10 ms·
Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai
- cjdoc29 4y ago> Latitude AI – a Ford subsidiary – is developing new automated driving technology with an initial focus on a hands-free, eyes-off driver assist system for next-generation Ford vehicles Not that every company should follow Tesla's approach, but I think it would be great if other companies don't get too focused on their production systems being eyes-off, hands-off. I'd much prefer more people having access to these systems _sooner_ with monitoring to ensure that they're paying attention. Tesla Autopilot, Hyundai's lane keep, etc. are such fantastic systems when you commute in high traffic areas and/or you have a long commute - even if you have to monitor the thing.
- binarymax 4y agoHyundai’s lane keep is so bad that I don’t trust it at all. In the three times I’ve tried to use it, it started to veer off the road suddenly and in strange ways on even the slightest curve. It should be recalled and disabled.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y agoHyundai has sold cars with multiple different systems in recent years (HDA2 is better than HDA1).
- xattt 4y agoHDA1 is more robust Lane Keep Assist that takes into account mapped highway curves and adjusts speed and steering accordingly. The car might as well be on rails. I haven’t had issues with vanilla LKA on a non-HDA mapped road other than expected problems where lane markings or shoulders are unclear. Perhaps grandparent poster has a misaligned camera on their vehicle.
- hd95489 4y agoNo problem with it on ioniq 5. The equivalent on the Kia was disastrous implementation. The one on Toyota is simple but robust as well
- guelo 4y agoNissan's ProPILOT Assist has been pretty trustworthy for me.
- bwhitty 4y agoYes, another anecdote to add to this thread of anecdotes is that my HI5 with HDA2 is stellar. I do hours at a time on highways in CA without a disengage.
- dmix 4y agoDoes it follow the car in front's speed on the highway while keeping you in the lane? I would absolutely love a car that could do that well while I still paid attention while listening to podcasts/audiobooks. I haven't tried any newish midtier cars, only been in a friends Tesla which is beyond my needs. These niche applications are 100% what car companies should have focused on from the beginning rather than robotaxis.
- a_t48 4y agoMy Jetta GLI can do this. ACC is good, if there’s a hard stop it will beep at me to brake, or brake itself hard later. The lane centering worked great in WA (with a tweak to the options to enable stronger centering) and works pretty good in CA (lane lines aren’t always as clear). Basically I only have to give a very light touch on the steering wheel, the car mostly just follows the road. The system overall is not perfect but it’s great in stop and go and pretty good in regular traffic. My single test drive with a Civic was similar but I didn’t test out the ADAS so much (and they wanted too much for it).
- rnk 4y agoRecent Toyotas like a Corolla can do this.
- SkyPuncher 4y agoLane keep is not the same as lane centering. I have a 2020 Palisade with lane centering. It works incredibly well. I've driven through Chicago highways with only management for lane changes. I literally will not buy a car without lane centering after having this car.
- CyanBird 4y ago> Lane keep is not the same as lane centering These are God awful naming schemes, completely misleading for the common consumer and bizantine in naming. Near purposefully misleading
- SkyPuncher 4y agoI think it was a bit of organic confusion. The challenge is they all do very, very similar things. It's just to what degree. It does seem they starting to standardize the naming.
- Tempest1981 4y agoSummary of the 3 different types (LKA, LCA, and LDW), and what each manufacturer called them last year: - https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/lane-departure-warning-lane-keeping-assist-guide-a7087080070/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/lane-departure-wa... The US NHTSA specifies the names here: - L*A: https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/driver-assistance-technologies#driving-control-assistance-30676 https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/driver-assistance-technologi... - LDW: https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/driver-assistance-technologies#collision-warning-30631 https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/driver-assistance-technologi... W = Warning, A = Assist (Curious what names are used outside the US)
- AlotOfReading 4y agoPeople have been trying the driver-monitoring-as-a-shortcut approach for years now. It turns out that effective driver monitoring is extremely difficult, so the typical result is that you end up with the worst of both worlds: A system designed under the assumption that there's a human backup and a human that's not able to react quickly enough to prevent accidents. It's not clear how to fix this, because the human can appear completely fine by all observable metrics even when they aren't, and vice versa to a lesser extent. This problem also gets worse the better your autonomous performance is. That's why virtually every safety expert in the field is fairly critical of these sorts of systems.
- nanidin 4y agoYou missed another quality of the worst world: driver monitoring that disengages even for a perfectly attentive driver. That’s about where Tesla is now.
- dylan604 4y agoI'd be happy if they'd just make a drop-in replacement EV for my existing ICE options. I don't need it to be a robot. I just want it to not use gasoline. Unfortunately, manufactures seem to think it has to be all or nothing.
- rnk 4y agoThe gm bolt is what you want.
- dylan604 4y agoExcept it's a GM
- rnk 4y agoYou can't have you basic car that is in-expensive and just a car without buying it from a boring, in-expensive automobile maker. They are the ones who make that kind of vehicle. They are one and the same. What's the 'basic car' that uses gas that you want in electronic form but still a basic car?
- dylan604 4y agoSure I can. Just because I don't like GM doesn't mean I don't like other manufacturers. You're making a big assumption. Some people don't like Ford cars because they are fixed or repaired daily. Some people don't like GM for whatever generic meme saying. Some people don't like Toyota/Honda/et al because they're not American made (to whatever truth there is/isn't to that). Some people just have preferences. Those preferences do not equate to the meaning you are trying to infer.
- rnk 4y agoI wasn't trying to criticize your choices. I was trying to figure out what brand makes the gas powered car you have that you would like to see translated into an electric form. I am guessing you have some other things that you like in a car, can you share your ideal car then?
- newaccount2021 4y ago[dead]
- paxys 4y ago> Ford hired about 550 employees formerly of Argo AI is pretty weird framing. Did they acquire the company? Or certain parts of it? I'm gonna guess they didn't actually recruit and interview all of them one by one.
- kjksf 4y agoWell, Ford (and VW) were major investors in Argo AI. Argo AI ran out of money, no-one else was willing to put more money in so Argo AI had to shut down. It looks like Ford effectively acquired the company by hiring all the people (who would otherwise be out of the job) but without actually acquiring the company. They waited for the company to dissolve and then picked up (most of?) the people. I'm sure it was possible because of the prior investment and relationship with the company.
- jfim 4y ago> Argo AI ran out of money, no-one else was willing to put more money in so Argo AI had to shut down. For those interested, there are a few more details about that in this Bloomberg article: https://archive.ph/ipQqz https://archive.ph/ipQqz
- dmix 4y agoWhen you have 500+ people at a startup and they spend 90% of their time working with a single partner on some failed venture it's not surprising they'd end up at the partner. You end up building personal relationships within the partner and the workers there will vouch for you. It's not like a small startup team with close vested interests doing the exact same project absent the aquihire. The robotaxi thing was very ambitious and shooting for the moon, and now they joined a megacorp with a much more modest long term project with corporate leadership/management. If the bulk of the Argo leadership staff joined and rehired their teams it'd be different though.
- AlotOfReading 4y agoFord owned Argo in a partnership with VW and recently divested of it with some serious losses, causing Argo to go under. This is a (separate) subsidiary being formed under Ford, but neither an acquisition nor individual hiring.
- roseway4 4y agoNot mentioned here, but in this Techcrunch article, is Ford’s expensive flip-flopping on AV: https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/02/ford-forms-automated-driving-subsidiary/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/02/ford-forms-automated-drivi... > Argo AI burst on the scene in 2017 stacked with a $1 billion investment from Ford — and Iater an investment from VW. The startup shuttered suddenly in October 2022 after Ford and VW determined they would no longer pursue AV technology, at least not under the Argo umbrella. Ford said, at the time, it was making a strategic decision to shift its resources to developing advanced driver assistance systems, and not autonomous vehicle technology that can be applied to robotaxis. The company said it recorded a $2.7 billion non-cash, pretax impairment on its investment in Argo AI.
- p1esk 4y agoWait, so they killed the 550 person AV startup they were funding, took 2.7B loss, and 4 months later hired those same 550 people to resume the same work? Something looks seriously wrong here.
- nnadams 4y agoWhen I was working at Ford a few years ago, many Ford engineers worked very closely with Argo engineers. Sharing code or data was common, they used our internal tools, and sometimes we would go in-person to troubleshoot with them. A lot of their employees had come from Ford, and so they knew who to call and even already had our numbers. All that to say I'm not surprised to see they hired back many of those people. Ford is a large company and Argo felt just like any other team within the company at times.
- robotastronaut 4y agoYeah, this is pretty standard behavior for Ford, I think. Similarly blurred lines with Autonomic. Honestly it was hard to keep track of who actually worked for Ford when I was at FSM.
- wmeredith 4y agoThis is normal on their web tech side as well. I worked with Ford in a consulting role through a very large agency, and there were multiple teams working as contractors, subsidiaries, and full-time employees. The lines were very blurry.
- pengaru 4y agoThat can't possibly be the outcome Argo.ai engineers were hoping for, since any stock/options they had in Argo presumably vanished and all they got in the end was a job @ Ford.
- dylan604 4y agoif the company was not profitable, stocks/options don't really seem that valuable. if the company folds, there's 0 value to them. so it's not like they "lost" anything. also, if a company closes and you're on the brink of having no job, a job "@ Ford" seems like a pretty fancy parachute to me.
- pengaru 4y ago> if the company was not profitable, stocks/options don't really seem that valuable. if the company folds, there's 0 value to them. so it's not like they "lost" anything. Plenty of unprofitable startups have worthwhile acquihire-style exits. But it requires the leadership actually doing their jobs in marketing the company to potential buyers and getting some competing offers. Just because you're unprofitable doesn't mean there's nothing of value. Are there patents? Is the team proven to work well together and ship state of the art product? Are there any customers? The conversation in this thread makes it sound like argo.ai was basically functioning like a Ford business unit already. If I were an argo.ai team member with stock/options that became worthless when the company's funding dried up, then Ford conveniently shows up to hire everyone after their stakes are worthless, I'd not be a happy camper and would be seriously questioning if argo.ai leadership acted in good faith on behalf of the employees/shareholders. But I know nothing of what went on here. Just what I'm seeing here on HN...
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoNote to all startup employees: If your company closes or sells for less than the total amount of funding the company took, you (almost always) get nothing from your equity. People should really understand this, because it drives home the point that taking a ton in funding rounds sets the bar that much higher for your equity to be worth anything. That is, startup investors almost always have at least 1x preferences, which means they get paid back first before common stock has any value at all. Thus, if part of your compensation is common stock options, you should absolutely demand to see information from the cap table about how much investors have already put in (and remember, of course, they may always add more in later rounds). I don't know all the details of what happened with Argo.ai, but given that Ford took a $2.7 billion impairment charge, my guess is they would have never been able to sell for more than their total funding.
- jdhn 4y agoI wish Ford the best of luck. The last time I worked at Ford AV, there wasn't a clear sense of direction after the initial kickoff project that was done to publicize Argo's AV chops. Hopefully this will have a better ending than that initial attempt.
- mvf4z7 4y agoJonathan, is that you?
- bob_theslob646 4y agoAre you attempting to dox someone on purpose?
- vulcan01 4y agoThey probably worked together in the past. This kind of comment is pretty common on HN.
- jcuenod 4y agoIs it just me or did they borrow the Fedora logo?
- IceWreck 4y agoThe parallel bars are longer than Fedora. Definitely inspired by it tho.
- dotancohen 4y agoVery much so. I saw that, and I was happy for a second to think that the thing clearly runs a common Linux under the hood.
- fwlr 4y agoI wonder if there’s space in the self-driving field for a self-driving-only company. Like, your product is a sensor and software package, and car manufacturers install it in their cars. They get to skip the R&D investment (I imagine there’s a mismatch between current car company management expertise and the management required for overseeing self-driving development), and potentially they get to avoid some of the liability (in the media at least, although probably they still take on the bulk of legal liability).
- actinium226 4y agoThis is Aurora's play. Phantom.AI is also in that business.
- crakenzak 4y agothis is what Mobileye (owned by Intel) does. For some reason they're very discreet about branding so you don't see their name publicized much on cars' spec sheets when mentioning ADS.
- ec109685 4y agoThey're a public company now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobileye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobileye
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jtvjan 4y agoThe name is a little bit unfortunate. There's already a company in the AI space called Latitude: https://latitude.io https://latitude.io
- sentientslug 4y agoNot for long!
- modzu 4y agohow many engineers does it take to unscrew a lightbulb? aka could we solve the blinding headlight problem first? and eliminate touchscreen controls for essentials second?
- joadha 4y agoI would support an all-hands-on-deck response to the blinding headlight problem. Incident declared!
- astrea 4y agoA mile or so away from Argo’s former location in Pittsburgh, there’s the national robotics engineering center: a commercial unit within Carnegie Mellon University. Rotting away amongst all their other former creations is a truck with special headlights. They solve the issue of snow blindness by only shining light where the falling snow isn’t, cut out a nice silhouette of oncoming drivers so as not to blind them, and are also capable of projecting driving directions onto the street ahead of the driver.