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> These cars are literally unsupervised. Unsupervised in what sense? There's internal cameras that are periodically checked. Weight and seatbelt sensors that g
by tmpz22 2y ago
> These cars are literally unsupervised.
Unsupervised in what sense? There's internal cameras that are periodically checked. Weight and seatbelt sensors that give alerts if a passenger is or puts objects in the drivers seat, or if too many individuals get in the car.
I'd be shocked if a similar or greater level of observability doesn't also exist outside the car.
- Aerbil313 2y agoI think GP meant unsupervised during the ride by a remote human driver.
- 0max 2y agoI've had a dude with a Tagalog accent take over the speakers in my car and asked me and the folks I was inside with to leave because I decided to clown car it with friends visiting from out of state. With that said, there for sure is someone monitoring, but it's similar to how checkout at Amazon Go stores went. I'd be curious to know how this monitoring scales over time.
- eightysixfour 2y agoI don’t work for Amazon but I have worked with the tech. The media really ran with a misunderstanding there - the error rate for JWO is dramatically lower than people seem to think. https://www.forrester.com/blogs/no-amazon-isnt-killing-just-walk-out-but-rather-pushing-hard-in-it/ https://www.forrester.com/blogs/no-amazon-isnt-killing-just-...
- fragmede 2y agoWe have computers that can drive a car in city traffic and you're worried that we can't have a computer look at the inside of a car and tell me if someone's left a mess? A non-ML model background subtraction algorithm from the 2000's could tell you that.
- TremendousJudge 2y agocomputers can't smell
- traverseda 2y agoVOC sensors are pretty good
- Auracle 2y ago“Massive fart detected. Initializing ejector seat in 3, 2…” I’m not sure how you could make that work. People that eat Indian food step in and it might get set off, so people will cry racism. You drive next to a particular industrial plant, etc..
- bushbaba 2y agoI’ll be curious how this is profitable long term.
- DANmode 2y agoDoes your long term include changing from offshoring? If not, what are you expecting to be prohibitive?
- gnicholas 2y ago> Unsupervised in what sense? Unsupervised in the sense that there's no driver there to clean the car when it gets dirty. At the same time, presumably part of the odor of an uber comes from the driver, so that helps. I wonder if waymos roll down the window (weather permitting) between riders, to air it out. Might be dangerous at a red light, since people could throw stuff in or even dive in through open windows.
- browningstreet 2y agoOr, maybe.. when the Waymo cars return to the depot periodically during the day. https://youtu.be/3QZ3e7mWD9E?si=CbP063vAtrnOTihp https://youtu.be/3QZ3e7mWD9E?si=CbP063vAtrnOTihp
- gnicholas 2y agoMakes sense if they're nearby frequently, but if vehicles are serving larger areas, that would happen less often.
- dgoldstein0 2y agoThey may have multiple depots in the larger area. Maybe spread further apart though
- gnicholas 2y agoTrue! Presumably they'd refuel the vehicles in these places as well. The number of depots would depend on how much time you want to waste having vehicles driving out-of-direction and (1) the cost of additional real estate plus (2) the cost of employees at each location.
- BtM909 2y agoThey're electric cars, so I assume they don't need to be juiced up in between rides.
- gambiting 2y ago>>Unsupervised in what sense? There's internal cameras that are periodically checked. What do you think is more likely to get vandalized - a room with a human sitting in it, or a room with a camera watching it?
- iwontberude 2y agoThe room with the human sitting in it, because humans are known to vandalize things.
- gambiting 2y agoI can't believe I have to specify this, but I obviously meant "other than by the human watching the room". Equally I don't expect the Uber driver to be the one vandalizing their own taxi.
- sulam 2y agoAnd yet you'll find that your definition of clean may far exceed the driver of an Uber's at least every other trip.
- iwontberude 2y agoThey do occasionally, I smell smoke in the headliner because the driver is an occasional smoker.
- standardUser 2y agoThey have my credit card and they could ban me from their app. It's not like people constantly trash hotel rooms or rental cars.
- rob74 2y ago99.9% of people also don't vandalize toilets, buses, trains and other public amenities, it's the 0.1% that do that's the problem...
- ivanhoe 2y agoHow do you remotely detect if car stinks or not?
- ctvo 2y ago> How do you remotely detect if car stinks or not? Why do you think they need to? These cars go to a centralize location every night, I would assume, and cleaning at scale can happen. How often do you think an Uber driver cleans their car in comparison?
- potatolicious 2y agoNot to mention the problem is pretty eminently solvable: let users flag a car as having an unacceptable condition. If that happens dispatch a new car and send the dirty car directly back to home base for cleaning. The main problem with Uber/taxi quality is that the responsibility for cleanliness is on individual drivers, with widely varying results as a natural outcome. In fact a lot of problems with Ubers and taxis is downstream from the ownership and responsibility model. The advantage of something like Waymo is that the responsibility is now on Waymo itself. Worth noting that this is a problem in other lines of business: it's harder to ensure quality in franchises vs. stores operated directly by the brand. The more independent parties you have in the mix the more incentives become misaligned and the fewer levers you have available to ensure compliance to some standard. This also isn't impossible to solve with human drivers, because ultimately this isn't a technological problem but an organizational one. Livery car services where drivers are employees (as opposed to independent owner-operators contractors) can centralize cleaning and training, and have more means to ensure compliance to a standard. The "downside" of such a model is that there are many more laws to ensure you can't shovel your own expenses onto the employee.
- BurningFrog 2y agoPeople take taxis because they're too drunk to drive. This sometimes leads to in-car vomiting. There are also still smokers among us.
- hiptobecubic 2y ago
- BurningFrog 2y agoIf the cameras are not AI monitored now, they will be next month.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoBy mechanical Turks for a few years.
- bamboozled 2y agoThere's internal cameras that are periodically checked. Not appealing for me personally.