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How are Waymo managing this? None of their competitors appear to be even close.

by moomin 2y ago

arbol 2y ago
There's unlikely to be a self-driving image dataset bigger than Google reCAPTCHA's. Maybe scale is the key to operating more safely.
sidibe 2y ago
Not skimping on sensors and having invested much more time and money and compute than their competitors. They were doing it first by years and have been spending the most on it throughout so not surprising they'd be ahead. Even now they've probably got several times more employees working on autonomy than Tesla
glzone1 2y ago
At least in SF the sensor suite on these must cost $$$. Tesla is like 6 cameras. These things have sensor and camera bumps everywhere. Tesla also struggled with route selection especially end of trip - google has very strong mapping and street view info. Compared to people who drive pretty poorly most of these will probably do better
- laweijfmvo 2y ago
  as a Tesla owner and Waymo rider, the two are not in the same category.
bastawhiz 2y ago
Four obvious reasons: 1. They've been doing it for ages. They had cars on the street fifteen years ago. 2. They bet on hardware that's not just cameras. Cameras—in practice—are still not the best tool for the job. Cameras see in 2D, they get dirty, they are easily blinded and obscured by dirt, etc. 3. They have data from every Google Street view and mapping car ever deployed. They have the most data and the most current data. Every Tesla on the road would need to be maxing out its LTE connection all the time and they still wouldn't have the breath and quality of data that Google has. 4. Google is throwing money at Waymo. They can see the potential profit if they win. They're not going to get dumped like Cruise.
- MrQuincle 2y ago
  Any background info on the betting on cameras alone? It sounds as silly as betting on an artificial version of our proprioception to be implemented in cars to measure acceleration. I also don't think they went all the way regarding neuromorphic engineering with spiking neural nets and artificial retinas. It's just so random to me what was decided to be good enough for autonomous navigation. Tesla went from very expensive cars down to cheaper ones. It would make so much more sense to do the same for perception. First go over board and go for high bandwidth input and lots of processing power and optimize later.
  - tim333 2y ago
    The betting on cameras alone is basically an Elon Musk thing. His reasoning is basically that if humans can do it AI should be able to do it. So far the software isn't really up to it but time will tell. Some stuff - https://www.engineering.com/now-revealed-why-teslas-have-only-camera-based-vision https://www.engineering.com/now-revealed-why-teslas-have-onl...
    - tzs 2y ago
      I wonder how that approach handles dense fog? I used to regularly have to make a left turn onto a rural highway on foggy mornings. Sometimes people drive faster than they should in fog. Sometimes fast enough that by the time they could see I'm in the intersection turning they would be too close to stop. Cars going fast enough to have that problem made enough sound that they could be heard quite a bit farther away than they could be seen. I'd open my windows at the intersection and listen until I couldn't hear any highway traffic. Then I'd know that any approaching cars are far enough away that I should have time to turn onto the highway and get up to speed before they arrive.
      - tim333 2y ago
        Yeah. Also I don't know how good the Tesla cameras are but my car has a reversing camera and it's ok for going back 2m at 2mph but kind of terrible compared to looking forward through the windscreen.
sgarland 2y ago
I don’t know, but it’s impressive. I’ve only ridden in one a few times, but the one at night tremendously impressed me. It successfully managed to navigate around various obstacles like people wandering into the street, a parked cop car blocking a lane and then some, etc.
sebzim4500 2y ago
Waymo are behind Tesla by most metrics given they only work in a few places.
- xnx 2y ago
  Waymo has decided to enable self driving in some locations. Tesla is not capable of self driving in any locations.
RobotToaster 2y ago
They use a reasonable sensor suite with RADAR and LIDAR, and don't try to rely purely on image recognition like tesla does.
aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
Waymo spends a lot on human oversight, where remote operators make a lot of "common sense" decisions that don't require an immediate response and which AI is not yet capable of solving. Humans actually do a lot of the navigation, suggesting paths that the car can drive along. An example I saw was a fire truck parked at an odd angle, poking out into the street, and the software didn't know what it was or what to do. The operator drew a path around the truck for the car to follow. This only works for taxis: it would be impossible for Tesla to do this since there aren't enough human operators to hire. But I suspect this means Waymo's software is ultimately more risk adverse. If a Tesla stops in the middle of the road then the customer has to take action, which is frustrating and makes the technology look bad, so there is strong incentive to remove that frustration even at the cost of safety. If a Waymo stops, the remote operator has to take action, and the customer can keep staring at their phone without being particularly affected - it just seems like the Waymo is "thinking."
- MoreMoore 2y ago
  Honestly, this is what a self-driving car should be. No interaction from the passenger required. Maybe eventually we'll be able to replace the human operator, but until then, risk averse AI where somebody remotely solves any unforeseen or unexpected issue is a decent compromise.
tantalor 2y ago
Teslas don't have lidar. "Lidar is lame, stupid"

How are Waymo managing this? None of their competitors appear to be even close.

by moomin 2y ago

How are Waymo managing this? None of their competitors appear to be even close.

There's unlikely to be a self-driving image dataset bigger than Google reCAPTCHA's. Maybe scale is the key to operating more safely.

sidibe 2y ago

Not skimping on sensors and having invested much more time and money and compute than their competitors. They were doing it first by years and have been spending the most on it throughout so not surprising they'd be ahead. Even now they've probably got several times more employees working on autonomy than Tesla

glzone1 2y ago

At least in SF the sensor suite on these must cost $$$. Tesla is like 6 cameras. These things have sensor and camera bumps everywhere. Tesla also struggled with route selection especially end of trip - google has very strong mapping and street view info. Compared to people who drive pretty poorly most of these will probably do better

laweijfmvo 2y ago
as a Tesla owner and Waymo rider, the two are not in the same category.

bastawhiz 2y ago

Four obvious reasons: 1. They've been doing it for ages. They had cars on the street fifteen years ago. 2. They bet on hardware that's not just cameras. Cameras—in practice—are still not the best tool for the job. Cameras see in 2D, they get dirty, they are easily blinded and obscured by dirt, etc. 3. They have data from every Google Street view and mapping car ever deployed. They have the most data and the most current data. Every Tesla on the road would need to be maxing out its LTE connection all the time and they still wouldn't have the breath and quality of data that Google has. 4. Google is throwing money at Waymo. They can see the potential profit if they win. They're not going to get dumped like Cruise.

MrQuincle 2y ago
Any background info on the betting on cameras alone? It sounds as silly as betting on an artificial version of our proprioception to be implemented in cars to measure acceleration. I also don't think they went all the way regarding neuromorphic engineering with spiking neural nets and artificial retinas. It's just so random to me what was decided to be good enough for autonomous navigation. Tesla went from very expensive cars down to cheaper ones. It would make so much more sense to do the same for perception. First go over board and go for high bandwidth input and lots of processing power and optimize later.
- tim333 2y ago
  The betting on cameras alone is basically an Elon Musk thing. His reasoning is basically that if humans can do it AI should be able to do it. So far the software isn't really up to it but time will tell. Some stuff - https://www.engineering.com/now-revealed-why-teslas-have-only-camera-based-vision https://www.engineering.com/now-revealed-why-teslas-have-onl...
  - tzs 2y ago
    I wonder how that approach handles dense fog? I used to regularly have to make a left turn onto a rural highway on foggy mornings. Sometimes people drive faster than they should in fog. Sometimes fast enough that by the time they could see I'm in the intersection turning they would be too close to stop. Cars going fast enough to have that problem made enough sound that they could be heard quite a bit farther away than they could be seen. I'd open my windows at the intersection and listen until I couldn't hear any highway traffic. Then I'd know that any approaching cars are far enough away that I should have time to turn onto the highway and get up to speed before they arrive.
    - tim333 2y ago
      Yeah. Also I don't know how good the Tesla cameras are but my car has a reversing camera and it's ok for going back 2m at 2mph but kind of terrible compared to looking forward through the windscreen.

sgarland 2y ago

I don’t know, but it’s impressive. I’ve only ridden in one a few times, but the one at night tremendously impressed me. It successfully managed to navigate around various obstacles like people wandering into the street, a parked cop car blocking a lane and then some, etc.

sebzim4500 2y ago

Waymo are behind Tesla by most metrics given they only work in a few places.

xnx 2y ago
Waymo has decided to enable self driving in some locations. Tesla is not capable of self driving in any locations.

RobotToaster 2y ago

They use a reasonable sensor suite with RADAR and LIDAR, and don't try to rely purely on image recognition like tesla does.

aithrowawaycomm 2y ago

Waymo spends a lot on human oversight, where remote operators make a lot of "common sense" decisions that don't require an immediate response and which AI is not yet capable of solving. Humans actually do a lot of the navigation, suggesting paths that the car can drive along. An example I saw was a fire truck parked at an odd angle, poking out into the street, and the software didn't know what it was or what to do. The operator drew a path around the truck for the car to follow. This only works for taxis: it would be impossible for Tesla to do this since there aren't enough human operators to hire. But I suspect this means Waymo's software is ultimately more risk adverse. If a Tesla stops in the middle of the road then the customer has to take action, which is frustrating and makes the technology look bad, so there is strong incentive to remove that frustration even at the cost of safety. If a Waymo stops, the remote operator has to take action, and the customer can keep staring at their phone without being particularly affected - it just seems like the Waymo is "thinking."

MoreMoore 2y ago
Honestly, this is what a self-driving car should be. No interaction from the passenger required. Maybe eventually we'll be able to replace the human operator, but until then, risk averse AI where somebody remotely solves any unforeseen or unexpected issue is a decent compromise.

tantalor 2y ago

Teslas don't have lidar. "Lidar is lame, stupid"