4 ms·

What is their claim about latency here? > Our vehicle-to-RA connection is also as fast as the blink of an eye. Median one-way latency is approximately 150 mill

What is their claim about latency here? > Our vehicle-to-RA connection is also as fast as the blink of an eye. Median one-way latency is approximately 150 milliseconds for U.S. based operations centers and 250 milliseconds for RA based abroad. That's still not fast enough for remote control, but are they implying they only send the RAs screenshots, since sending video would take seconds, not milliseconds?

AlotOfReading 8mo ago
Their claim is talking about latency, not bandwidth. What you're talking about is throughput, which can usually be solved by throwing more money at the problem.
xnx 8mo ago
They had to throw something in about speed even though the gating factor is the RA's ability to interpret the situation and decide a course of action. I wouldn't be surprised if actions required agreement between decisions by two independent RAs.
gruez 8mo ago
>That's still not fast enough for remote control, but are they implying they only send the RAs screenshots, since sending video would take seconds, not milliseconds? Their earlier blog post has screenshots (?) of the UI that the "fleet response" people have access to. It seems to be a video feed combined with yes/no questions, along with some top-down UI to direct where the vehicle should go. https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response
meatmanek 8mo ago
You can stream video with milliseconds of latency, provided you have enough bandwidth for the video stream. Videoconferencing and cloud gaming both work on this principle. That said, I would argue that their focus on one-way latency is misinformation meant to make the picture look rosier than it actually is. Round-trip latency is what matters here -- the video feed needs to get to the assistant, then the assistant needs to react, then their response needs to get back to the car. If one-way latency is 250ms, then round-trip latency would presumably be 500ms, which is a very long time in the context of driving. At highway speeds, you'd travel ~44 feet / 13 meters in that time.
- gruez 8mo ago
  >That said, I would argue that their focus on one-way latency is misinformation meant to make the picture look rosier than it actually is. Round-trip latency is what matters here -- the video feed needs to get to the assistant, then the assistant needs to react, then their response needs to get back to the car. If one-way latency is 250ms, then round-trip latency would presumably be 500ms, which is a very long time in the context of driving. At highway speeds, you'd travel ~44 feet / 13 meters in that time. Right, which is why the blog post is titled "Advice, not control ..." and goes to explain that they're not relying on the "remote assistance" people to make split second judgements.
- Retric 8mo ago
  They don’t do human in the loop at highway speeds. Further the cars need to safely stop in an emergency without human intervention. There’s no way for the car to first notice a problem, then send a message to a call center which then routes to a human, and for that human to understand the situation, all fast enough to avoid a collision. Even 50ms is significant here let alone several seconds.
  - mcny 8mo ago
    That's not an achievement. Even a non intelligent low to mid end compact SUV such as a 2024 Mazda CX30 has cruise control that can detect cars stopped ahead to slow down, stop if necessary, and continue when the car in front starts moving. I'm just saying that "it avoids a collision" by not ramming into people or cars is table stakes and it makes us look incompetent if we tout it as a flagship feature.
    - Retric 8mo ago
      You say that but we’ve had cars that can do what you describe for a decade and yet actual autonomous driving is still waiting. Not failing due to a software or hardware issue is way more complicated than just usually working. Avoids a collision is similarly way more difficult than just detecting a stopped car. What needs to happen when a car blows out a tire at speed isn’t just slam on the breaks for example. At scale cars need to adapt to the conditions and drive defensively not just watch what’s directly in front of them.
fragmede 8mo ago
They could get rid of that latency by hiring Americans.
- fooker 8mo ago
  Any American within a good distance of a large city to mitigate latency issues can make about 4-5x driving for Uber or delivering food. And latency to small towns in the middle of nowhere is not significantly better than latency to Philippines. You can expect something in the ballpark of 70ms in both cases.
  - pythonaut_16 8mo ago
    Not realistic but a remote work Uber driver is kinda an interesting (if dystopian) concept.
    - ben_w 8mo ago
      I'm semi-seriously expecting remote-work Optimus driving to be a thing in the near future. Well, more so than it already is. A factory in the US* staffed entirely by humanoid robots has the same impact on US employment opportunities regardless of if the robots are controlled by AI in the sense of software or in case where the "Actually Indians" meme still applies. It's just that in the latter case your "illegal aliens" who are "stealing our jobs" are managing to do so without actually crossing the border, making it very difficult to deport them, and denying them access suddenly becomes a freedom of speech issue. * I'm in Europe, I don't think we'll be tolerating "new" "exciting" "opportunities" from Musk any time soon. I don't think China or Russia will be either. Or indeed more than half of the G20 nations. He'll be told to prove it, and get told "no" a lot because experiments based on his rhetoric and vision are no longer worth the downsides without solid proof both that it works as advertised and that he won't cut things off when he has a hissy fit.
- jeffbee 8mo ago
  People don't like to work in the middle of the night.

AlotOfReading 8mo ago

Their claim is talking about latency, not bandwidth. What you're talking about is throughput, which can usually be solved by throwing more money at the problem.

xnx 8mo ago

They had to throw something in about speed even though the gating factor is the RA's ability to interpret the situation and decide a course of action. I wouldn't be surprised if actions required agreement between decisions by two independent RAs.

gruez 8mo ago

>That's still not fast enough for remote control, but are they implying they only send the RAs screenshots, since sending video would take seconds, not milliseconds? Their earlier blog post has screenshots (?) of the UI that the "fleet response" people have access to. It seems to be a video feed combined with yes/no questions, along with some top-down UI to direct where the vehicle should go. https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response

meatmanek 8mo ago

You can stream video with milliseconds of latency, provided you have enough bandwidth for the video stream. Videoconferencing and cloud gaming both work on this principle. That said, I would argue that their focus on one-way latency is misinformation meant to make the picture look rosier than it actually is. Round-trip latency is what matters here -- the video feed needs to get to the assistant, then the assistant needs to react, then their response needs to get back to the car. If one-way latency is 250ms, then round-trip latency would presumably be 500ms, which is a very long time in the context of driving. At highway speeds, you'd travel ~44 feet / 13 meters in that time.

gruez 8mo ago
>That said, I would argue that their focus on one-way latency is misinformation meant to make the picture look rosier than it actually is. Round-trip latency is what matters here -- the video feed needs to get to the assistant, then the assistant needs to react, then their response needs to get back to the car. If one-way latency is 250ms, then round-trip latency would presumably be 500ms, which is a very long time in the context of driving. At highway speeds, you'd travel ~44 feet / 13 meters in that time. Right, which is why the blog post is titled "Advice, not control ..." and goes to explain that they're not relying on the "remote assistance" people to make split second judgements.
Retric 8mo ago
They don’t do human in the loop at highway speeds. Further the cars need to safely stop in an emergency without human intervention. There’s no way for the car to first notice a problem, then send a message to a call center which then routes to a human, and for that human to understand the situation, all fast enough to avoid a collision. Even 50ms is significant here let alone several seconds.
- mcny 8mo ago
  That's not an achievement. Even a non intelligent low to mid end compact SUV such as a 2024 Mazda CX30 has cruise control that can detect cars stopped ahead to slow down, stop if necessary, and continue when the car in front starts moving. I'm just saying that "it avoids a collision" by not ramming into people or cars is table stakes and it makes us look incompetent if we tout it as a flagship feature.
  - Retric 8mo ago
    You say that but we’ve had cars that can do what you describe for a decade and yet actual autonomous driving is still waiting. Not failing due to a software or hardware issue is way more complicated than just usually working. Avoids a collision is similarly way more difficult than just detecting a stopped car. What needs to happen when a car blows out a tire at speed isn’t just slam on the breaks for example. At scale cars need to adapt to the conditions and drive defensively not just watch what’s directly in front of them.

fragmede 8mo ago

They could get rid of that latency by hiring Americans.

fooker 8mo ago
Any American within a good distance of a large city to mitigate latency issues can make about 4-5x driving for Uber or delivering food. And latency to small towns in the middle of nowhere is not significantly better than latency to Philippines. You can expect something in the ballpark of 70ms in both cases.
- pythonaut_16 8mo ago
  Not realistic but a remote work Uber driver is kinda an interesting (if dystopian) concept.
  - ben_w 8mo ago
    I'm semi-seriously expecting remote-work Optimus driving to be a thing in the near future. Well, more so than it already is. A factory in the US* staffed entirely by humanoid robots has the same impact on US employment opportunities regardless of if the robots are controlled by AI in the sense of software or in case where the "Actually Indians" meme still applies. It's just that in the latter case your "illegal aliens" who are "stealing our jobs" are managing to do so without actually crossing the border, making it very difficult to deport them, and denying them access suddenly becomes a freedom of speech issue. * I'm in Europe, I don't think we'll be tolerating "new" "exciting" "opportunities" from Musk any time soon. I don't think China or Russia will be either. Or indeed more than half of the G20 nations. He'll be told to prove it, and get told "no" a lot because experiments based on his rhetoric and vision are no longer worth the downsides without solid proof both that it works as advertised and that he won't cut things off when he has a hissy fit.
jeffbee 8mo ago
People don't like to work in the middle of the night.