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Waymo issues software and mapping recall after robotaxi crashes into a pole
- bastawhiz 2y agoThis is the most interesting part, in my opinion: > Waymo’s recall was deployed by the company’s engineers at the central depot where the vehicles return for regular maintenance and testing. It was not through an over-the-air software update, like some of Tesla’s recent recalls. I'd be interested to learn more about why the updates are manual, and also whether the map data is fully local to the vehicle. Tesla obviously does the polar opposite of this, and it seems to have at least some degree of success, but Tesla's approach has always seemed like it would be subject to some bad potential failure modes in my mind. How much data does this amount to? Gigs? Terabytes? On the same note, I'm curious about what data gets pulled from the map versus sensor data. The car seems to have used map data instead of sensor data (unless I'm misunderstanding?). Whether there's a curb seems to be exactly the sort of thing you could rely on sensors for, mostly because you also already need to look for obstructions which necessarily can't be in map data.
- unshavedyak 2y agoMaybe it's about validation, not necessarily update data. They do seem to take safety more serious than Tesla does.
- xnx 2y agoIt's a shame there are so many trade secrets involved, because it would be especially fascinating to get more details on their entire system everything from advanced topics like how they blend ML with traditional rule-based logic to how they manage data like maps (versioning, distributed updates, etc.)
- ra7 2y agoAgreed. They publish some impressive research on https://waymo.com/research/ https://waymo.com/research/, but are very tight-lipped about many things. I've always wanted to know how they maintain maps and what their in-vehicle compute hardware looks like. They don't want to share anything beyond high level blog posts.
- AlotOfReading 2y agoIt sounds weird to say, but updates being applied only in-garage doesn't mean they're not going over the air. However, updates can include software for between dozens and hundreds of individual processors. That makes them quite large. The real data pigs are driving logs and map data though, which are usually serious storage constraints in autonomous vehicles.
- bastawhiz 2y agoYeah, I can definitely understand that it's probably far faster (and cheaper, and reliable) to transfer the data in the shop with a USB cable in both directions. In fact, it's probably fastest to have a small bank of hard drives that you can physically pull from the vehicle and swap out for a fresh one. You could probably pack a few hundred TB of storage into a unit that could fit in a briefcase and have it loaded with fresh map data and lots of room for logs.
- AlotOfReading 2y agoYou've possibly misinterpreted what I said. To gesture vaguely some more, it's not necessarily about what's fastest, but rather what involves the least human intervention. Wish I could be more clear.
- choppaface 2y agoCould be a lidar failure, or potential failure, that needed a firmware update to address.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rvnx 2y agoI'm sure they did it out of caution, considering their excellent track record. Love this company, would like to see them expanding.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoI'm interested about the legal requirements of Waymo filing a recall notice with the NHTSA. That is, all the affected cars were actually owned by Waymo - could they have just updated the cars anyway, by themselves. To emphasize, I'm genuinely curious. I don't understand how the recall notice process works if your product isn't owned by anyone else but you.
- throwup238 2y agoProduct recall insurance is a relatively common rider on general liability insurance. I don’t know if that’s what drives Waymo’s decision here but it’s pretty common for such policies to require the insured to play nice with regulators and not pull any stunts, otherwise they’ll fight any payout.
- LanceJones 2y agoI don't think the economics will work (for quite some time). They have ~670 cars in total, and still have seriously negative cash flow.
- webwielder2 2y ago"Recall" really needs to be retired as a term.
- nickff 2y agoIt’s a term of art; as such, it’s probably here to stay.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoBut, in this case, it's not a term of art, it's a specific legal definition. It's a "recall" because Waymo filed a recall notice with the NHTSA.
- patmorgan23 2y agoterm of art - noun noun: term of art; plural noun: terms of art a word or phrase that has a precise, specialized meaning within a particular field or profession. "‘public domain’ is a term of art in copyright law and you shouldn't throw it around if you don't know what it means"
- TacticalCoder 2y agoWhat'd be the proper term then? In french when, for example, many cars are sent back to the dealerships (or factory) to fix something, it's called a "campagne de rappel ("recall campaign"). P.S: I've got nothing against "recall" being recalled so that it can be fixed ; )
- IncreasePosts 2y agoI think that's the problem. "Recall" to most people means "I need to take my car to the dealership, and they will fix something dangerous with the car and give it back to me". Whereas, may recalls these days are just "Your car performed an over the air update while you were sleeping". Maybe we need the concept of "physical recall" and "software recall".
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- Animats 2y ago"The update corrects an error in the software that “assigned a low damage score” to the telephone pole." What did it get classified as? What's a Waymo allowed to hit?
- mucle6 2y agoMy best guess is they're lying, or they model curbs to have a "low damage score" so its okay if the ai thinks theres a 10% chance a path will hit a curb. I'm excited for self driving cars, but I have reservations about a system that has to hard code "don't hit a telephone pole". It reminds me of this skit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
- magicalist 2y ago> My best guess is they're lying It would be extremely silly to lie about an implementation detail that doesn't matter in an official recall filing with an agency currently investigating you for your reporting of incidents like this. It could also just be everything gets a damage score, including reflection artifacts that aren't really there or paper garbage in the road, and in this case the pole was identified incorrectly, given a low score, and the car thought it could keep driving. The verge seems to quote the filing, it would be nice if they had linked it. I can't find it from searching.
- LanceJones 2y agoCruise withheld details (lied by omission) about the person they ran over...
- gowld 2y agoThe robocar "trolley problem" appears to be real.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- AlotOfReading 2y ago
- mehlmao 2y agoIf self-driving vehicles are tested on public streets, all data generated should be public. Companies should be cooperating, not competing, on "don't hit telephone poles" and "don't run over children".
- patmorgan23 2y agoShould all Google Street view data be publicly available?
- readyman 2y ago[flagged]
- unshavedyak 2y agoJust annoying how it's always privatize the profits, socialize the risk.
- nickff 2y agoThe companies doing the mapping and algorithm develop do face significant legal and technical risk, and they’re unlikely to be bailed out. Perhaps the public is facing some safety risk, but this isn’t what was usually meant by your idiom of choice.
- unshavedyak 2y agoI disagree that they face significant risk, personally. But perhaps i'm just too much of a pessimist. To me, there is a safety trail involving everyone on the road, with no ability to opt-out. The corporation will yield net profits from this, and the people will suffer the losses from this. That seems close enough to the idiom, in my view. But i'm no expert.
- bcrl 2y agoNo, that would be open access to data, which is how science has made progress since time began. Or are you saying the scientific method doesn't apply to implementing self driving cars?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- LeifCarrotson 2y agoAfter some sleuthing and Geoguessring, here's the alley where it happened: https://maps.app.goo.gl/UNUzQn686ESYWbfo7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/UNUzQn686ESYWbfo7 Further south of the pin, by the section of the alley with stripes on the pavement behind the garages for 842 N 6th Ave (but not on 6th or 7th, on an unnamed alley between the two). Let me repeat - it's an alley. The Google Maps car didn't even go down that road (though it looks to have been under construction when the Maps car went through). Without exclusing Waymo (they had their car do something dangerous and stupid) this is the kind of pseudo-off-road parking lot/driveway/construction zone nav stuff that's really hard to get right, and almost requires AGI. I think the real error was not the damage score but the planning algorithm that directed it to drive down and to continue through that alley. I think we'll soon get to (if we're not there already) a form of level 2 driver aids or level 3 geofenced self driving (highway only?) that's safer than average human drivers. I think we're a long way from self-driving cars that will assign a low damage score and drive over an empty cardboard box in an unmarked, unmapped private alley, and we may never get there. But that doesn't mean Waymo can't or shouldn't exist, it means they need to shut down the car and delegate to a human when they're stuck and not not on public, mapped, confirmed clear roads. Maybe that means it can't pick you up from the back of the Chic Fil A parking lot or the entrance to the mall that's an island in a quarter mile of private parking lots and you have to go to the nearest parking spot on the actual road, but if the alternative is assigning damage scores to stuff in alleys that's probably for the best.
- wmf 2y agoI assume Waymo is continuously improving the safety of their software. It's bizarre to classify two of these updates as "recalls" but not the others.