  - jrockway 8y ago
    I don't think that is the blocker. You can pass a law that says "manufacturers that meet XYZ self-driving certification are exempt from liability". The question of liability is always tough to resolve. Is Boeing responsible for the 737 MAX deaths because they wrote the faulty software? Is the airline responsible for poor training or buying the version without the "disagree" light? Or is the FAA liable for their poor oversight of the whole program? Arguments can be made for all three.
    - jbverschoor 8y ago
      Selfdriving.. oh wait, this is in the air, where there's no traffic and all these different situations. And wait, it was not even an autopilot. Even this was too hard to implement. Lane-assist on the highway? Sure.. autopilot? Not any time soon. Probably not within 20 years
  - peteradio 8y ago
    Exactly, this is also a legal one. I'm curious what happens when we get human driven cars crashing into auto piloted. Are we going to have an assumption of guilt on the human or the auto or will it actually be balanced.
- mfoy_ 8y ago
Eridrus 8y ago
Trains involve massive capital outlays and 60% of bus operating costs are for the driver, resulting in buses that are larger than necessary and therefore increasing the non-driver costs. If we had self-driving vans we could provide better and cheaper transit to everyone.
- tntn 8y ago
  > Trains involve massive capital outlays And self-driving cars don't? How many trains could be built with the billions invested so far in self-driving cars?
  - valine 8y ago
    That's a one time cost. If we get the technology working building more self driving cars will be much cheaper than building new trains.
    - opportune 8y ago
      Self driving cars are simply a backwards-compatible transit solution. We have already invested so much money in car-based transportation to the detriment of trains. But, we will still need to continue paying billions and billions to repair and build new roads.
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - Eridrus 8y ago
    It costs NYC about 2.6 billion to construct a mile of subway. In light of that, the money invested in self-driving cars is pretty small.
    - tntn 8y ago
      either that or NYC is just really inefficient in terms of cost. Keep in mind you've cited probably the first or second most expensive mile of any subway ever built, and subways usually cost much more than other trains. China regularly builds high speed rail for $30M per mile. Europe is usually closer to $50-60M. Tokyo has built subways for $400M per mile. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
otikik 8y ago
> If the solution is flawed even a little bit, people will die. That will give self-driving cars a bad reputation and people will be unwilling to ride in them. Some people have died while using elevators, but I don't see the rest of us not using because of that.
- cr0sh 8y ago
  > Some people have died while using elevators For some reason I forgot about this in an earlier comment I made about people wanting someone to blame. But here we have what could be argued as a "simplest version of self-driving vehicle, with no human operator at the controls, and no one to immediately blame when somebody is hurt or killed by the system"... So the question is - has there been a study done on how people respond to such incidents, when they have no one to blame? At least, in the moment? They can't "yell at the elevator". Eventually, they may yell at the owner of the property or the manufacturer of the elevator, or whatever company last did maintenance (ie - yell -> lawsuit). But does that stop them from using elevators ever again (I imagine that a percentage do become fearful; I know I read something of that nature regarding people who've been "trapped" for a long period of time in an elevator, especially those who are alone when it happens)? Also - why do others continue to use elevators, and not take the stairs (this is more a rhetorical question - stairs are not an option in a skyscraper over more than a few stories for most people)? I'm just interested in why a self-driving car is so different to people, beyond the relative "novelty" of it? Will we completely reject it, because it can't be made 100% perfect? Or will we get used to them in time, even though statistically someone somewhere will die occasionally from an accident in one? I'm not looking for answers here; it's just something that I ponder when these kinds of discussions come up, as I've had a bit of minor experience in learning about (and how to create) these kinds of systems.
  - otikik 8y ago
    The parallelisms don't end there: elevators used to be much more complicated that they are now. Instead of having one button per floor they had motor controls. They literally had to be "driven" by human operators. I don't remember if any studies were cited, but the "elevators vs self-driving cars" was studied in the Planet Money podcast: https://www.npr.org/2015/07/31/427990392/remembering-when-driverless-elevators-drew-skepticism https://www.npr.org/2015/07/31/427990392/remembering-when-dr...
fullshark 8y ago
Self driving trucks on highways driving from hub to hub with manual drivers for the first/last miles seems doable today. That’s most of the way to a working solution and still a major potential cost/labor/crash savings.
thrownblown 8y ago
I recently used a rental that had GMs "adaptive cruise" and it was mostly awesome even in dense traffic. There were two main issues that had to do with following distance. 1: I had it set to 80mph and the other cars in the hov lanes on I-80 were going 75-80 and I was impressed how the car maintained a relatively safe following distance. This seems to irritate the other drivers and I would have tailgaters and eventually people would pass me on the right to occupy the space in front of me causing the car to slow down to get back to a safe following distance, causing the tailgaters to receive an autonomous brake check. 2: In slower traffic around 30mph (still set to 80) that same safe following distance allowed other drivers to cut me off, and several times the brakes engaged hard when the collision detector was activated. The first time that happened I was not prepared and I barely got my foot to the brake pedal in time. I decided after the second time that happened to turn it off as the time it took initialize my foot press the brake was too long, that when I was actively pressing the gas/brakes I could react much quicker to traffic.
- ben_jones 8y ago
  I wonder if we can't take all these advanced sensors for self-driving and use them to help LEO fairly detect unsafe driving in order to increase mean driver safety. Ironically the parent was probably technically going over the speed limit, though everyone goes over the speed limit there. Whoever builds automated traffic violation software would need to be very fairhanded in order to not upset the status quo.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    There is an Israeli startup that does this (using machine vision and freely issued iPhones to rideshare drivers; the name escapes me at the moment, I apologize) to provide data to insurance companies for better pricing of auto insurance rates. I'm not sure I want to live in a future where my Tesla is a mobile sensor platform for someone else's benefit besides myself and Tesla, although I can see the allure of negating the need for LEO patrols on road infrastructure once a critical mass of sensor platform vehicles is reached in an area. This would require a herculean amount of governance and transparency to be okay with me, and I would expect more sanity in road legislation (higher reasonable top speeds, for example) as well.
dreamcompiler 8y ago
Exactly. It's relatively easy to build a self-driving car that works well on good, well-marked highways in good weather in the daytime when every other driver on that road is acting responsibly. But that's just the base case, and the edge cases are wickedly hard.
ar_lan 8y ago
IIRC, it was Elon Musk that said something along the lines of it's not too difficult to get self-driving cars to 99.9% safety - but that's still 1 accident in every 1000, which is terrible all around. You need to shoot for many, many 9's before it can be considered a practical alternative.
afterburner 8y ago
> If you are going to geofence self-driving cars it is questionable whether they are better than trains and buses. If they could manage to geo fence them to highways and get full functionality there it would be a big win for commuters and road trippers. However the companies can't then make billions off of automated city taxi services.
crikli 8y ago
> If the solution is flawed even a little bit, people will die. That will give self-driving cars a bad reputation and people will be unwilling to ride in them. There is lots of debate on every autonomous car story, including this one, about "is as good as humans good enough", but that's a technical threshold. The real blocker (from my view) currently is and will be liability for "negligence." If I'm driving and fiddling with the radio and as a result blow a light and kill someone, at most you can turn out my shallow pockets in civil court. The automaker has no liability. But if the _car_ is driving and blows a light and kills someone, then the automaker can and will be sued because they've got deep pockets. I can see the ads now running during the Price is Right. "Hit by a runaway robot car? Jon from Orlando was awarded $3.2 million! Call Richard Cranium Attorney at Law and get yours!"
Fricken 8y ago
It was very exciting when autonomous vehicles from a handful of companies first began demonstrating the ability to go a few miles in complex traffic and pull off a few fancy maneuvers along the way. I got really excited when I saw that, and for the engineers building these systems, it did go to their heads, and timelines to scaled deployment went from being 20 years away to being 5 years away in the span of 18 months. When deep learning and simulation were first applied huge gains were made, and the limits of these tools were not fully understood. Now that these tools are better understood, we are back to old fashioned robotics development timelines. You gotta build features, and test them, over and over, down to a very granular level. Every time you roll out into a new geography, there is a new mountain of problems to be solved. To drive the error rate down another order of magnitude, the workload goes up exponentially relative to what was needed to achieve the previous order of magnitude. It's like inverse Moore's law. Boston Dynamics had bipedal robots balancing dynamically and walking around in the early 1980s. 35 years later, now that we have a billion times more compute to throw at the problem, well, BD's robots are still mostly just walking around, and far from being good enough to walk around in the real world. That's the real rate of progress in robotics. The prospect of autonomous vehicles has drawn billions of dollars of investment towards solving these fundamental robotics problems, and certainly that has accelerated things, but how long does the money need to keep coming in for before it starts paying out? That's anybody's guess.
- throwaay4343 8y ago
  BDs controllers were/are all hand-tuned using good old convex optimization. Good luck getting fancy 'Deep-RL' to work on these without multiple man years tweaking every little knob in the cost function and the algorithm.
saalweachter 8y ago
The sobering thought is if you work in machine learning, big data, or talk to someone who does. What do you consider a good accuracy rate for your machine learned / hand-engineered heuristic? 95%? 99%? 90%? We've built some real marvels of machine learning, but you can get away with the occasional not-very-rare horrible failures in speech recognition, photo labeling, or machine translation, and it just results in some giggles on Reddit.
mustacheemperor 8y ago
I think self driving research has already benefited cars substantially via driver assistance, like you say. Recently I was in a base model Toyota rental (camry or corrolla I think) and was surprised when it automatically warned me that someone was cutting me off in traffic, before I even noticed them move a few car lengths ahead. Then I noticed there was automatic radar cruise control built in, which made the rest of the drive much nicer. I hadn't even looked too closely before since I assumed that tech wasn't pervasive enough yet to trickle down to a basic rental car. I think that the technology is probably already saving lives - Volvo is trying for zero fatalities right now, and I think driver assistance will reduce the lethality of cars substantially before we're able to adopt self driving vehicles, which would likewise make it less of a disaster if we aren't able to adopt self driving vehicles in the short timelines originally predicted.
sagarm 8y ago
I used to think this too -- but Tesla has killed half-a-dozen or so of their customers with no apparent brand repercussions, let alone an impact on the broader AV space!

mrweasel 8y ago

Beyond the geo-fenced solution, and system like Super Cruise, I doubt that we'll see truly self-driving cars for another 30 - 40 years. What fascinates me is that company like Uber believe that they can use their current business model to finance the development of a self-driving car and the start to make profit when those cars a ready. That would mean investors pumping money into the company for at least 25 years more. It makes more sense to slowly develop self-driving cars for technologies like Autopilot and Super Cruise. Gradually improving the solution until one day it can safely navigate a leaf covers dirt road.

rcxdude 8y ago
Strategies like Autopilot are the worst of both worlds: They don't free up the driver and they are still susceptable to faults. Driving aids which engage to prevent an accident are a useful way to improve safety, driving aids which mean the driver is not in control and is just monitoring the system in case something goes wrong increases the likelihood of accident significantly.
- Retric 8y ago
  > just monitoring the system in case something goes wrong increases the likelihood of accident significantly. That depends on the rate of system failure. I used an early form of autopilot and you quickly started to pay attention to where the system would fail. It was like cruse control where you look for situations where you can turn it on but never stop paying attention. At the other end with really safe systems they are going to default to safer than a human driver. So, there might be a significantly deadlier middle ground, but no company has deployed anything like that yet.
  - cr0sh 8y ago
    > I used an early form of autopilot and you quickly started to pay attention to where the system would fail. It was like cruse control where you look for situations where you can turn it on but never stop paying attention. You may do this, but I bet the majority of people do not. I know that Google has data about it's self-driving cars that they know their "safety drivers" simply don't pay attention. In Uber's case - here in the Phoenix area last year - this inattention helped to cause an arguably avoidable fatal accident. These were people supposedly trained not to do this - yet they did. As far as cruise control is concerned - there've been more than a few accidents of people thinking it did more than it does, and not pay attention to the road in front of them. Tesla's autopilot system, while better than simple cruise control, has - because of this better system (and poor marketing) - caused people to think it does more than it can, and has led them to sleeping in their vehicles while it "drove", to being completely inattentive, etc. It is pretty well known at this point that those "middle levels" of self-driving technologies are things that shouldn't be implemented, because people either misunderstand them, or misuse them, leading to often fatal accidents.
    - Retric 8y ago
      When I mean early I am talking a system that stops working every 60 seconds or so. The constant failure instilled a fair amount of paranoia, and did not give enough time to cause boredom. Google’s cars are in that middle ground, but Google has also not released their system. Presumably they are going to wait until it’s as safe as the average driver before releasing it.
- thorrr 8y ago
  I've been wondering: why don't the self-driving car companies build a system that requires a person to drive it but assures the human can't crash the car? In other words, if the self-driving models predict that the human inputs will result in a crash it forcefully overrides the throttle, brakes, or steering wheel. The sensation would be like driving one of those tracked cars at an amusement park. Try and slam the wheel hard to the right to steer into a guard rail? Computer would physically block it from turning past the point that you would leave your own lane. This system would: * force human drivers to drive the car 100% of the time * allow real world testing and enhancement of self driving capabilities (data gathering, model backtesting, etc.) * be strictly better than both fully automated and existing non-automated systems We have the beginnings of this with the new auto-stop capabilities that are showing up in new cars. Why not build this hybrid system as a stopgap until full level 5 automation is working?
  - marshray 8y ago
    > requires a person to drive it but assures the human can't crash the car? Because the 'not crashing' part is the hard part, the rest is just navigation.
  - dTal 8y ago
    Because now you have the worst of both worlds. The computer still has the final say in what the car does, but now you have a fallible human in the loop at all times as well. If the computer really can predict crashes better than the human, then have the computer drive the car. If it can't, then letting it override the human isn't a good idea. Example: you slam the wheel to the right to steer into a guard rail. The computer overrides you and you remain in your lane. You flatten the toddler you were trying to avoid, that the computer didn't see.
ulldoitforever 8y ago
Uber knows the routes ahead of time. They can decide if the route and time of day is safe enough for the limited self driving technology they employ or send a human driver if their SDCs can't handle it.
StreamBright 8y ago
Unfortunately too many people subscribe the idea of startups bringing disruptive changes into car transportation because other startups could do the same with entirely different problems. Just because Elon Musk created Paypal it does not mean that he will be able to jump the hoops to get self driving cars on the roads by end of this year. Many people who are intimately familiar with self driving car technologies predict that we need at least 10 years and several innovations before we can seriously consider this as an option.
- DennisP 8y ago
  Of course you're correct that they might not pull it off, but it's not like people are basing any confidence on Musk's Paypal background. Tesla already brought disruptive change to car transportation by making electric cars popular. And Musk brought a third big change by commercializing reusable rockets.
throwaay4343 8y ago
I wonder what the model of survival is for Uber's regional competition like Didi and Ola. I can't speak for China, but driving in India is way way difficult than in the US.

mcorning 8y ago

It is seeming more likely by the year that Tesla is one of the biggest over estimators when it come self-driving cars. Musk has repeatedly promised "autonomous vehicles", and even promised to have a fully autonomous vehicle by the end of this year. He is notorious for his rather bold and exciting predictions, but fewer and fewer seem to come to fruition with each passing year. It seems especially unlikely considering Tesla doesn't even test any autonomous vehicles on public roads, unlike many other companies in the space: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/96c89ec9-aca6-4910-802b-c596f2625a7f/TeslaMotors.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CVID= https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/96c89ec9-aca6-4910... It's disappointing to hear that Ford overestimated, however, it's reassuring that they publicly recognize the challenges and also put safety above being first out the door.

Shivetya 8y ago
disclaimer, own a TM3 with full autopilot and purchased full self driving. I have never believed they will deliver much more than level 3. I did buy the FSD package recently when it was discounted mostly for resale value; it was 2k; and not faith in the technology. Too many companies want to label it a safety feature yet for the most part it doesn't operate like most safety features. almost all demos we see are fair weather events on simple roads or in some cases systems which can operate on specific roads. so I think they focus too much of the navigation part. I am more interested in full self driving technology if it leads to more passive safety features like the forward emergency braking. as in an always on system which watches "over your back". that to me is the real value of all this research. (personal usage stuff is below) now don't get me wrong, Tesla's system is amazing for what it does do. It certainly isn't full self driving but it offers many of the features people could use to augment their driving. I used it for the majority of a six hundred mile drive both directions. It was useful in rush hour traffic, the stop and go variety, as well as the long haul. two reasons I found it valuable. first being on long drives I engage it but still maintain the presence of mind to take over when I need to. In this mode I am using it to handle situations when I am distracted. The old issue of looking in your rear view mirror and seeing a bridge you went under but don't remember. I also used it on a typical mid Western two lane road at night in the pouring rain. It helped alleviate fears caused by the constant issue of people with poorly aimed lights or not dimming high beams. The car never lost track of the lanes whereas a few times I was having to hard focus on the white line to avoid being blinded by one of those hibeam drivers.

davnicwil 8y ago

> If you are going to geofence self-driving cars it's questionable whether they are better than trains and buses They run on demand 24/7, they run point to point, you never have to stand, you don't have to share the space with people who behave antisocially, you have a range of choice of comfort options, there are unlimited competitors for the same route driving prices down and service standards up. So, quite a few game changers for me at least. If you live/work outside the geofence, this obviously doesn't apply, but if you do then you get the advantages 80% of the time, and for day to day purposes it absolutely is fundamentally better than trains and buses.

Al-Khwarizmi 8y ago
And they pollute much more and take more space.
- davnicwil 8y ago
  I'm first in line to agree with you, I think cars in cities are awful because of these two problems, and honestly I support all sensible efforts to reduce the number of (current generation) cars on city streets. I'm also a daily user of public transport in a major world city, however, and whilst buses and trains work they also have the fundamental problems highlighted above that are in my view insurmountable, and which (self driving) cars solve. So I'm in a dilemma over whether I think they'd be an improvement, but I ultimately believe they would be. But yes, absolutely pollution and space saving would have to be addressed. I'm optimistic they could be: Pollution: hopefully solvable with electric. Yes, of course, there are efficiency gains that trains/buses would perhaps always have (having to move many small things rather than one big thing carrying the same number of people) but I can see electric reducing the absolute level of pollution from cars to a point where it basically doesn't matter. Maybe overly optimistic, but I hope that'll happen. Space: Driverless cars, particularly electric driverless cars, can be much smaller and can drive much closer together. Different cities have different challenges, but I don't see why we couldn't get to a situation where roads might effectively have capacity for 2x vehicles across and 2-3x vehicles along if the vehicles can be coordinated to drive closer together and are physically smaller (remember that on-demand unlocks certain design constraints - you don't have to provision for peak - if the average number of passengers is 1.5, then most cars on the road could be ultra small 2 seaters). Again lots of conjecture and optimism here, and I am probably assuming that 'manual' cars would eventually disappear or be banned at least from cities too, but nonetheless I think there is hope here.

naasking 8y ago

> If the solution is flawed even a little bit, people will die. Of course they will, but as long as it's more convenient and the death rate is lower than human drivers, they will take off.

sorenjan 8y ago
Will regulators allow machines to kill people? Human drivers killing themselves and others are a part of human nature, but will politicians and the public accept that people get killed through no fault of their own by mistakes machines make?
- naasking 8y ago
  > Human drivers killing themselves and others are a part of human nature, but will politicians and the public accept that people get killed through no fault of their own by mistakes machines make? This has already happened with manufacturer defects. It's just more of the same. As long as a clear liability boundary can be established in principle, there's no problem.
  - jakeinspace 8y ago
    If autonomous driving can be delivered with accident-causing failure rates similar to those of general manufacturer defects (i.e., much lower odds than accidents caused by human error), then I think that would be sufficient. But if say we go from ~35k human-caused road deaths/year to ~10k autonomous-driving caused deaths/year, that may be seen as unacceptably high.
    - naasking 8y ago
      > But if say we go from ~35k human-caused road deaths/year to ~10k autonomous-driving caused deaths/year, that may be seen as unacceptably high. Sure, but there wouldn't be an outright ban. They'd instead establish higher standards that need to be met.
- rhacker 8y ago

magnamerc 8y ago

I think you're discounting exponential growth. We (humans) overestimate the short term, and underestimate the longterm.

tyree731 8y ago
On the contrary, humans are keen on extrapolating "linearly", ignoring that progress is discrete, and that the next discrete step isn't on any guaranteed timeline. See: humanity's idea of the next twenty years of space exploration in 1970.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- misthop 8y ago
  Humanity's ideas of space travel 1970-1990 were right on, assuming US government investment had remained the same (4.4% in 1966, <= 1.01% since 1975) https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/feb/01/nasa-budgets-us-spending-space-travel https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/feb/01/nasa-b...
rayiner 8y ago
Technological growth is an S curve. Exponential at first but hitting a point of diminishing returns after. The 747 is roughly equidistant from the Wright Flyer and the 787. Aviation hit the wall before we got, for example, routine supersonic flights. In computers, the 1.5 GHz Pentium IV is roughly equidistant between the 8 MHz 286 and the i9-9900k (which clocks up to 5 GHz, but that’s not even a fair comparison because the 286 dissipated under 15 watts, the Pentium 4 was a 60W chip, and the i9 is nominally a 95W chip but in reality can dissipate much more than that during boost.)

omarforgotpwd 8y ago

Agreed. Advanced driver assistance is where the market opportunity is for a considerable time. From there it can evolve closer to full self driving. However full self driving will never be “done”

jbverschoor 8y ago
So we want a car that we don't want to drive. It's calld a taxi.

metaphyze 8y ago

Both GM and Ford have been hiring a lot of software engineers in Detroit in the past few years. The problem is that they need NASA-style software engineers (crazy-anal nit-picky consider-every-possibility style engineers)--not engineers from the regular software industry. If your car crashes, you can't just reboot it.

PorterDuff 8y ago
It seems to me that there's less of that than there used to be. In days of yore, I shipped quite a few ROM-based products. Bugs were frowned upon.
vonmoltke 8y ago
That, and they pay shit relative to the regular software industry.

PorterDuff 8y ago

It seems to me that self-driving cars can't be just as safe as the status quo, but have to be far far better. It's an unreasonable need, but human nature. I'll bet that to really make it work well, you also need to redesign roads to suit the new cars. In any case, I'll believe it when I see widespread/universal adoption of self-driving in constrained environments (mining vehicles, warehouses, storage yards). Step two will be things like garbage trucks (slow, expensive, otherwise automated, phone home when it gets in trouble).

xeromal 8y ago
Humans have a tolerance for human-style accidents, but not robotic-style accidents. A dipshit that pulls in front of you to t-bone is a human-style accident that is acceptable. A tesla that sees a river and thinks it's a road is a robotic-style accident. It's going to take centuries for us to become acclimated to how machines mess things up.
- romwell 8y ago
  Is it unreasonable? One can learn to drive defensively, and be able to spot the said dipshit in advance, decreasing the likelihood of collision. Yes, not in all cases, but there's a bell curve. As humans, we can read other humans. Robots aren't inherently bad either. I love my Roomba precisely because if it fails, it fails predictably. I can and do make my apartment Roomba-friendly. But the self-driving deep learning-driven cars don't have this feature. They fail unpredictabily, as in your example. We don't have an understanding of what really drives the decision-making there. And we keep discovering failure modes as they manifest. One day, the car might think the river is a road. Another, it will not recognize a road block as such. But only if it's a Tuesday. Or something. We really don't know. So I don't think we'll get acclimated to that. Unpredictable failure is a reasonable thing to be afraid of.
  - cblades 8y ago
    I'd argue it is unreasonable given that (afaik) no one is marketing a self-driving car that doesn't also require a driver be attentive at all times. You can learn to drive a self-driving car defensively, in the same way you learn to drive a normal car defensively. Pay attention to your surroundings, blind spots, and other cars. Maybe self-driving is a poor term to use.

segmondy 8y ago

People will die with self-driving cars. The only thing that matters is how many people are dying because of self-driving cars vs dying without. That's it. The moment it's an order of magnitude less, then self driving car will become default.

deanclatworthy 8y ago
That is not the only thing that matters. There is some interesting psychology at play here. One thing I see rarely discussed is the fact you are getting killed by a programming error, not a human. Of course, the humans made the said programming error, but they have no face, there is nobody (individual) to blame, no-one to apologise, no-one to mourn for their actions. At least if someone is hit by another driver, they will be prosecuted in the case of negligence, or if it's due to a mistake, be able to apologise. It's human. It's different.
- ncallaway 8y ago
  I don't know. People still fly despite the occasional mechanical error, programming error, or other non-individual error leading to fatalities. I think if it is an order of magnitude safer that would override many of those emotional concerns. Insurance companies are decent at thinking rationally about problems. People might have emotional concerns, but I think a halved auto insurance bill would be enough to sway a critical majority of people.
  - MBCook 8y ago
    But when you fly there is still a human face ‘in control’ (even if not to a sufficient degree) you can blame: the pilot.
    - ncallaway 8y ago
      That's a good point. Pilots are still an important psychological factor that makes it easier for people to fly.
- 8y ago

bluGill 8y ago

People die today. Self driving cars just need to improve on that but a significant amount. I predict that despite not being perfect (which might not even be a reachable bar) they will become mandatory for all cars in the near future because they are that much better than humans.

mhermher 8y ago
Who's going to be liable for those deaths? The manufacturer? I don't think they'll be so hot on that. So really, they need to be orders of magnitude safer than humans, to the point that they are close to flawless.
- jrockway 8y ago
  I don't think that is the blocker. You can pass a law that says "manufacturers that meet XYZ self-driving certification are exempt from liability". The question of liability is always tough to resolve. Is Boeing responsible for the 737 MAX deaths because they wrote the faulty software? Is the airline responsible for poor training or buying the version without the "disagree" light? Or is the FAA liable for their poor oversight of the whole program? Arguments can be made for all three.
  - jbverschoor 8y ago
    Selfdriving.. oh wait, this is in the air, where there's no traffic and all these different situations. And wait, it was not even an autopilot. Even this was too hard to implement. Lane-assist on the highway? Sure.. autopilot? Not any time soon. Probably not within 20 years
- peteradio 8y ago
  Exactly, this is also a legal one. I'm curious what happens when we get human driven cars crashing into auto piloted. Are we going to have an assumption of guilt on the human or the auto or will it actually be balanced.
mfoy_ 8y ago

Eridrus 8y ago

Trains involve massive capital outlays and 60% of bus operating costs are for the driver, resulting in buses that are larger than necessary and therefore increasing the non-driver costs. If we had self-driving vans we could provide better and cheaper transit to everyone.

tntn 8y ago
> Trains involve massive capital outlays And self-driving cars don't? How many trains could be built with the billions invested so far in self-driving cars?
- valine 8y ago
  That's a one time cost. If we get the technology working building more self driving cars will be much cheaper than building new trains.
  - opportune 8y ago
    Self driving cars are simply a backwards-compatible transit solution. We have already invested so much money in car-based transportation to the detriment of trains. But, we will still need to continue paying billions and billions to repair and build new roads.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Eridrus 8y ago
  It costs NYC about 2.6 billion to construct a mile of subway. In light of that, the money invested in self-driving cars is pretty small.
  - tntn 8y ago
    either that or NYC is just really inefficient in terms of cost. Keep in mind you've cited probably the first or second most expensive mile of any subway ever built, and subways usually cost much more than other trains. China regularly builds high speed rail for $30M per mile. Europe is usually closer to $50-60M. Tokyo has built subways for $400M per mile. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

otikik 8y ago

> If the solution is flawed even a little bit, people will die. That will give self-driving cars a bad reputation and people will be unwilling to ride in them. Some people have died while using elevators, but I don't see the rest of us not using because of that.

cr0sh 8y ago
> Some people have died while using elevators For some reason I forgot about this in an earlier comment I made about people wanting someone to blame. But here we have what could be argued as a "simplest version of self-driving vehicle, with no human operator at the controls, and no one to immediately blame when somebody is hurt or killed by the system"... So the question is - has there been a study done on how people respond to such incidents, when they have no one to blame? At least, in the moment? They can't "yell at the elevator". Eventually, they may yell at the owner of the property or the manufacturer of the elevator, or whatever company last did maintenance (ie - yell -> lawsuit). But does that stop them from using elevators ever again (I imagine that a percentage do become fearful; I know I read something of that nature regarding people who've been "trapped" for a long period of time in an elevator, especially those who are alone when it happens)? Also - why do others continue to use elevators, and not take the stairs (this is more a rhetorical question - stairs are not an option in a skyscraper over more than a few stories for most people)? I'm just interested in why a self-driving car is so different to people, beyond the relative "novelty" of it? Will we completely reject it, because it can't be made 100% perfect? Or will we get used to them in time, even though statistically someone somewhere will die occasionally from an accident in one? I'm not looking for answers here; it's just something that I ponder when these kinds of discussions come up, as I've had a bit of minor experience in learning about (and how to create) these kinds of systems.
- otikik 8y ago
  The parallelisms don't end there: elevators used to be much more complicated that they are now. Instead of having one button per floor they had motor controls. They literally had to be "driven" by human operators. I don't remember if any studies were cited, but the "elevators vs self-driving cars" was studied in the Planet Money podcast: https://www.npr.org/2015/07/31/427990392/remembering-when-driverless-elevators-drew-skepticism https://www.npr.org/2015/07/31/427990392/remembering-when-dr...

fullshark 8y ago

Self driving trucks on highways driving from hub to hub with manual drivers for the first/last miles seems doable today. That’s most of the way to a working solution and still a major potential cost/labor/crash savings.

thrownblown 8y ago

I recently used a rental that had GMs "adaptive cruise" and it was mostly awesome even in dense traffic. There were two main issues that had to do with following distance. 1: I had it set to 80mph and the other cars in the hov lanes on I-80 were going 75-80 and I was impressed how the car maintained a relatively safe following distance. This seems to irritate the other drivers and I would have tailgaters and eventually people would pass me on the right to occupy the space in front of me causing the car to slow down to get back to a safe following distance, causing the tailgaters to receive an autonomous brake check. 2: In slower traffic around 30mph (still set to 80) that same safe following distance allowed other drivers to cut me off, and several times the brakes engaged hard when the collision detector was activated. The first time that happened I was not prepared and I barely got my foot to the brake pedal in time. I decided after the second time that happened to turn it off as the time it took initialize my foot press the brake was too long, that when I was actively pressing the gas/brakes I could react much quicker to traffic.

ben_jones 8y ago
I wonder if we can't take all these advanced sensors for self-driving and use them to help LEO fairly detect unsafe driving in order to increase mean driver safety. Ironically the parent was probably technically going over the speed limit, though everyone goes over the speed limit there. Whoever builds automated traffic violation software would need to be very fairhanded in order to not upset the status quo.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  There is an Israeli startup that does this (using machine vision and freely issued iPhones to rideshare drivers; the name escapes me at the moment, I apologize) to provide data to insurance companies for better pricing of auto insurance rates. I'm not sure I want to live in a future where my Tesla is a mobile sensor platform for someone else's benefit besides myself and Tesla, although I can see the allure of negating the need for LEO patrols on road infrastructure once a critical mass of sensor platform vehicles is reached in an area. This would require a herculean amount of governance and transparency to be okay with me, and I would expect more sanity in road legislation (higher reasonable top speeds, for example) as well.

dreamcompiler 8y ago

Exactly. It's relatively easy to build a self-driving car that works well on good, well-marked highways in good weather in the daytime when every other driver on that road is acting responsibly. But that's just the base case, and the edge cases are wickedly hard.

ar_lan 8y ago

IIRC, it was Elon Musk that said something along the lines of it's not too difficult to get self-driving cars to 99.9% safety - but that's still 1 accident in every 1000, which is terrible all around. You need to shoot for many, many 9's before it can be considered a practical alternative.

afterburner 8y ago

> If you are going to geofence self-driving cars it is questionable whether they are better than trains and buses. If they could manage to geo fence them to highways and get full functionality there it would be a big win for commuters and road trippers. However the companies can't then make billions off of automated city taxi services.

crikli 8y ago

> If the solution is flawed even a little bit, people will die. That will give self-driving cars a bad reputation and people will be unwilling to ride in them. There is lots of debate on every autonomous car story, including this one, about "is as good as humans good enough", but that's a technical threshold. The real blocker (from my view) currently is and will be liability for "negligence." If I'm driving and fiddling with the radio and as a result blow a light and kill someone, at most you can turn out my shallow pockets in civil court. The automaker has no liability. But if the _car_ is driving and blows a light and kills someone, then the automaker can and will be sued because they've got deep pockets. I can see the ads now running during the Price is Right. "Hit by a runaway robot car? Jon from Orlando was awarded $3.2 million! Call Richard Cranium Attorney at Law and get yours!"

Fricken 8y ago

It was very exciting when autonomous vehicles from a handful of companies first began demonstrating the ability to go a few miles in complex traffic and pull off a few fancy maneuvers along the way. I got really excited when I saw that, and for the engineers building these systems, it did go to their heads, and timelines to scaled deployment went from being 20 years away to being 5 years away in the span of 18 months. When deep learning and simulation were first applied huge gains were made, and the limits of these tools were not fully understood. Now that these tools are better understood, we are back to old fashioned robotics development timelines. You gotta build features, and test them, over and over, down to a very granular level. Every time you roll out into a new geography, there is a new mountain of problems to be solved. To drive the error rate down another order of magnitude, the workload goes up exponentially relative to what was needed to achieve the previous order of magnitude. It's like inverse Moore's law. Boston Dynamics had bipedal robots balancing dynamically and walking around in the early 1980s. 35 years later, now that we have a billion times more compute to throw at the problem, well, BD's robots are still mostly just walking around, and far from being good enough to walk around in the real world. That's the real rate of progress in robotics. The prospect of autonomous vehicles has drawn billions of dollars of investment towards solving these fundamental robotics problems, and certainly that has accelerated things, but how long does the money need to keep coming in for before it starts paying out? That's anybody's guess.

throwaay4343 8y ago
BDs controllers were/are all hand-tuned using good old convex optimization. Good luck getting fancy 'Deep-RL' to work on these without multiple man years tweaking every little knob in the cost function and the algorithm.

saalweachter 8y ago

The sobering thought is if you work in machine learning, big data, or talk to someone who does. What do you consider a good accuracy rate for your machine learned / hand-engineered heuristic? 95%? 99%? 90%? We've built some real marvels of machine learning, but you can get away with the occasional not-very-rare horrible failures in speech recognition, photo labeling, or machine translation, and it just results in some giggles on Reddit.

mustacheemperor 8y ago

I think self driving research has already benefited cars substantially via driver assistance, like you say. Recently I was in a base model Toyota rental (camry or corrolla I think) and was surprised when it automatically warned me that someone was cutting me off in traffic, before I even noticed them move a few car lengths ahead. Then I noticed there was automatic radar cruise control built in, which made the rest of the drive much nicer. I hadn't even looked too closely before since I assumed that tech wasn't pervasive enough yet to trickle down to a basic rental car. I think that the technology is probably already saving lives - Volvo is trying for zero fatalities right now, and I think driver assistance will reduce the lethality of cars substantially before we're able to adopt self driving vehicles, which would likewise make it less of a disaster if we aren't able to adopt self driving vehicles in the short timelines originally predicted.

sagarm 8y ago

I used to think this too -- but Tesla has killed half-a-dozen or so of their customers with no apparent brand repercussions, let alone an impact on the broader AV space!