3 ms·

Once again, George was right. Self driving will be solved with vision alone, or it will never be solved. And solving for vision means solving for AGI.

lorstic 3y ago
Vision-only is very very very far behind other techniques. Cruise (the self driving company, not OP) was killed by an overzealous CEO, not by their chosen technique. Waymo drives great in SF.
- wewtyflakes 3y ago
  +1 for Waymo; it feels safe and I have seen it navigate tricky road situations to my surprise.
- ramesh31 3y ago
  >Cruise (the self driving company, not OP) was killed by an overzealous CEO, not by their chosen technique. Waymo drives great in SF. Cruise is dead regardless of how you spin it. And Waymo will continue to piddle around SF with their $500,000 frankenstein cars until eternity. Meanwhile Tesla and Comma (both pure vision) are the only operational L3 systems being used every day by regular people to drive millions of miles. The legacy manufacturers will end up licensing one or the other, a la Android/iOS.
  - ra7 3y ago
    You’re wrong on most counts. 1. Waymo costs around $120,000 and the cost is rapidly dropping with new hardware generations and vehicle platforms. They’re in LA, soon in Austin, airport rides in Phoenix and imminent highway driving. 2. Tesla and Comma are only L2, not even L3.
  - lorstic 3y ago
    > Waymo will coninue piddling around SF with their $500,000 cars until eternity And Phoenix, and very soon LA, and very soon Austin. They're expanding, not staying in one spot for eternity. > Meanwhile Tesla and Comma (both pure vision) are the only operational L3 systems being used every day by regular people to drive millions of miles. What a coincidence, because L2 (what Tesla actually is) to L4 self driving are millions of miles away from each other.
    - gibolt 3y ago
      Tesla is legally Level 2, but has done 500 million miles of driving, with the 'driver' acting as supervisor. The race is on, and if Tesla can fix a large number of small issue, they'll be able to do a massive global rollout fairly rapidly.
      - lorstic 3y ago
        Isn't it concerning that Tesla has 500 million miles of driving and is still L2, when Waymo is at 20 million and they're at L4? Maybe Tesla's approach isn't the way to go.
        gibolt 3y ago
        The company decides the level. Tesla's approach is to get more real-world training data to reach a general solution, while Waymo goes slow with pre-mapping as a requirement. Tesla's approach will likely be the winner long-term and can be flipped on globally far faster than Waymo's could
        ra7 3y ago
        Everyone’s working on a general solution, including Waymo. Everyone has large real world (and even larger simulated) training data. It’s not just Tesla despite what is widely claimed in Tesla circles. Others just choose to deploy in certain places because of market, operational and safety reasons. This notion of Tesla just ingesting training data which magically outputs a general self driving solution is nonsense. The levels aren’t just slapped on by the companies for vanity. They indicate liability and therefore capability.
        gibolt 3y ago
        I said approach, not vanity. Having 200,000+ safety drivers across the U.S. and classifying it as level 2 is Tesla's approach. Waymo's approach is a Level 4 system from the start, but in a very limited operating environments, and slowly expanding.
  - MobileVet 3y ago
    Tesla is Level 2. Too many sources to cite but here is Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Autopilot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Autopilot
  - fragmede 3y ago
    Vision-only is stupid. I can't see through fog and have a tough time with glare and can't see in the dark. Other technologies aren't subject to the same limitations. Don't we want these things to be better at driving than humans?
    - lopkeny12ko 3y ago
      You say vision-only is stupid, but Tesla FSD is the only full self-driving system deployed to millions of drivers and usable anywhere in the world, right now, at scale. > Don't we want these things to be better at driving than humans? Sure we do. Your options are, a as-good-as-a-human-driver for 1 unit of cost, or a better-than-human-driver at 1000 units of cost. Realistically, which do you pick? Other tech like Waymo is good. They drive well. But it's not scalable--expensive mapping and hundreds of thousands of lines of code written to address the nuances of whatever city they specialize the solution to. Not to mention that they only operate in cities with sunny weather all year round!
iknowstuff 3y ago
Cue the Mercedes apologists pointing out their „L3” system that can be used on a handful of stretches of nevada freeways, below 30mph, only when there’s a car leading directly ahead, and only when there’s little road curvature. But hey bragging rights. Good luck finding non-press videos of it in action
gscho 3y ago
Who is George?
- LegitShady 3y ago
  George Hotz. Niche celebrity hackerman. Comma.ai self driving car stuff with cameras only. In an interview some years ago (I think it was lex friedman) he was asked about Tesla and their radars etc and he said he thinks the future of self driving cars is vision only.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Waterluvian 3y ago
Vision is necessary but lidar and other sensor types are probably going to be a powerful supplement. One can possibly compensate for an inferior “brain” by having more kinds of data to discern meaning from.
- LegitShady 3y ago
  George Hotz take was that vision alone could be trained to get to human or near human driving ability, but that the sensor fusion part was confusing the machine learning and much harder to get to that level. Maybe he'll be wrong in the future but for now even Tesla seems to have pulled the radar stuff from their cars.
  - Waterluvian 3y ago
    Yeah, we don’t know yet. Maybe in the future! But Tesla or anyone else pulling radar stuff doesn’t really suggest he’s right. Until any of them succeed, it doesn’t mean much.
    - LegitShady 3y ago
      To some degree it is an expert opinion. Opinions can change or be wrong but they still have some noteworthiness
ra7 3y ago
Must be why his Comma.ai product is still relegated to hands-free lane keeping.
adrr 3y ago
Are there any vision only self driving cars on the road?

lorstic 3y ago

Vision-only is very very very far behind other techniques. Cruise (the self driving company, not OP) was killed by an overzealous CEO, not by their chosen technique. Waymo drives great in SF.

wewtyflakes 3y ago
+1 for Waymo; it feels safe and I have seen it navigate tricky road situations to my surprise.
ramesh31 3y ago
>Cruise (the self driving company, not OP) was killed by an overzealous CEO, not by their chosen technique. Waymo drives great in SF. Cruise is dead regardless of how you spin it. And Waymo will continue to piddle around SF with their $500,000 frankenstein cars until eternity. Meanwhile Tesla and Comma (both pure vision) are the only operational L3 systems being used every day by regular people to drive millions of miles. The legacy manufacturers will end up licensing one or the other, a la Android/iOS.
- ra7 3y ago
  You’re wrong on most counts. 1. Waymo costs around $120,000 and the cost is rapidly dropping with new hardware generations and vehicle platforms. They’re in LA, soon in Austin, airport rides in Phoenix and imminent highway driving. 2. Tesla and Comma are only L2, not even L3.
- lorstic 3y ago
  > Waymo will coninue piddling around SF with their $500,000 cars until eternity And Phoenix, and very soon LA, and very soon Austin. They're expanding, not staying in one spot for eternity. > Meanwhile Tesla and Comma (both pure vision) are the only operational L3 systems being used every day by regular people to drive millions of miles. What a coincidence, because L2 (what Tesla actually is) to L4 self driving are millions of miles away from each other.
  - gibolt 3y ago
    Tesla is legally Level 2, but has done 500 million miles of driving, with the 'driver' acting as supervisor. The race is on, and if Tesla can fix a large number of small issue, they'll be able to do a massive global rollout fairly rapidly.
    - lorstic 3y ago
      Isn't it concerning that Tesla has 500 million miles of driving and is still L2, when Waymo is at 20 million and they're at L4? Maybe Tesla's approach isn't the way to go.
      - gibolt 3y ago
        The company decides the level. Tesla's approach is to get more real-world training data to reach a general solution, while Waymo goes slow with pre-mapping as a requirement. Tesla's approach will likely be the winner long-term and can be flipped on globally far faster than Waymo's could
        ra7 3y ago
        Everyone’s working on a general solution, including Waymo. Everyone has large real world (and even larger simulated) training data. It’s not just Tesla despite what is widely claimed in Tesla circles. Others just choose to deploy in certain places because of market, operational and safety reasons. This notion of Tesla just ingesting training data which magically outputs a general self driving solution is nonsense. The levels aren’t just slapped on by the companies for vanity. They indicate liability and therefore capability.
        gibolt 3y ago
        I said approach, not vanity. Having 200,000+ safety drivers across the U.S. and classifying it as level 2 is Tesla's approach. Waymo's approach is a Level 4 system from the start, but in a very limited operating environments, and slowly expanding.
- MobileVet 3y ago
  Tesla is Level 2. Too many sources to cite but here is Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Autopilot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Autopilot
- fragmede 3y ago
  Vision-only is stupid. I can't see through fog and have a tough time with glare and can't see in the dark. Other technologies aren't subject to the same limitations. Don't we want these things to be better at driving than humans?
  - lopkeny12ko 3y ago
    You say vision-only is stupid, but Tesla FSD is the only full self-driving system deployed to millions of drivers and usable anywhere in the world, right now, at scale. > Don't we want these things to be better at driving than humans? Sure we do. Your options are, a as-good-as-a-human-driver for 1 unit of cost, or a better-than-human-driver at 1000 units of cost. Realistically, which do you pick? Other tech like Waymo is good. They drive well. But it's not scalable--expensive mapping and hundreds of thousands of lines of code written to address the nuances of whatever city they specialize the solution to. Not to mention that they only operate in cities with sunny weather all year round!

iknowstuff 3y ago

Cue the Mercedes apologists pointing out their „L3” system that can be used on a handful of stretches of nevada freeways, below 30mph, only when there’s a car leading directly ahead, and only when there’s little road curvature. But hey bragging rights. Good luck finding non-press videos of it in action

gscho 3y ago

Who is George?

LegitShady 3y ago
George Hotz. Niche celebrity hackerman. Comma.ai self driving car stuff with cameras only. In an interview some years ago (I think it was lex friedman) he was asked about Tesla and their radars etc and he said he thinks the future of self driving cars is vision only.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Waterluvian 3y ago

Vision is necessary but lidar and other sensor types are probably going to be a powerful supplement. One can possibly compensate for an inferior “brain” by having more kinds of data to discern meaning from.

LegitShady 3y ago
George Hotz take was that vision alone could be trained to get to human or near human driving ability, but that the sensor fusion part was confusing the machine learning and much harder to get to that level. Maybe he'll be wrong in the future but for now even Tesla seems to have pulled the radar stuff from their cars.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  Yeah, we don’t know yet. Maybe in the future! But Tesla or anyone else pulling radar stuff doesn’t really suggest he’s right. Until any of them succeed, it doesn’t mean much.
  - LegitShady 3y ago
    To some degree it is an expert opinion. Opinions can change or be wrong but they still have some noteworthiness

ra7 3y ago

Must be why his Comma.ai product is still relegated to hands-free lane keeping.

adrr 3y ago

Are there any vision only self driving cars on the road?