7 ms·

This may seem like a stupid question, but why isn't there a company that just outsources driving to remote drivers? Imagine a car simulation in which someone i

by bko 7y ago

This may seem like a stupid question, but why isn't there a company that just outsources driving to remote drivers? Imagine a car simulation in which someone in a low cost country sees what the driver in the car would see, including the surroundings (side mirrors, behind them, etc). She can look around, same way as someone in the car and that person can drive. And her actions gets sent to the car half way across the world. Kind of like a Mechanical Turk for driving. Is this crazy?

bathtub365 7y ago
I would not get into a car driven by someone in a "low cost" country whose only incentive for not getting into an accident is getting fired.
- mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
  They might also care about not killing people, but fair enough I guess.
  - bathtub365 7y ago
    Not as much as if they were actually in the car.
  - kkotak 7y ago
    What about DRUI?
    - phlipski 7y ago
      This is an interesting case - probably the only time your lawyer would RECOMMEND blowing! :)
  - 2zcon 7y ago
    Having been in a taxi with a driver who bragged about staying up all night on stimulants, I disagree.
- jeremysalwen 7y ago
  No, they hire 3 drivers in "low cost" countries and the car controls respond to the majority vote, for built-in redundancy. If you buy the premium subscription it's 7 drivers instead.
dpq 7y ago
Welcome to https://phantom.auto https://phantom.auto
- nradov 7y ago
  They have a clever market strategy but those vehicles don't operate on public roads.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Fricken 7y ago
    They sure do, or at least have operated on public roads: https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/ces-2018-phantom-auto-demonstrates-first-remotecontrolled-car-on-public-roads https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/sel...
  - dpq 7y ago
    That's incorrect; Postmates, for one, uses Phantom Auto (https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/09/23/postmates-delivery-robots-have-a-phantom-babysitter/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/09/23/postmate...), and they definitely operate on public roads.
    - oldgradstudent 7y ago
      There's a bit of difference between a 100lb Postmates vehicle moving at 3mph and a 10-ton truck moving at 65mph. The former could annoy you, the latter could kill your entire extended family.
uoaei 7y ago
Latency.
richardw 7y ago
Bit scary due to latency and connection reliability. If the connection breaks you’re stuck, or worse. If it breaks when you’re on the highway at speed, or on a twisty road, or in a tunnel...
dastbe 7y ago
The primary issues here are the latency, throughput, and availability of information to this remote driver. * The remote driver is seeing things 10s-100s of milliseconds after they've happened * And somehow we're getting all of the data coming out of sensors on the car at high enough fidelity over the air * And we're not having connectivity blips that would result in loss of remote control for seconds
wpietri 7y ago
I think it's crazy for reasons other people state, especially latency and connection reliability issues. But I think a related idea can work pretty well. Self-driving cars are classified into 6 SAE levels, 0-5. 5 is full autonomy, 4 is autonomy in limited conditions, 3 is self driving but there has to be a driver ready to take over. Getting to 5 is really hard. It could take decades, because there are a zillion edge cases. But what if you could turn cars loose at the "can handle 95% of driving" level and then let it call a human to give guidance when the car is nervous or confused? Obviously, the phone-a-friend approach can't work for things requiring quick action. But if you bias the car to just stop safely and wait for orders, I think it's doable. E.g., the car comes upon an accident where the lanes in one direction are blocked. Humans know to go around the accident by slowly and carefully sharing the remainder of the road. So perhaps the car stops before the obstruction and asks for help. A human looks at it and draws in the path it should follow to get back to normal road. So I think remote "robot coaches" could plug the gap between levels 4 and 5. And maybe some of the level 3 gap, too. And from what I hear of the Waymo operation in Arizona, I suspect Google's doing something akin to this.
- anaanymouse 7y ago
  https://www.wired.com/story/phantom-teleops/ https://www.wired.com/story/phantom-teleops/
- Tyrek 7y ago
  The easy solution to this idea is to have the guy inside the car (you know, the passenger) pick up in this case. He's right there - no latency problems. The difficulty is in correctly identifying an unresolved edge case with enough margin to brake safely and draw the attention of a distracted passenger.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    Sure, but then you lose the self-driving illusion, which is a big part of what's being sold. By all means have that as a backup mode if it can't phone home. But trained remote operators will not only preserve the fiction, but they'll be much more effective and they'll be the source of a lot of good feedback for the dev teams.
nradov 7y ago
Latency is literally a killer problem in remote operation. For example, the US Air Force operates Predator drones all around the world remotely from a base in Nevada. But for takeoff and landing (the most hazardous phases) they usually hand over control to another pilot located at that airfield.
- selectodude 7y ago
  The only surprising thing in your statement is the fact that the drones can’t land themselves. Even large commercial passenger aircraft can do that. Nobody dies if a drone cocks up on landing.
  - numpad0 7y ago
    So the drones has a few strains, Predator is a frontline ones akin to A-10, reportedly uses some Cisco VPN gears in it. There are Global Hawk, which is basically modern Air Force U-2, or X-37B or X-47B, controlled like stah-tegic wargame piece, and how each ones fly are different. For whatever purpose they fly Predators manually.
  - nradov 7y ago
    Very few commercial passenger aircraft have autoland capability, and even those that do have two human pilots ready to take over instantly in case of system failure.
    - fyfy18 7y ago
      The first part of your statement is not true. Autoland as in "press a button and go get a coffee" sure. Almost all commercial aircraft have systems that can land the aircraft themselves (with the pilot ready to take over at any point), but it is not often used in practice because: - pilots still need to know how to land an aircraft themselves, so they may as well practice it (it's not like they are driving to work and can read Facebook) - to prevent interference with the radio signals used for the ILS, ground aircraft are routed away from transmitters which reduces capacity of the airport when it has to be used - the system isn't perfect, so from a safety perspective it's safer to use it as guidance rather than rely on it Autoland is a requirement during severe weather conditions - when a pilot cannot obtain enough visual information to perform the landing themselves.
scarejunba 7y ago
Yes, this is called remote operation or teleoperation and many people have attempted it. But as far as I can see, they all hit against the latency/bandwidth/availability barriers. The hope is that 5G will help. Currently, everyone is vaporware. Including Phantom.
jpm_sd 7y ago
There was. They are doomed. It's a bad idea. https://www.freightwaves.com/news/exclusive-mass-layoffs-reported-after-starsky-robotics-fails-to-find-buyer-investors https://www.freightwaves.com/news/exclusive-mass-layoffs-rep...
megaframe 7y ago
Among many other issues is connectivity, in the bay area on 280 or 101 there are dead zones and when there's heavy traffic all those cars/people/phones connected to the towers and swapping as they move along overload the connection at each transition point. It wouldn't be possible today to reliably maintain a connection for such a human critical situation. Even with 5G a small interruption would likely be too risky for consumer projects.

by bko 7y ago

bathtub365 7y ago

I would not get into a car driven by someone in a "low cost" country whose only incentive for not getting into an accident is getting fired.

mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
They might also care about not killing people, but fair enough I guess.
- bathtub365 7y ago
  Not as much as if they were actually in the car.
- kkotak 7y ago
  What about DRUI?
  - phlipski 7y ago
    This is an interesting case - probably the only time your lawyer would RECOMMEND blowing! :)
- 2zcon 7y ago
  Having been in a taxi with a driver who bragged about staying up all night on stimulants, I disagree.
jeremysalwen 7y ago
No, they hire 3 drivers in "low cost" countries and the car controls respond to the majority vote, for built-in redundancy. If you buy the premium subscription it's 7 drivers instead.

dpq 7y ago

Welcome to https://phantom.auto https://phantom.auto

nradov 7y ago
They have a clever market strategy but those vehicles don't operate on public roads.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Fricken 7y ago
  They sure do, or at least have operated on public roads: https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/ces-2018-phantom-auto-demonstrates-first-remotecontrolled-car-on-public-roads https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/sel...
- dpq 7y ago
  That's incorrect; Postmates, for one, uses Phantom Auto (https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/09/23/postmates-delivery-robots-have-a-phantom-babysitter/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/09/23/postmate...), and they definitely operate on public roads.
  - oldgradstudent 7y ago
    There's a bit of difference between a 100lb Postmates vehicle moving at 3mph and a 10-ton truck moving at 65mph. The former could annoy you, the latter could kill your entire extended family.

uoaei 7y ago

Latency.

richardw 7y ago

Bit scary due to latency and connection reliability. If the connection breaks you’re stuck, or worse. If it breaks when you’re on the highway at speed, or on a twisty road, or in a tunnel...

dastbe 7y ago

The primary issues here are the latency, throughput, and availability of information to this remote driver. * The remote driver is seeing things 10s-100s of milliseconds after they've happened * And somehow we're getting all of the data coming out of sensors on the car at high enough fidelity over the air * And we're not having connectivity blips that would result in loss of remote control for seconds

wpietri 7y ago

I think it's crazy for reasons other people state, especially latency and connection reliability issues. But I think a related idea can work pretty well. Self-driving cars are classified into 6 SAE levels, 0-5. 5 is full autonomy, 4 is autonomy in limited conditions, 3 is self driving but there has to be a driver ready to take over. Getting to 5 is really hard. It could take decades, because there are a zillion edge cases. But what if you could turn cars loose at the "can handle 95% of driving" level and then let it call a human to give guidance when the car is nervous or confused? Obviously, the phone-a-friend approach can't work for things requiring quick action. But if you bias the car to just stop safely and wait for orders, I think it's doable. E.g., the car comes upon an accident where the lanes in one direction are blocked. Humans know to go around the accident by slowly and carefully sharing the remainder of the road. So perhaps the car stops before the obstruction and asks for help. A human looks at it and draws in the path it should follow to get back to normal road. So I think remote "robot coaches" could plug the gap between levels 4 and 5. And maybe some of the level 3 gap, too. And from what I hear of the Waymo operation in Arizona, I suspect Google's doing something akin to this.

anaanymouse 7y ago
https://www.wired.com/story/phantom-teleops/ https://www.wired.com/story/phantom-teleops/
Tyrek 7y ago
The easy solution to this idea is to have the guy inside the car (you know, the passenger) pick up in this case. He's right there - no latency problems. The difficulty is in correctly identifying an unresolved edge case with enough margin to brake safely and draw the attention of a distracted passenger.
- wpietri 7y ago
  Sure, but then you lose the self-driving illusion, which is a big part of what's being sold. By all means have that as a backup mode if it can't phone home. But trained remote operators will not only preserve the fiction, but they'll be much more effective and they'll be the source of a lot of good feedback for the dev teams.

nradov 7y ago

Latency is literally a killer problem in remote operation. For example, the US Air Force operates Predator drones all around the world remotely from a base in Nevada. But for takeoff and landing (the most hazardous phases) they usually hand over control to another pilot located at that airfield.

selectodude 7y ago
The only surprising thing in your statement is the fact that the drones can’t land themselves. Even large commercial passenger aircraft can do that. Nobody dies if a drone cocks up on landing.
- numpad0 7y ago
  So the drones has a few strains, Predator is a frontline ones akin to A-10, reportedly uses some Cisco VPN gears in it. There are Global Hawk, which is basically modern Air Force U-2, or X-37B or X-47B, controlled like stah-tegic wargame piece, and how each ones fly are different. For whatever purpose they fly Predators manually.
- nradov 7y ago
  Very few commercial passenger aircraft have autoland capability, and even those that do have two human pilots ready to take over instantly in case of system failure.
  - fyfy18 7y ago
    The first part of your statement is not true. Autoland as in "press a button and go get a coffee" sure. Almost all commercial aircraft have systems that can land the aircraft themselves (with the pilot ready to take over at any point), but it is not often used in practice because: - pilots still need to know how to land an aircraft themselves, so they may as well practice it (it's not like they are driving to work and can read Facebook) - to prevent interference with the radio signals used for the ILS, ground aircraft are routed away from transmitters which reduces capacity of the airport when it has to be used - the system isn't perfect, so from a safety perspective it's safer to use it as guidance rather than rely on it Autoland is a requirement during severe weather conditions - when a pilot cannot obtain enough visual information to perform the landing themselves.

scarejunba 7y ago

Yes, this is called remote operation or teleoperation and many people have attempted it. But as far as I can see, they all hit against the latency/bandwidth/availability barriers. The hope is that 5G will help. Currently, everyone is vaporware. Including Phantom.

jpm_sd 7y ago

There was. They are doomed. It's a bad idea. https://www.freightwaves.com/news/exclusive-mass-layoffs-reported-after-starsky-robotics-fails-to-find-buyer-investors https://www.freightwaves.com/news/exclusive-mass-layoffs-rep...

megaframe 7y ago

Among many other issues is connectivity, in the bay area on 280 or 101 there are dead zones and when there's heavy traffic all those cars/people/phones connected to the towers and swapping as they move along overload the connection at each transition point. It wouldn't be possible today to reliably maintain a connection for such a human critical situation. Even with 5G a small interruption would likely be too risky for consumer projects.