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> fundamental differences No. A Tesla with a driver and a Waymo have a lot in common: "When self driving cars don't actually drive themselves" https://www.nyt

> fundamental differences No. A Tesla with a driver and a Waymo have a lot in common: "When self driving cars don't actually drive themselves" https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/11/insider/when-self-driving-cars-dont-actually-drive-themselves.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/11/insider/when-self-driving... There isn't a big story to this. Does Waymo share details about how and when its vehicles are driven remotely? Since the answer is no, you can only assume that it is pretty often. Really kudos to Zoox for turning a profile about them into this unveiling of Waymo. I fell for Waymo's sleight of hand. Aspirationally, we really do want self driving cars.

05 2y ago
> when its vehicles are driven remotely? They aren't. The car asks the remote operator about its options, the operator suggests an option, the car proceeds. Nobody is driving in realtime over LTE, that would be insane.
- tzs 2y ago
  > Nobody is driving in realtime over LTE, that would be insane. To be pedantic that's not really a good argument against the possibility of remote driving. All of Waymo's service areas are inside the coverage areas of AT&T's 5G+, Verizon's 5G Ultra Wide, and T-Mobile's 5G Ultra Capacity networks.
  - doctorpangloss 2y ago
    Just because they figured out an efficient way for the cars to be driven remotely doesn't mean that the cars are not being driven remotely. This ventures a bit into a subjective sense of what is self driving, and clearly, Waymos overstate their self driving ability through a variety of very clever, very powerful sleights of hand.
kccqzy 2y ago
Waymo shared that their disengagement rate is 17k miles per disengagement meaning they are driven by human test drivers once per 17k miles, across all causes. It doesn't include assists by humans because that's not driving: it's merely remote humans answering a question about where to drive in case of a novel obstacle on the road. You'd be nuts to think remote humans actually drive: the internet infrastructure is not designed for guaranteed low latency. I also wouldn't trust NYT reporting on anything related to Big Tech: they have a well-documented pattern of anti-big-tech biased reporting.
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  > That's not driving: it's merely remote humans answering a question about where to drive in case of a novel obstacle on the road. Listen to yourself.
  - kccqzy 2y ago
    Google Maps tells me where to drive. Does that count as driving? If so, Google has achieved self driving decades ago.
    - doctorpangloss 2y ago
      > Does that count as driving? In this comment, you are saying the verbatim words "where to drive" to mean the navigation that Google Maps does, but then you used the verbatim words "where to drive" to mean resolving questions about obstacles. So I guess, yes, resolving questions about obstacles is indeed remote driving, and navigation questions from Google Maps is not remote driving. But everyone already knows that. The sort of obvious definition of self driving means no human intervention whatsoever, which Waymos also fail. So I don't know. Why doesn't Waymo use Google Maps instead of people to tell the car, "where to drive"?
      - kccqzy 2y ago
        Very simple. Because there are real-time conditions on the road not known by Google Maps. Google Maps can tell me to turn right at an intersection, but I can see that police cars have blocked that road so I decide to proceed straight. Same thing with Waymo; its routing indicates turning right but it finds obstacles on the right. So it asks a remote human what to do. Both of these are "where to drive" questions. It's just that their answers come from different data sources, and one is easier to answer than the other.
  - fnordpiglet 2y ago
    It’s the difference between Star Craft and Doom.
- 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
agildehaus 2y ago
Waymos are NEVER "driven remotely". Occasionally there are problems of being stuck (at 0 mph) due to a lack of aggressiveness or the refusal to violate a rule, or being in a loop the car can't figure a way out of. Often times this is just a safety precaution, at this early stage, of wanting a human in the loop to confirm a plan, but sometimes it's because the system isn't robust enough to properly make the plan and I'm sure that's where a lot of the development effort is currently pointed -- reducing these events to as close to zero as possible. That's the long tail. It never really quite goes away.

05 2y ago

> when its vehicles are driven remotely? They aren't. The car asks the remote operator about its options, the operator suggests an option, the car proceeds. Nobody is driving in realtime over LTE, that would be insane.

tzs 2y ago
> Nobody is driving in realtime over LTE, that would be insane. To be pedantic that's not really a good argument against the possibility of remote driving. All of Waymo's service areas are inside the coverage areas of AT&T's 5G+, Verizon's 5G Ultra Wide, and T-Mobile's 5G Ultra Capacity networks.
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  Just because they figured out an efficient way for the cars to be driven remotely doesn't mean that the cars are not being driven remotely. This ventures a bit into a subjective sense of what is self driving, and clearly, Waymos overstate their self driving ability through a variety of very clever, very powerful sleights of hand.

kccqzy 2y ago

Waymo shared that their disengagement rate is 17k miles per disengagement meaning they are driven by human test drivers once per 17k miles, across all causes. It doesn't include assists by humans because that's not driving: it's merely remote humans answering a question about where to drive in case of a novel obstacle on the road. You'd be nuts to think remote humans actually drive: the internet infrastructure is not designed for guaranteed low latency. I also wouldn't trust NYT reporting on anything related to Big Tech: they have a well-documented pattern of anti-big-tech biased reporting.

doctorpangloss 2y ago
> That's not driving: it's merely remote humans answering a question about where to drive in case of a novel obstacle on the road. Listen to yourself.
- kccqzy 2y ago
  Google Maps tells me where to drive. Does that count as driving? If so, Google has achieved self driving decades ago.
  - doctorpangloss 2y ago
    > Does that count as driving? In this comment, you are saying the verbatim words "where to drive" to mean the navigation that Google Maps does, but then you used the verbatim words "where to drive" to mean resolving questions about obstacles. So I guess, yes, resolving questions about obstacles is indeed remote driving, and navigation questions from Google Maps is not remote driving. But everyone already knows that. The sort of obvious definition of self driving means no human intervention whatsoever, which Waymos also fail. So I don't know. Why doesn't Waymo use Google Maps instead of people to tell the car, "where to drive"?
    - kccqzy 2y ago
      Very simple. Because there are real-time conditions on the road not known by Google Maps. Google Maps can tell me to turn right at an intersection, but I can see that police cars have blocked that road so I decide to proceed straight. Same thing with Waymo; its routing indicates turning right but it finds obstacles on the right. So it asks a remote human what to do. Both of these are "where to drive" questions. It's just that their answers come from different data sources, and one is easier to answer than the other.
- fnordpiglet 2y ago
  It’s the difference between Star Craft and Doom.
2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

agildehaus 2y ago

Waymos are NEVER "driven remotely". Occasionally there are problems of being stuck (at 0 mph) due to a lack of aggressiveness or the refusal to violate a rule, or being in a loop the car can't figure a way out of. Often times this is just a safety precaution, at this early stage, of wanting a human in the loop to confirm a plan, but sometimes it's because the system isn't robust enough to properly make the plan and I'm sure that's where a lot of the development effort is currently pointed -- reducing these events to as close to zero as possible. That's the long tail. It never really quite goes away.