4 ms·

If problem was cost of building and maintaining hardware they would go after that problem by iterating on hardware much faster. That is not the immediate proble

by msoad 6y ago

If problem was cost of building and maintaining hardware they would go after that problem by iterating on hardware much faster. That is not the immediate problem. What they need to solve first is to reach to a level of confidence with "happy ride ratio" in which they don't need to hire too many remote assistant drivers to scale up. After all, this technology wants to remove human drivers from the taxi business. What's the point of paying often more expensive remote human drivers plus super expensive gear to do a low margin business like taxi service?

lupire 6y ago
It's a lot worse than that. The reason Waymon is in Arizona is that it has almost no weather. Remote assistance isn't enough to rescue a ride in weather. Uber bought out almost the entire CS department of CMU (Pittsburgh) yet they run their cars in Arizona.
- mlyle 6y ago
  It's kinda an interesting problem-- the technology readiness re: weather. Right now a lot of self driving, like Waymo, is aimed at taxi fleets, because the equipment is expensive, so amortizing the cost over many driving hours per day makes fiscal sense. But-- a taxi fleet that requires a massive scale up / instant appearance of a human workforce when it's rainy is a non-starter. On the other hand, personal cars would be useful with an "only sunny" autonomous mode.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    To a discussion upthread, it sometimes seems as if many of the folks working on full autonomy decided to deliberately turn their difficulty up to 11. What use case shall we tackle first? Highway driving in good weather? "No that's boring. How about largely-urban taxis in all weather types?"
    - mlyle 6y ago
      The problem is, it's not clear that camera-only and relatively modest processing can even handle fully autonomous highway driving in good weather. So, if you need a very expensive sensor package, the only large market available is taxis.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        >if you need a very expensive sensor package, the only large market available is taxis. But absolutely the only benefit it brings to a taxi is reduced labor costs. So if the capital cost is so high that you can't sell an $80-$100K self-driving car to moderately wealthy people, are you really going to be able to undercut Uber drivers? (And labor costs don't go to zero anyway as someone needs to clean and maintain the vehicles.) >camera-only I'd just point out that even Toyota uses some sort of radar for its dynamic cruise control today.
        mlyle 6y ago
        > But absolutely the only benefit it brings to a taxi is reduced labor costs. So if the capital cost is so high that you can't sell an $80-$100K self-driving car to moderately wealthy people, are you really going to be able to undercut Uber drivers? Say you can do it for $100k, and it looks wonky. That's a very small car market. But it's potentially a very large autonomous taxi market. > I'd just point out that even Toyota uses some sort of radar for its dynamic cruise control today. Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't mean "camera-only". Even low end cars have radars for collision avoidance. I meant "with cameras and front-facing RADAR, but no LIDAR / other expensive sensors". Though-- cameras need to be good enough to perceive everything radars miss, and once they're reliable enough at that for L4, the incremental value provided by a radar may be limited.
- oldgradstudent 6y ago
  > Uber bought out almost the entire CS department of CMU (Pittsburgh) yet they run their cars in Arizona. Not really. They hired a few faculty and dozens of other staff from a robotics institute. https://www.post-gazette.com/business/tech-news/2016/03/07/A-year-after-Uber-hired-away-researchers-CMU-robotics-center-rebounds/stories/201603070110 https://www.post-gazette.com/business/tech-news/2016/03/07/A...

by msoad 6y ago

lupire 6y ago

It's a lot worse than that. The reason Waymon is in Arizona is that it has almost no weather. Remote assistance isn't enough to rescue a ride in weather. Uber bought out almost the entire CS department of CMU (Pittsburgh) yet they run their cars in Arizona.

mlyle 6y ago
It's kinda an interesting problem-- the technology readiness re: weather. Right now a lot of self driving, like Waymo, is aimed at taxi fleets, because the equipment is expensive, so amortizing the cost over many driving hours per day makes fiscal sense. But-- a taxi fleet that requires a massive scale up / instant appearance of a human workforce when it's rainy is a non-starter. On the other hand, personal cars would be useful with an "only sunny" autonomous mode.
- ghaff 6y ago
  To a discussion upthread, it sometimes seems as if many of the folks working on full autonomy decided to deliberately turn their difficulty up to 11. What use case shall we tackle first? Highway driving in good weather? "No that's boring. How about largely-urban taxis in all weather types?"
  - mlyle 6y ago
    The problem is, it's not clear that camera-only and relatively modest processing can even handle fully autonomous highway driving in good weather. So, if you need a very expensive sensor package, the only large market available is taxis.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      >if you need a very expensive sensor package, the only large market available is taxis. But absolutely the only benefit it brings to a taxi is reduced labor costs. So if the capital cost is so high that you can't sell an $80-$100K self-driving car to moderately wealthy people, are you really going to be able to undercut Uber drivers? (And labor costs don't go to zero anyway as someone needs to clean and maintain the vehicles.) >camera-only I'd just point out that even Toyota uses some sort of radar for its dynamic cruise control today.
      - mlyle 6y ago
        > But absolutely the only benefit it brings to a taxi is reduced labor costs. So if the capital cost is so high that you can't sell an $80-$100K self-driving car to moderately wealthy people, are you really going to be able to undercut Uber drivers? Say you can do it for $100k, and it looks wonky. That's a very small car market. But it's potentially a very large autonomous taxi market. > I'd just point out that even Toyota uses some sort of radar for its dynamic cruise control today. Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't mean "camera-only". Even low end cars have radars for collision avoidance. I meant "with cameras and front-facing RADAR, but no LIDAR / other expensive sensors". Though-- cameras need to be good enough to perceive everything radars miss, and once they're reliable enough at that for L4, the incremental value provided by a radar may be limited.
oldgradstudent 6y ago
> Uber bought out almost the entire CS department of CMU (Pittsburgh) yet they run their cars in Arizona. Not really. They hired a few faculty and dozens of other staff from a robotics institute. https://www.post-gazette.com/business/tech-news/2016/03/07/A-year-after-Uber-hired-away-researchers-CMU-robotics-center-rebounds/stories/201603070110 https://www.post-gazette.com/business/tech-news/2016/03/07/A...