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What’s Amazon’s plan? The article says something something Amazon delivers lots of things something, but I don’t see how building their own driving systems foll
by hevelvarik 6y ago
What’s Amazon’s plan? The article says something something Amazon delivers lots of things something, but I don’t see how building their own driving systems follows naturally from that.
Further, I would think a firm promising enough to seed a self driving program to power Amazon’s delivery fleet would be worth more than a billion dollars.
Would love to hear some thinking on this.
Update: There’s a comment up thread to the effect that buying seed a growing their own program to support their internal operations is standard operating procedure for Amazon that provides a number of good examples.
- numpad0 6y agoTo me the future of SDC tech is clear: General public expects driverless cars, car companies want level 3 automation, Google says there is only level 2 and 4 which is probably right, and the technology is going to stay level 2 for at least better part of next decade if not couple decades. What’s working is Level 4 betas in Level 2 mode with driver monitoring for safety, what I would call a “driving simplification”. “Simplification” applied to delivery vans offloads what used to require driver competence to machines thus improve consistency, and that will work for Amazon.
- jedberg 6y agoI rode in a Zoox car two years ago. It was already at level 3, almost 4. The driver took over once but didn’t even have to. The car was about to do the same thing the driver did, he just got nervous.
- numpad0 6y agoZoom is Level 4, any experimental SDCs is Level 4 and all production SDC technology is Level 2. Few manufacturers thought L3 is simple enough to at least try, but all were abandoned for above reasons. By definitions, Level 2: driver always pays attention Level 3: car pays attention, may request driver Level 4: car do not require driver This seems simple enough, but Level 3 requires car to be able to drive entirely by itself + be able to predict situations minutes into the future, including situations that cannot be predicted. That requirement far surpasses Level 4, or laws of physics known to humans, Level 3 classification is thus invalid and there are only Level 2 and 4.
- hevelvarik 6y agoThanks for defining. I’m missing something: what is the purpose of level 3. Isn’t level 4 all you could ask for?
- numpad0 6y agoAutomotive industry wanted a gradual transition from manually driven cars to fully robotic cars. That’s fine, but they didn’t ask for inputs from software engineers about how to do it. So they worded that that you may have either: 1) no wheels, or 2) wheels that may shear off, or 3) wheels that may shear off but continue to support weight for a while, or 4) wheels that don’t shear off under normal conditions, or 5) wheels that don’t shear off under any circumstances. Simple enough right?
- csours 6y agoIf you're a consumer, you probably don't want level 3. If you're a company selling self driving cars, you probably don't want level 3. If you're a research organization developing self driving cars, you will find yourself stuck at level 3, because level 4 is really really hard. Going from level 3 to level 4 means getting rid of any problem that would keep you at level 3. Disclaimer: I work for GM, not on SDC, this is solely my opinion.
- mynameisvlad 6y agoAs someone who owns a Tesla, I think a lot of people want level 3 even if they don't realize it. Obviously if level 4 was available, people would go for it, but perfect is the enemy of good, and even with Tesla's L2 technology, it makes driving significantly easier. Continuously being ready to take over control vs controlling is a huge leap already.
- csours 6y agoI think a lot of people would use and enjoy level 3, but some people would have a real bad time.
- person_of_color 6y agoWhy do you believe that your anecdote will scale to every situation, ever?
- Fricken 6y agoHe didn't say anything to that effect.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]