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Waymo's simulators are doing 100 years of playing video games per day. They're not doing any driving.
by axguscbklp 6y ago
Waymo's simulators are doing 100 years of playing video games per day. They're not doing any driving.
- jrockway 6y agoSimulators can be pretty good. The FAA certifies some pretty low-end simulator setups for commercial/private pilots to get IFR training in, for example. And of course, airline pilots almost exclusively train in simulators. Very few pilots have experienced an engine fire in their 787, but I'd bet that about 100% of them would handle the situation correctly because of simulator training (and good documentation). I don't know how good driving simulators are, but at least self-driving cars are modular enough to test components. Even if you can't test the machine vision, you can still invent data coming out of the vision to test the rest of the system. (You can probably fuzz test it, too. Generate a bunch of random scenarios, fail if an obstacle hitbox and vehicle hitbox touch. Tweak that, and then set up the scenario in the field when COVID-19 is over.) Certainly the vision part of the equation is one of the greatest engineering challenges. That is why they are testing cars in the field. But just having a working vision system doesn't get you a working self-driving car, so quite a bit of effort has to be invested in the rest of the system. With noone allowed to go to work, now is a great time to invest in that.