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Hailing a Driverless Ride in a Waymo
- BIair 7y agoI used to think my daughter may never drive, because autonomous vehicles were rumored to always be just around the corner. Now I think she may never ride in an autonomous vehicle. Do autonomous vehicles drive in the rain? We live in a northern state where snow remains on the ground for months at a time in ever shifting depths and banks along roads. Lidar is unable to see through the snow. Road surfaces are sometimes wet, sometimes snow covered, sometimes ice. Visibility can drop to zero. I wonder if tech companies will spend the time and expense to solve these difficult problems for a rather small percentage of the population.
- nexuist 7y agoBaby steps. Once the majority of human drivers get off the road we will almost certainly see an evolution in traffic control systems which will allow self driving vehicles to conquer poor weather conditions. As of now, each vehicle can only rely on its own sensor package to understand the world. Tesla already has a system in place that lets one car learn from thousands of others; ie if everyone disconnects autopilot at a certain turn each car will learn to slow down even if they have never encountered that turn before. The future will have more of this. Self driving has mostly been a solved problem, it just only works in ports, warehouses, docks, and factory floors. You might say those are tightly regulated spaces, but so are roads! All it takes is political will to scale up the same systems that guide robots today and install them onto every highway and main road.
- KineticLensman 7y ago> All it takes is political will to scale up the same systems that guide robots today and install them onto every highway and main road Well, that and a massive amount of infrastructure spend.
- mopsi 7y agoMany places in the world already have reflectors installed into all major and many minor roads. Seems like a reliable and very cheap way of detecting lane geometry. https://www.worldhighways.com/_resources/assets/inline/custom/73/40218.jpg https://www.worldhighways.com/_resources/assets/inline/custo... Snow isn't a problem either, because reflectors can be (and often are) mounted onto plastic poles. https://c7.alamy.com/comp/EC79CD/reflector-signal-white-post-roadside-in-lonely-road-of-spain-europe-EC79CD.jpg https://c7.alamy.com/comp/EC79CD/reflector-signal-white-post...
- steelframe 7y ago>> All it takes is political will to scale up the same systems that guide robots today and install them onto every highway and main road > Well, that and a massive amount of infrastructure spend. And before we put anything close to that kind of money toward autonomous cars, I demand the spending go toward urban micromobility infrastructure first.
- rayiner 7y ago> Baby steps. Once the majority of human drivers get off the road we will almost certainly see an evolution in traffic control systems which will allow self driving vehicles to conquer poor weather conditions That puts the cart before the horse. The cars need to be able to handle weather before “the majority of human drivers get off the road.” In most of the US, not being able to drive in bad weather will make self driving cars a complete non-starter.
- ambicapter 7y ago> In most of the US, not being able to drive in bad weather will make self driving cars a complete non-starter. This strikes me as complete hyperbole. "Most of the US" population wise is in cities, which have weather management (snow plows, bright lights), and plenty of people will buy a car that "self-drives" 80% of the time-most people's driving miles are boring highway commutes, not off-roading.
- rayiner 7y agoMost of the US population lives in the suburbs, not cities: http://www.newgeography.com/files/cox-uza-3.png http://www.newgeography.com/files/cox-uza-3.png. It can take days for local suburban roads to be cleared after a snow storm. Rain is also a significant impediment to self driving. “Most people” (the criterion specified by OP, above) will not buy a car they cannot drive during a snow storm or rain storm. Peoples’ driving might mostly be boring highway miles, but for example here in the southeast you still need to get to work during the regular summer downpours where you can’t see the lines on the road.
- MAGZine 7y agoI have every confidence that once self-driving cars have done a pretty good job of mastering city/fair-weather driving conditions, that ML will be able to handle poor weather just as good or better than humans. For example, humans are susceptible to panic when they start to lose control of the vehicle and do unproductive things like lock up the brakes. Even experienced drivers do this. Self-driving autos won't. But yes, in the short term, self-driving is a non-starter for many regions during winter months or inclement weather.
- rm_-rf_slash 7y agoSplitting hairs a bit: the qualifications and regulations for driving in ports, warehouses, docks, and factory floors are far more stringent than public roadways, and the conditions on roads are far less predictable and controllable. Wouldn’t want to end up like Klaus: https://youtu.be/-oB6DN5dYWo https://youtu.be/-oB6DN5dYWo
- steelframe 7y ago> if everyone disconnects autopilot at a certain turn each car will learn to slow down even if they have never encountered that turn before. That can't be the bar. Full self-driving technology must be able to handle any situation as well as the bottom ~1% of human drivers the first time any vehicle on the road encounters it.
- fouc 7y ago> Once the majority of human drivers get off the road This leads to a dystopian future. When the majority have given away their driving freedoms to machines controlled by corporations, the outcomes are not good.
- gdy 7y agoSounds like almost any place in Russia. Yandex is working on its own self-driving car.
- jfoster 7y agoYep. Here's a video of Yandex driving after a snowfall. https://youtu.be/Bx08yRsR9ow https://youtu.be/Bx08yRsR9ow
- icebraining 7y agoAfter snowfall, but also after a cleanup by snowplows. What about when there's a thin layer of white snow everywhere?
- jfoster 7y agoWhat's your actual point, though? Is it that they won't try to solve the case where there's some snow on the road, or is it that this case is somehow not possible?
- icebraining 7y agoMy actual point is that Yandex hasn't yet shown an attempt to solve that case (unless there are other videos), and therefore we can't gauge if they are even ready to attempt it.
- jfoster 7y agoSuppose they haven't started working on it yet. What's to prevent them from starting next year and having a solution ready in a few years?
- icebraining 7y agoThe same that might prevent any team. If I knew what it was, I'd be more wealthy than I am.
- ta999999171 7y agoSnow density with radar is being worked on.
- xeromal 7y agoHonestly, tech companies should spend their time building cars for the city. That's where most of the people are and that's where the congestion reduction will benefit the most number of people. Rural areas should be the last to update
- jacquesm 7y agoNo, tech companies should do their best to get rid of cars in the city. Cities should be built for people, not vehicles.
- icebraining 7y agoYou can never get rid of wagons in the city; the goal must be to reduce their use, and for that I think you must convince people that they don't need to own one, because if they do, they're more likely to use it, since the fixed costs are large compared to the marginal (per ride). And to convince them of that, you'll have to make them trust they'll have an available, affordable and comfortable alternative for those situations were they really need one.
- dilyevsky 7y agoCruise does just that (in SF).
- baking 7y agoSeems the opposite to me. Congestion and pedestrians present the greatest challenges for driverless cars. Also, they will only increase congestion both by increasing the number of cars on the streets and by being overly cautious.
- drngdds 7y agoThat seems backwards. Dense cities are where mass transit is a viable alternative to cars. It would make more sense to focus on that in cities and focus on self-driving cars where individual cars are unfortunately a requirement, like the suburbs. (Ideally we would Upzone All The Things and the vast majority of Americans would live in places dense enough for cars to be unnecessary, but making NIMBYs stop NIMBYing is harder than just making better tech.)
- maxerickson 7y agoComputers already manage traction on most new cars, a relatively simple feedback loop is better at it than most humans.
- cryptozeus 7y agoCheck tesla auto driver mode in rain. They handle it very well so I am sure waymo will as well. These are classic problems and you can trust those curious engineers to at least think about these issues before they even started coming up with the driverless car program. Vision technology has improved 10 fold in last decade.
- esotericn 7y agoI own an MS and it has no idea what snow is. Once the road markings disappear, you're done. If there's a car track, then it'll think that the cut-out created by warm cars or a plough form the edges of the road. But if there's just snow, it has no idea. It'll easily mistake parts of the roads where snow has been crossed by tires as being dashed road markings as well. The highway by me - well, you can stick autopilot on if you want. You'd better watch closely though, because unexpected snow patterns on the road surface will have you close to a median barrier quite quickly. Generally if the road is fully snow covered AP is disabled. If the sensors are covered, which they will be if you've left your car outside in -10c or so, then basically everything is disabled. Works great as a car though!
- icebraining 7y agoMS?
- javagram 7y agoModel S (MS) presumably
- icebraining 7y agoThanks!
- esotericn 7y agoSorry, yeah, Model S as the other poster stated.
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- ma2rten 7y agoThey had to start somewhere. Waymo is doing testing in Florida right now for the rainy season. They have also done testing in snow.
- chrisseaton 7y ago> Lidar is unable to see through the snow. Road surfaces are sometimes wet, sometimes snow covered, sometimes ice. Visibility can drop to zero. All these problems apply equally to people drivers and their eyes. Why can't automated systems at least match us?
- rm_-rf_slash 7y agoBecause people can learn on the fly, and these systems can’t. Sure, you can aggregate the data from a fleet of cars and use that to train a better model (or set of models for vision, driving, etc.) that updates the old one, but that process takes time and isn’t as immediate as a human reaction. Not saying it can’t ever happen, but rather that it’ll take a lot of time and effort before a self driving car can handle extreme weather, rather than the calm conditions of California (which, to be fair, took an awful lot of work to get functional there, too).
- icebraining 7y agoWaymo has been testing outside of California: they're in Washington since 2016 and in Michigan since 2017 (for Winter testing): https://twitter.com/waymo/status/846438598421336064?lang=en https://twitter.com/waymo/status/846438598421336064?lang=en
- throwawayhhakdl 7y agoHumans are good at filtering out bad information because the whole system is understood. I can’t see some of the road, because it’s snowing, and I can quickly stop paying attention to the non useful parts of my vision. It’s definitely a hard problem, but I don’t think it’s insurmountable
- smileysteve 7y ago> sometimes ice. I'm curious what the expectation is here, as what cars do on ice can't be described as driving, with the exception of spiked (not just studded) tires.
- fenwick67 7y agoSometimes ice is an impassible skating rink, but usually it's either in patches or only partial ice.
- TaylorAlexander 7y agoI believe the plan at the start is that bad weather will cause the vehicle to pull over and require a human driver. But that’s not really a big problem in large areas of California and Arizona where they’re starting off. And all the companies are researching bad weather driving and that feature will roll out later. Self driving cars will basically migrate north as the technology allows. But they’re already testing in snow and rain and working on that too. I don’t think they’d really deploy to northerly areas until the tech works as well as all the rest. With enough testing experience and engineering time, they ought to be able to solve it.
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- seanmcdirmid 7y agoCan people see very well through the snow? If visibility drops to zero (in human terms), then don’t people just stop driving anyways? Is “use the force” really a thing on the road? During a heavy snow the accident rate shoots up anyways. If waymo does a taxi service, it would make sense for them to stop service even if the car could drive just as well as a human, it just isn’t worth the risk.
- notatoad 7y ago>Lidar is unable to see through the snow humans are also unable to see through snow, but mostly still manage to drive their cars in the winter.
- valine 7y agoA geofenced robo taxi service does nothing to improve my life. The real usefulness of self driving cars will come when you can fall asleep in the back as it drives across the country. Also you can’t set up a mobile office in the back of a taxi, so productivity in robo taxis will be no better than regular taxis. For self driving to be truly useful to the end consumer car ownership needs to be an option.
- rwmj 7y agoThat may apply to you, but I only drive long distance once every few months. My life would be much improved by a driverless car/service which could go back and forth between my house and the train station. It's a distance of about 4 miles with three roads and two junctions. (We use driven taxis for this at the moment but they're expensive and limited by availability of drivers. Buses would also be good but it appears there isn't sufficient demand to run a regular service at a profit).
- baron816 7y agoI’d be happy with it if it could drive me from my apartment in Menlo Park to downtown Palo Alto.
- LeanderK 7y agoYeah, my life is a different situation and I would very much benefit from a geofenced rob-taxi service to supplement public transport and medium range trips. I don't own a car and don't plan to, bicycle and public transport is sufficient for where I life. I don't even have a driving licences, I plan to do it one day but it's not important currently. I would never take the autonomous car to drive across the countries, i think taking the train is just the superior experience. In a car you're crammed in this tiny space, whereas a train is a smooth ride with lots of space, internet and something to charge your laptop. I don't think setting up a mobile office in a vehicle is that important for most people.
- adrr 7y agoYour use case is very limited. Using cabs instead of driving to work at a similar price point would cover majority of the population. Most costly part of a cab is the driver's time. I can browse my phone during my commute which i can't even do with my Tesla and Autopilot.
- Zush8phoog 7y agoCould somebody estimate how much additional sensors cost over the stock car waymo uses? I see at least 4 LIDARs if I am not mistaken...
- dilyevsky 7y agoDon’t forget expensive compute rack in the back. The retrofit probably costs multiples of actual car itself.
- dpiers 7y agoWaymo designs and builds their own LIDAR units. As of almost 3 years ago, estimated costs per unit had fallen to $5,000. https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/06/waymo-to-start-selling-standalone-lidar-sensors/amp/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/06/waymo-to-start-selling-sta...
- jedberg 7y agoLast year I got a chance to ride in an autonomous vehicle by a Waymo competitor in San Francisco, in and around Market Street. It handled every situation as well as or better than a human would, including trash bags in the road, a truck driving the wrong way down a one way street, and numerous unpredictable pedestrians. It was that day that I was convinced that we would have driverless tech by 2020, and the only thing that would stop it would be laws and regulations.
- sfkdjf9j3j 7y agoSo, it's now November of 2019, and it seems unlikely that driverless cars will be ubiquitous or even an available option by 2020. If you could go back and change some laws and regulations, which ones would you have fixed to hit the 2020 prediction?
- jedberg 7y agoThis article make it sounds like I was right. The author just took a ride in a driverless car. Which is limited to driving in Arizona due to legal restrictions. But to answer your question, we’d need a whole different legal framework about liability for driverless cars instead of technological restrictions. Like for example, the law ~says~ would say “one person must be designated as legally liable for the vehicle” and that’s it. Drive your driverless car on any road you want. If it hits someone, the designated person is liable.
- rory096 7y agoCan you point me to that law? Do 'legal persons' qualify?
- jedberg 7y agoNo I’m saying that is the law I would write. It doesn’t exist.
- Noos 7y agoWhy would anyone buy a car where they can be held liable for the software defects of the manufacturer? The driver has no control over the software and cannot compensate for it. You're blaming them for putting the thing on the road at all, and the end result would be not to bother.
- greenyouse 7y agoIf using driverless cars for rideshare companies becomes more popular will they start designing cars for computer control only? Has that already been started? It seems like they would have no use for human steering controls and they seats could be moved around to open up more space for passengers.
- imtringued 7y agoConcept cars without steering wheels have been a thing for years already before we even had reliable self driving cars.
- Noos 7y agoThey shouldn't. What happens if the car runs our of gas or the software/internet is down and it needs to be manually steered even a slight distance? Say up onto the lift in a mechanic's garage? There are at least few situations where direct control is easier and safer than software control.
- icebraining 7y agoThis software doesn't need Internet. I agree there must be some way to control them manually, but it'll probably be something like a gamepad than a full steering wheel and pedals.
- IanCal 7y agoBeing designed to be movable short distances manually is wildly different from being designed to always be driven manually. > There are at least few situations where direct control is easier and safer than software control. Is there any direct control now? Acceleration, breaking and steering all have tech interaction. If you don't need completely direct control and just need manual control, being able to connect an Xbox controller to a car and drive it at max 3mph would probably deal with most issues (like the garage example).
- xivzgrev 7y agoMan I wish I could upvote this 1000 times. This is amazing. How many fucking edge cases there are in driving, and to be able to develop a reliable algorithm that can handle all sorts of situations it has never seen before. I’m also glad to see their rollout seems to be very measured. The standard is safety is so much higher.
- etaioinshrdlu 7y agoI got some thoughts on the lidar vs vision debate. Remember the goal is to drive better than humans. Lidar gives better-than-human depth sensing performance in many cases. Furthermore, human eyes are substantially better than small digital cameras at this point, in terms of low light sensitivity and resolution. It may be a problem that lidar is ugly right now. But that can change. I'm of the belief that more and better sensors is better.
- TaylorAlexander 7y agoI don’t think anyone debates that LIDAR plus cameras is “better” than cameras alone. The real question is whether it is possible without LIDAR. (AFAIK all self driving cars use cameras even when they also have LIDAR).
- mercenario 7y ago‘Anyone relying on lidar is doomed,’ Elon Musk. Around 1:41:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucp0TTmvqOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucp0TTmvqOE
- propercoil 7y agoI really can't understand how any logical person would think lidar is better here. You are driving with the sight of your eyes correct? then the AI would do the same but better.
- etaioinshrdlu 7y agoThe cameras are worse in terms of resolution and light sensitivity. They cannot blink or clean themselves. They are not equivalent!
- agent008t 7y agoIt's amazing how HN sentiment on driverless cars seems to change from week to week, from article to article.
- libpcap 7y agoLidar seems to be a necessary augmentation to complement cameras to be able to achieve this level of drive autonomy.
- jagged-chisel 7y agoOT: This title parses strangely. Why are you "in a Waymo" hailing a driverless ride? Ah, a Waymo is a driverless ride, and you have hailed one. I don't think I've ever seen someone say "Hailing a Ride in a Lyft" or "...in an Uber."
- ufmace 7y agoThis article touches a bit on what I think is one of the more interesting problems - exactly where to pick up and drop off. I gotta wonder what they're doing for that. I guess most suburban homes and apartments aren't too hard, but I wonder how they handle stuff like malls, stadiums, airports, festivals, etc.
- humbleMouse 7y agoI'll be impressed when they can make a car that can drive thru a foot of snow in minnesota.
- falcor84 7y agoGenerally speaking, getting an AI to learn anything that a human can learn is easy, the hard parts are the competencies we acquired through evolution [0]. As such, once self-driving cars fully reach the level of the average 17-year old new driver, it should be a relatively easy path to the level of the best drivers in the world. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox