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Levandowski is arguing in favor of retrofitting in order to deploy now, versus spending the time and money on future design with an unknown ship date. And he ar

by cmurf 5y ago

Levandowski is arguing in favor of retrofitting in order to deploy now, versus spending the time and money on future design with an unknown ship date. And he argues the hardware is good enough, it's the software that needs improving. It's approximately 180 degrees opposite of Tesla's strategy. Is self-driving a mostly solved problem? I'm not even sure what the context is, long haul highway, or mixed (pedestrian, biking, non-self-driving autos)? Humans get confused with edge cases: poor road design, poor and non-standard signage, difficulty predicting other people's intentions in particular when human driver and pedestrian can't see each other's faces to know if they see each other as well as hand signaling to reduce the ambiguity, etc. I come from an aviation background where the approximate equivalents for mixed city is VFR, and long haul standardized is IFR. And while the big expensive newer plans can do Cat IIIc with autoland in zero visibility: not everything is a Cat IIIc approach (there is no equivalent for take-off), and not every airport has the ground infrastructure to support such landings, and there's a whole area of ground operations that also aren't easily automated. Ergo, I use the best case scenario of IFR as the most likely environment in which we could have autonomous aircraft, and yet we don't. Andn that's when the environment is in normal positive control, as soon as there's no radar, compulsory reporting by a human pilot becomes required with IFR. What if weather forecast is off, and you need to fly to the alternate? What if there's loss of radio communications? All of these are accounted for by IFR, there's a written protocol pilots learn, but human pilots perform those actions. Not flight navigation systems or autopilots. And from my point of view, the self-driving automobile problem is astronomically more complicated than IFR. Which is now where I come back full circle and opine that I think we're a long ways off from seeing "full self driving" (whatever that is) in anything other than very constrained, idealized (standardized) environments.

35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
> I come from an aviation background where the approximate equivalents for mixed city is VFR, and long haul standardized is IFR. Your subsequent paragraph is extremely interesting because you talk about how IFR is "easier to automate" – but, a layman's understanding of IFR vs VFR is "VFR is easy for humans, IFR kills bad pilots", so that first sentence threw me for a loop: "mixed city" is insanely hard over long haul trucking, why is it VFR?!
- cmurf 5y ago
  s/IFR is easier to automate/IFR should be easier automate/ and that's mainly because the theory is that positive separation is neither the pilot nor autopilot's problem. And also the stricter standards constrain the environment. Separation is primarily the responsibility of pilots under VFR. In fact even on an IFR flight plan, in visual conditions, pilots are expected to maintain separation, hence the reporting of entering instrument meteorological conditions. It is the very thing humans are good at, visual analysis, that autonomous systems aren't good at. But if the need for visual analysis is taken off the table, that should make automation of IFR+IMC easier compared to VFR. The analog for pedestrians might be radio communications. Try getting an autonomous system to understand non-standard jargon, which happens all the time among native English speaking pilots. Of course we should just have standardized communication without voice, thereby reducing ambiguity, but how to do deal with legacy? Again in aviation this would be easier to just say, no more voice radio communications - work for this is already in progress for some time. But get rid of pedestrians? How? And there's some historical point for comparison, when pedestrians had an absolute right to cross the road, with horse driven carriages and before the automobile. Once the automobile arrived, so did ticketing for jaywalking.
chrischen 5y ago
Depends on what you are trying to solve. Personally I find improving level 2 assistance programs are much more useful. I’m actually able to use and benefit from OpenPilot on a daily basis, and all it does is lane keeping, but it does it so well.
- cmurf 5y ago
  It's a really good point. Maybe we're allowing perfect to be the enemy of good. Where are the worst problems? The edge cases we want to fix? What are humans bad at that autonomous systems are better at? Probably top on that list is patience. Only humans get impatient, frustrated, and have emotional situations cloud their judgement.
  - chrischen 5y ago
    Yes exactly. Contrast with my friends who have Teslas who never use the autopilot or self driving functions.

by cmurf 5y ago

35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago

> I come from an aviation background where the approximate equivalents for mixed city is VFR, and long haul standardized is IFR. Your subsequent paragraph is extremely interesting because you talk about how IFR is "easier to automate" – but, a layman's understanding of IFR vs VFR is "VFR is easy for humans, IFR kills bad pilots", so that first sentence threw me for a loop: "mixed city" is insanely hard over long haul trucking, why is it VFR?!

cmurf 5y ago
s/IFR is easier to automate/IFR should be easier automate/ and that's mainly because the theory is that positive separation is neither the pilot nor autopilot's problem. And also the stricter standards constrain the environment. Separation is primarily the responsibility of pilots under VFR. In fact even on an IFR flight plan, in visual conditions, pilots are expected to maintain separation, hence the reporting of entering instrument meteorological conditions. It is the very thing humans are good at, visual analysis, that autonomous systems aren't good at. But if the need for visual analysis is taken off the table, that should make automation of IFR+IMC easier compared to VFR. The analog for pedestrians might be radio communications. Try getting an autonomous system to understand non-standard jargon, which happens all the time among native English speaking pilots. Of course we should just have standardized communication without voice, thereby reducing ambiguity, but how to do deal with legacy? Again in aviation this would be easier to just say, no more voice radio communications - work for this is already in progress for some time. But get rid of pedestrians? How? And there's some historical point for comparison, when pedestrians had an absolute right to cross the road, with horse driven carriages and before the automobile. Once the automobile arrived, so did ticketing for jaywalking.

chrischen 5y ago

Depends on what you are trying to solve. Personally I find improving level 2 assistance programs are much more useful. I’m actually able to use and benefit from OpenPilot on a daily basis, and all it does is lane keeping, but it does it so well.

cmurf 5y ago
It's a really good point. Maybe we're allowing perfect to be the enemy of good. Where are the worst problems? The edge cases we want to fix? What are humans bad at that autonomous systems are better at? Probably top on that list is patience. Only humans get impatient, frustrated, and have emotional situations cloud their judgement.
- chrischen 5y ago
  Yes exactly. Contrast with my friends who have Teslas who never use the autopilot or self driving functions.