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I took a bunch of Cruise rides in SF when it was free, and I think I know what was going on. The cars were clearly driving themselves. But what did happen fair
by raylad 3y ago
I took a bunch of Cruise rides in SF when it was free, and I think I know what was going on.
The cars were clearly driving themselves. But what did happen fairly often was that they would get confused and stop.
For example, my Cruise car needed to make a right turn and a van had parked on the corner, sticking out into the perpendicular street. The Cruise car went up to the corner and then stopped. It was apparently not programmed to go further out into the street and also wasn't programmed to be allowed to turn if it couldn't see around the corner.
We sat there for a couple of minutes, then I called Cruise support. They did not notice the problem themselves until I called.
I suggested that they inch the car forward because I had the above hypothesis about why it wouldn't turn, but instead I was told to wait. After a couple of minutes, the car inched back a few feet. Then, after a pause in which I assume they were transferring control back to the car's computer, it went to the corner again and stopped.
I told them again that they should move it forward, not back. But after another couple of minutes they moved it back again. Again it went forward and stopped on the corner. They tried this at least three times before accepting my suggestion. As soon as the car was able to see around the corner, it took off again, clearly under its own power.
So I don't think it's a case of remote drivers operating the cars, it's a case of remote drivers having to intervene when the cars stopped, and even in that case they try to make the cars do it on their own.
This is not Theranos behavior. This is debugging.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoTesla behavior without a driver but with remote assistance? Elon should’ve just thrown a call center at FSD if that’s all it takes (half joking).
- SamBam 3y agoI don't see how this is in any way contacting the article. It seems to be confirming it. The article just said that the cars needed a "remote human intervention" every few miles. Well, what you described was exactly that, an intervention. The point is that if they need this kind of intervention every few miles, on average, than they're still not really at the level of driving themselves around town.
- raylad 3y agoThe implication of the article, and also some subsequent discussion here, was that there were remote drivers driving the cars around, and that the supposed self-driving was not really happening. This is clearly not the case. When I was in Cruise cars they did all kinds of things that looked really difficult, like figuring out that a truck was stopped and double-parked and going around it, dodging cyclists that got in front of it, navigating around cars that were double parked on both sides of the street like a maze, etc. Then, they would get stumped by unusual configurations like the one I recounted. So whether they are 'at the level of driving themselves around town' or not depends on your definition. They drove around quite deftly although a bit erratically, and using sometimes very circuitous routes, but they definitely seemed to get all around town with only occasional glitches, none of which seemed at all unsafe (when I was in the car at least).
- quickthrower2 3y agoI would have just got out and walked at that point
- raylad 3y agoI was quite far away from where I was going and the ride had just started a couple of blocks earlier.
- martinflack 3y agoOr pushed.
- bryan_w 3y agoIt's interesting as from the videos I've seen, it seems like waymo doesn't even entertain the idea of allowing remote support staff that level of micromanagement to control a car. It makes sense too, as you really don't wanna deal with the cell network to provide realtime updates to the dispatch. Better to just send a car out. Heck it would even seem sensible to allow the customer support staff to update the model of the world that the car sees but still allowing it to travel autonomously. Allowing direct remote control is wild
- rladd 3y agoWe don’t know that it’s direct remote control. It might be that they sent a command to it to back up or move forward and it figures out how to do that.
- bmitc 3y ago> This is debugging. On public roads. This shouldn't be allowed. If they want to do R&D, they need to build their own roads instead of endangering people going about their lives. None of these "automated" cars should be allowed on the roads, including Tesla cars with "self-driving" features enabled.
- raylad 3y agoWith requirements like that, there's no way such a product would ever get to the point of being usable.
- bmitc 3y agoThen it's not a viable product or business.
- raylad 3y agoWe don't have those requirements on any other product, so it seems absurdly unnecessarily burdensome to just apply them to this particular product category.
- eig 3y agoWe do actually. In the car industry they have to test airbag systems in closed roads and special warehouses that the companies built themselves.
- bmitc 3y ago> We don't have those requirements on any other product Like what? I mean, there are literally requirements even for these very products. It's just that they were given special permits to operate. California revoked these permits for Cruise. It is my opinion that they shouldn't have been given in the first place for such nascient and unproven technology. But the government and taxpayers, the latter unwittingly, have been swindled into dumping money into these companies.
- patrick451 3y ago