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The camera is bird's eye on the google presentation. And it is a recording. So jitter/flicker can be cleaned up/smoothed out and the data can be massaged in wa

The camera is bird's eye on the google presentation. And it is a recording. So jitter/flicker can be cleaned up/smoothed out and the data can be massaged in ways that a real time system may not be able to do. This is a presentation. I'd be /very/ surprised if this animation was from RAW data as-is. Also there seems to be Lidar data (point clouds) which Tesla doesn't have. So while this means bounding boxes may have less detail in Tesla's system this is not an issue as long as they are not smaller than the physical object. Having worked in the automotive space in the last five years and seen lots of those I'd not say one is less impressive than the other.

m463 7y ago
It diminishes the comparison when just the lidar for a waymo car costs more than the entire tesla vehicle. So, not only can you afford a tesla vehicle, you can go out and buy one today.
- keenmaster 7y ago
  LIDAR will get cheaper and smaller though. I think Tesla’s argument that cameras+ML+tons of data>LIDAR is more compelling.
  - mcot2 7y ago
    It will still be power hungry and mess up aerodynamics even if it is smaller. Tesla is looking at the entire picture of autonomous + EV which IMO is a better strategy.
  - hokkos 7y ago
    The real question is cameras + ML + tons of data vs LIDAR + cameras + ML + tons of data
- iamaelephant 7y ago
  Can you go out and buy a fully self driving Tesla today? Because that would be the relevant comparison.
  - pbreit 7y ago
    Can you buy any sort of waymo at all?
- mda 7y ago
  According to [1] Waymo produces its own lidars. In 2017 it costed $7500 without being mass produced. Edit: wording. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/8/14206084/google-waymo-self-driving-chrysler-pacifica-minivan-detroit-2017 https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/8/14206084/google-waymo-self...
  - nxpnsv 7y ago
    I guess I CAN afford a Tesla...
    - mda 7y ago
      I was just answering to the claim "when just the lidar for a waymo car costs more than the entire tesla vehicle". Which is clearly wrong. The tesla you can afford still does not have self driving capabilities either btw.
      - nxpnsv 7y ago
        I made this joke as I found disparity between the message its reply humorous. If you disagree, feel free to ignore my comment. That aside, it is quite cool how Waymo cut costs by 90%: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo-invests-in-lidar-technology-cuts-costs-by-90-percent/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo-invests-i... (perhaps there are newer developments of which I am not aware). The old numbers indeed exceed the price of most teslas...
        mda 7y ago
        I see, I missed the joke I think, reading again, it was quite obvious, sorry about that.
  - m463 7y ago
    All the Waymo vans I've seen have had multiple lidar sensors, I think 4?
gogoincar 7y ago
Those scenarios from Google were obviously selected for the presentation, but very much represent state of the art in _real time_ processing for autonomous driving systems from the time of the presentation. I’m not sure what is implied with saying it’s a recording - both the Google and Tesla presentations are “recordings” and equal opportunity to pick best case examples, but I would bet strongly there is nothing not RAW = “real time“ for their respective compute platforms. The top down viewpoint helps show off the quality (still by no means perfect) of the world representation. If you projected Tesla’s model into 3D you would see far more jitter than in the video overlay for a variety of reasons. That said, I think comparing them directly on specific technical components is a bit of a sidebar. They are taking two very different paths along the way to a still ambiguous problem. Both are leading their respective approaches, but have fundamentally different and unproven assumptions. Also worth looking not just at how accurately objects are detected but what the visualizations show about the intent of other road users. The Google video shows predicted trajectories for important objects in a number of scenes. We don’t get to see any of that clearly from Tesla, and that is by no means a small part of the problem. Not sure if it is there and not shown, just highlighting there is a lot more downstream even once you are finding objects reliably in the sensors.
Lewton 7y ago
> The camera is bird's eye on the google presentation The car is aware where it is in the world, so a birds eye view is more representative of what the waymo car actually sees, it’s just one of the many ways the waymo car has better data to work with

m463 7y ago

It diminishes the comparison when just the lidar for a waymo car costs more than the entire tesla vehicle. So, not only can you afford a tesla vehicle, you can go out and buy one today.

keenmaster 7y ago
LIDAR will get cheaper and smaller though. I think Tesla’s argument that cameras+ML+tons of data>LIDAR is more compelling.
- mcot2 7y ago
  It will still be power hungry and mess up aerodynamics even if it is smaller. Tesla is looking at the entire picture of autonomous + EV which IMO is a better strategy.
- hokkos 7y ago
  The real question is cameras + ML + tons of data vs LIDAR + cameras + ML + tons of data
iamaelephant 7y ago
Can you go out and buy a fully self driving Tesla today? Because that would be the relevant comparison.
- pbreit 7y ago
  Can you buy any sort of waymo at all?
mda 7y ago
According to [1] Waymo produces its own lidars. In 2017 it costed $7500 without being mass produced. Edit: wording. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/8/14206084/google-waymo-self-driving-chrysler-pacifica-minivan-detroit-2017 https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/8/14206084/google-waymo-self...
- nxpnsv 7y ago
  I guess I CAN afford a Tesla...
  - mda 7y ago
    I was just answering to the claim "when just the lidar for a waymo car costs more than the entire tesla vehicle". Which is clearly wrong. The tesla you can afford still does not have self driving capabilities either btw.
    - nxpnsv 7y ago
      I made this joke as I found disparity between the message its reply humorous. If you disagree, feel free to ignore my comment. That aside, it is quite cool how Waymo cut costs by 90%: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo-invests-in-lidar-technology-cuts-costs-by-90-percent/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo-invests-i... (perhaps there are newer developments of which I am not aware). The old numbers indeed exceed the price of most teslas...
      - mda 7y ago
        I see, I missed the joke I think, reading again, it was quite obvious, sorry about that.
- m463 7y ago
  All the Waymo vans I've seen have had multiple lidar sensors, I think 4?

gogoincar 7y ago

Those scenarios from Google were obviously selected for the presentation, but very much represent state of the art in _real time_ processing for autonomous driving systems from the time of the presentation. I’m not sure what is implied with saying it’s a recording - both the Google and Tesla presentations are “recordings” and equal opportunity to pick best case examples, but I would bet strongly there is nothing not RAW = “real time“ for their respective compute platforms. The top down viewpoint helps show off the quality (still by no means perfect) of the world representation. If you projected Tesla’s model into 3D you would see far more jitter than in the video overlay for a variety of reasons. That said, I think comparing them directly on specific technical components is a bit of a sidebar. They are taking two very different paths along the way to a still ambiguous problem. Both are leading their respective approaches, but have fundamentally different and unproven assumptions. Also worth looking not just at how accurately objects are detected but what the visualizations show about the intent of other road users. The Google video shows predicted trajectories for important objects in a number of scenes. We don’t get to see any of that clearly from Tesla, and that is by no means a small part of the problem. Not sure if it is there and not shown, just highlighting there is a lot more downstream even once you are finding objects reliably in the sensors.

Lewton 7y ago

> The camera is bird's eye on the google presentation The car is aware where it is in the world, so a birds eye view is more representative of what the waymo car actually sees, it’s just one of the many ways the waymo car has better data to work with