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Everybody got bullish on this when Google first publicly presented their autonomous car and everybody from IT said: 10 years from now. Except all the automotiv

Everybody got bullish on this when Google first publicly presented their autonomous car and everybody from IT said: 10 years from now. Except all the automotive people said: Nay, way to complex to solve. The automotive guys worked since the 1960s/1970s on this. Yes it got boosted by the advances in AI, which where mainly driven by the now available computing power/memory. But AI and its limitation is known since the 1980s/1990s. I learned AI in hte mid 1990s in the university as part of my degree as an electrical engineer. Now, we are at a point where even the Waymo guys (former Google Car) admit, that the fully self driving car will be years away. It will take much more years then everybody expected. The cars the Waymo runs, are running in very dedicated areas, which are highly mapped. They still have problems with temporay obstacles, like road construction. They still have problems in unexpected weather situations. So it is, that even all the tech people who believed in the sayings from Elon, now realizes that its just vaporware.

TulliusCicero 4y ago
It's not vaporware, it's just taken significantly longer than expected. Tesla's solution looks more like vaporware because of how many times Musk has promised fully driverless operation -- sometimes even promising a cross country hands off trip -- within a year or two. Other companies have also had overly optimistic predictions, but generally not "we'll be able to go anywhere in the country with no intervention within the next year" level of extreme. Waymo's progress has been slow relative to "ten years" predictions, but they've also made steady progress, and it looks like it's continuing.
- badwolf 4y ago
  Tesla is also selling "full self driving" as a feature, right now. Not "coming in a year or two" They are taking people's money for it right now, and have been for years.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- mikestew 4y ago
  It's not vaporware, it's just taken significantly longer than expected. EDIT: nevermind, parent clarified. Leaving original comment so follow-ups make sense. "Taking longer...": what we call it when it doesn't work, despite all of the marketing. So, IOW, "vaporware". When Tesla ships a working product, where "working" something remotely close to what has been promised, we can call it something else.
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    Sorry, I interpreted GP as saying that self driving in general is vaporware. If they meant specifically just Tesla is vaporware, then yeah I largely agree.
    - mikestew 4y ago
      Oh, okay, I get ya. Yeah, I could see self-driving being a thing...some day, and wouldn't put the whole thing in the vaporware bucket. Thanks for the clarification.
- semi-extrinsic 4y ago
  CPU/GPU processing power is clearly making steady progress and looks like it will continue. Yet nobody thinks we will be able to brute-force 2048-bit RSA with the best sieve techniques even if the progress continues for 100 years. It is clearly not sufficient just to have some measure of growth to achieve some goal. It is necessary to have the growth actually matter compared to a measure of the problem difficulty. I would argue for self-driving cars as in Level 4/5 autonomy, nobody even has any useful measure or understanding of the problem difficulty. It's really easy to understand the autonomous driving levels. It's also really easy to understand the Kardashev scale. It might just turn out that both are of equally little practical relevance in our lifetimes. I know this is a boring situation, but there is no guarantee the universe shouldn't be boring.
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    Waymo has an operational SDC taxi service in Phoenix with no safety drivers. Obviously that's a fairly easy metro as far as driving goes, but it's enough progress to be long term optimistic imo, especially considering they're doing a closed beta in SF currently.
laidoffamazon 4y ago
Robotaxis are on the road today in multiple cities. That's nothing to sneeze at, large fleets of totally autonomous vehicles in complex city environments is something something roboticists have never done before!
- marcellus23 4y ago
  Those environments have been mapped out to a very high level of detail. It's a similar "long-tail" problem — all very well and good to have self-driving cars running around downtown SF after spending tons of effort and time creating a virtual map of the city, but it's quite something else to get general self-driving that will work across the entire country.
  - laidoffamazon 4y ago
    I don’t think doing it for the entire country is even a goal for these AV only companies. For trucking theyll HD map the highways. For city center taxi service HD maps and remote assistance are fine.
  - minwcnt5 4y ago
    Cruise went from nothing to a public driverless service in Austin in 90 days, and that involves a LOT more than just mapping the area. Waymo had a comparable timeline for expanding to downtown Phoenix from the suburbs. Mapping is not the albatross you think it is. It's essentially just Google Maps/Streetview (which covers the whole world) with extra sensors and larger hard drives. A problem that's been solved for over 15 years already.
- PinguTS 4y ago
  Did you read and understood what I wrote: "The cars the Waymo runs, are running in very dedicated areas, which are highly mapped."
  - laidoffamazon 4y ago
    I simply don't see the problem with areas being highly mapped. For the record, operational areas can be mapped very quickly now - I think I read a Waymo presser that said they mapped their LA operational area from 0 in a few weeks.

TulliusCicero 4y ago

It's not vaporware, it's just taken significantly longer than expected. Tesla's solution looks more like vaporware because of how many times Musk has promised fully driverless operation -- sometimes even promising a cross country hands off trip -- within a year or two. Other companies have also had overly optimistic predictions, but generally not "we'll be able to go anywhere in the country with no intervention within the next year" level of extreme. Waymo's progress has been slow relative to "ten years" predictions, but they've also made steady progress, and it looks like it's continuing.

badwolf 4y ago
Tesla is also selling "full self driving" as a feature, right now. Not "coming in a year or two" They are taking people's money for it right now, and have been for years.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
mikestew 4y ago
It's not vaporware, it's just taken significantly longer than expected. EDIT: nevermind, parent clarified. Leaving original comment so follow-ups make sense. "Taking longer...": what we call it when it doesn't work, despite all of the marketing. So, IOW, "vaporware". When Tesla ships a working product, where "working" something remotely close to what has been promised, we can call it something else.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  Sorry, I interpreted GP as saying that self driving in general is vaporware. If they meant specifically just Tesla is vaporware, then yeah I largely agree.
  - mikestew 4y ago
    Oh, okay, I get ya. Yeah, I could see self-driving being a thing...some day, and wouldn't put the whole thing in the vaporware bucket. Thanks for the clarification.
semi-extrinsic 4y ago
CPU/GPU processing power is clearly making steady progress and looks like it will continue. Yet nobody thinks we will be able to brute-force 2048-bit RSA with the best sieve techniques even if the progress continues for 100 years. It is clearly not sufficient just to have some measure of growth to achieve some goal. It is necessary to have the growth actually matter compared to a measure of the problem difficulty. I would argue for self-driving cars as in Level 4/5 autonomy, nobody even has any useful measure or understanding of the problem difficulty. It's really easy to understand the autonomous driving levels. It's also really easy to understand the Kardashev scale. It might just turn out that both are of equally little practical relevance in our lifetimes. I know this is a boring situation, but there is no guarantee the universe shouldn't be boring.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  Waymo has an operational SDC taxi service in Phoenix with no safety drivers. Obviously that's a fairly easy metro as far as driving goes, but it's enough progress to be long term optimistic imo, especially considering they're doing a closed beta in SF currently.

laidoffamazon 4y ago

Robotaxis are on the road today in multiple cities. That's nothing to sneeze at, large fleets of totally autonomous vehicles in complex city environments is something something roboticists have never done before!

marcellus23 4y ago
Those environments have been mapped out to a very high level of detail. It's a similar "long-tail" problem — all very well and good to have self-driving cars running around downtown SF after spending tons of effort and time creating a virtual map of the city, but it's quite something else to get general self-driving that will work across the entire country.
- laidoffamazon 4y ago
  I don’t think doing it for the entire country is even a goal for these AV only companies. For trucking theyll HD map the highways. For city center taxi service HD maps and remote assistance are fine.
- minwcnt5 4y ago
  Cruise went from nothing to a public driverless service in Austin in 90 days, and that involves a LOT more than just mapping the area. Waymo had a comparable timeline for expanding to downtown Phoenix from the suburbs. Mapping is not the albatross you think it is. It's essentially just Google Maps/Streetview (which covers the whole world) with extra sensors and larger hard drives. A problem that's been solved for over 15 years already.
PinguTS 4y ago
Did you read and understood what I wrote: "The cars the Waymo runs, are running in very dedicated areas, which are highly mapped."
- laidoffamazon 4y ago
  I simply don't see the problem with areas being highly mapped. For the record, operational areas can be mapped very quickly now - I think I read a Waymo presser that said they mapped their LA operational area from 0 in a few weeks.