11 ms·
Also relevant, when it rains in Miami during the summer, it pours. As in, zero visibility for 15-30 minutes, then it's past. So if it can handle Miami tropica
by ethbr1 2y ago
Also relevant, when it rains in Miami during the summer, it pours.
As in, zero visibility for 15-30 minutes, then it's past.
So if it can handle Miami tropical rain, it should be okay with all sorts of normal rain.
Out of curiosity, what's Waymo's current production sensor suite mix? I'd assume lidar and radar would also be very unhappy with the surrounding space suddenly being ~10%(?) liquid water droplets.
- david-gpu 2y agoI would expect service to be canceled while it is pouring down. Do we have reasons to believe that they have the ability to ride safely during heavy rain? I haven't been keeping up.
- RivieraKid 2y agoThey can handle heavy rain, see time 6:00: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bm1A3aaQnh0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bm1A3aaQnh0 From their August 2023 blog post: > During this past winter season in California with its record rain, high winds, and thunderstorms, we were able to maintain 99.4% fleet uptime
- david-gpu 2y agoThank you, that was fascinating.
- 1024core 2y agoHow does it make out lane markings? Or is it all just GPS-based?
- AlotOfReading 2y agoLocalization is primarily based on visual registration, i.e. matching the current surroundings to the closest data in its map. Lane markings are based on map data and what it's able to see in real-time.
- RivieraKid 2y agoMaybe similarly how humans do it.
- mikepurvis 2y agoHumans do it super badly in a heavy rain/snow though. We're basically blind and just toodle along following the guy in front and hoping for the best. A machine driver should not accept these conditions.
- drewgross 2y agoOn the contrary, sticking strictly to the lane markers when everyone else is blindly straddling lanes seems the worst of all worlds.
- mikepurvis 2y agoRight, but I’m arguing that the correct behaviour for everyone is to pull over and wait for conditions to improve — robots and humans alike.
- rstuart4133 2y agoWhere I come from that might be called a "shower". Heavy rain here is like fog. It's so thick you can only see a few meters, and the windscreen wipers can only give you a brief glimpse of what's ahead. It happens rarely. When it does, more cautious drivers give up and pull over, even if they are on the freeway. That makes travelling at high speed down on freeway at high speed in those conditions near suicidal. It only lasts a few minutes. I expect Waymo would handle like any human. Stop, or just creep forward.
- ethbr1 2y agoExample of moderate Miami tropical rain: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/HAvKGwtQ2Uo https://m.youtube.com/shorts/HAvKGwtQ2Uo
- tialaramex 2y agoIf it's too dangerous for humans to drive (regardless of whether they do anyway, humans do all manner of things which are unacceptably dangerous) then I don't expect Waymo to offer service even if they believe they technically could have the Waymo driver [their software] continue to deliver service.
- marcosdumay 2y agoThe weather becomes too dangerous to drive because of mechanical (lost of adherence) problems way sooner than humans have sensorial problems anyway. So if it's too dangerous for people, it's also too dangerous for computers.
- thegrim33 2y agoYou moved the goalpost by introducing the "too dangerous for humans to arrive" qualifier. The person you're replying to never said that. They asked if it would refuse to drive in pouring rain. They never asked if it would refuse to drive in scenarios where it's too dangerous for humans to drive.
- tialaramex 2y agoThe problem is that "pouring rain" is vague. So that's why I drew a more specific line.
- nilstycho 2y agoFar less than 10%. During a heavy downpour, by volume, about one part in a million is liquid. In a cubic meter of heavily rain, there are only a few tens of raindrops.
- naming_the_user 2y agoImagine if it were 10%, though. During the time it took for a droplet to fall 1 metre, you’d have 10cm of water on the floor. I reckon it’d feel quite heavy.
- ricardobeat 2y agoRain falls at 9m/s, so in a second you'd almost completely fill that space with 900 liters. For the immediate area around you, imagine an olympic pool of water falling roughly every second.
- ethbr1 2y agoAccording to NASA, terminal velocity for the largest droplets is ~10 m/s. Which seems oddly close (in magnitude) to Earth gravitational acceleration (9.8 m/s^2). Weird!
- deepsun 2y agoYep, but what matters for radar/lidar is the projection. I mean what percentage of 1 _square_ meter (not cubic meter) is occupied by droplet projections. Or, in radial terms, what percentage of "Solid angle" is occupied by rain droplets.
- CasperH2O 2y agoLiDAR sensors, like for example from SICK can have multiple 'layers' of sensors, which combined with various algorithms can handle rain pretty good.
- diggan 2y ago> So if it can handle Miami tropical rain, it should be okay with all sorts of normal rain. I feel like a lot of "How well does it handle rain?" comes down to how the roads are built and maintained (Huge puddles, proper drainage, etc) rather than about the car itself, as the car you could test by blasting it with water from different directions and amounts.
- alwa 2y agoThere’s also the question of how other drivers handle the rain. And I have to imagine it’s nontrivial to, on a test range alone, permute the full range of different surfaces’ handling characteristics under different precipitation conditions. I wonder whether, like many human drivers, Waymos might be wont to pull over and wait out the short-but-extreme Miami squalls.
- frakkingcylons 2y agoHopefully it does, because the drivers that don't stop are just driving blind and won't see the waymo.
- ibejoeb 2y agoNot just visibility in the rain, but diminished or fully obstructed visibility due to ponding and full flooding. Then there are the physical navigational problems associated with that. They probably shouldn't be driving though a foot of sea water.
- porphyra 2y agoLidars perform very well in the rain [1]. [1] https://ouster.com/insights/blog/lidar-vs-camera-comparison-in-the-rain https://ouster.com/insights/blog/lidar-vs-camera-comparison-...
- ethbr1 2y agoThanks! Super informative link, and what I was hoping to get.
- somethoughts 2y agoInterestingly is there a potential moral issue in the making here? What happens if/when self driving dependency is so prevalent that the majority of inhabitants in a city don't know how to drive. In addition add the fact that self driving cars don't have a steering wheel so even people who know how to take over driving can't actually take over. What happens if there's an event that requires a mass evacuation such as a Category 5 hurricane and the major self driving car companies deem it too risky to drive in the conditions that precede the storm?