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Kyle here, Cruise CEO. It sucks when press (or even our own marketing) give well-meaning people like you the wrong impression. We need to fix this. The posit

by kvogt 12y ago

Kyle here, Cruise CEO. It sucks when press (or even our own marketing) give well-meaning people like you the wrong impression. We need to fix this. The positive impact self-driving cars will have on society far outweighs any desire we have to be first to market or turn a quick profit. We haven't launched a product yet, and we won't until it's safe. For example, we built a mashup of lane-keeping assist and adaptive cruise control within the first 3 months of starting the company. It wasn't safe enough, so we didn't launch it. We're on roughly our 5th major iteration of the product. It uses maps, but it also works fine without them. It uses a GPS, but it works fine without it. It uses lane markers for localization, but it works fine without those too. But it's still not safe enough, so we haven't launched it yet. Plenty of tough problems left to solve, but enough upside to justify our commitment.

woofyman 12y ago
Mashup ? That makes me feel so much better.
- rezistik 12y ago
  The part that should make you feel better is where they knew it wasn't safe, so they didn't release it. Prototyping by mashing things together is how a significant amount of products get started. Including cars.
  - woofyman 12y ago
    According to Wikipedia, a mashup is a term used to describe web development and combining music. It doesn't denote to me rigorous engineering development. And no, it doesn't inspire confidence in me that they didn't release a mashup that was unsafe.
- justin 12y ago
  This is why Kyle cofounder a company worth $1 billion and you're just the guy making sarcastic comments on the internet.
  - woofyman 12y ago
    I thought it was an odd adjective to use for a process where bugs equal death. He made a lot of money so that means a lowly developer can't question his choice of words ?
- Animats 12y ago
  "This is the Cruise RP1, the first autopilot for your car. ... Frees you from the pain of commuting, stop and go traffic, and long trips. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. ... Reserve yours at getcruise.com and join the driverless revolution." - Cruise RP1 commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEQqQj_zyHI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEQqQj_zyHI "Your Personal Chauffeur Keep your car. Just let it drive you." - getcruise.com "Be the first to experience Cruise. We're currently accepting 50 pre-orders for a 2015 launch. Order now to join the driverless revolution." - getcruise.com, a few months ago. (Now the site offers only a wait list.) If there's a "wrong impression" of Cruise, it's because that was the impression they deliberately gave. I have deep misgivings about almost-automatic driving. Full automatic driving seems to be within reach, and is not that far away. It's almost-automatic driving that's troubling. Suddenly handing control back to the driver when the automatic system can't cope is not going to work well. Commercial pilots have problems with that. Watch "Children of the Magenta" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10), where a chief pilot of American Airlines talks to other experienced pilots about how to use cockpit automation. Those are very well trained pilots. Yet this talk is about accidents which usually involved the end of a period where automated systems were flying the airplane, and then, for some reason, from conflicting traffic to weather to a runway change, the pilot had to take over. At that moment, sometimes the pilot didn't have full situational awareness, because they weren't flying the aircraft. That's when accidents happened. Drivers are not selected and trained like airline pilots. An almost-autopilot puts them in a situation where they may have to take over suddenly. One cannot expect drivers to do that with a high degree of success. The minimum safety requirement for automatic driving is probably to be able to pull over and come to a complete stop after a failure without user intervention. Or to drive slowly enough that slamming on the brakes is an adequate solution. That's probably why Google wants to initially deploy automatic driving on vehicles with a 25MPH top speed. At that speed, an emergency stop is a sufficient response to almost all problems. There's no need to be able to drive out of trouble at 25MPH. A high level of driver ineptitude has to be well tolerated. People are going to use automatic driving when tired, drunk, stoned, or looking at a phone. That has to work, and work well. If not, people will die. This is a very tough human factors problem.
neaanopri 12y ago
It would be terrible if a driver erroneously thought that the Cruise system was engaged when it wasn't, and crashed because of that. How do you try to minimize that risk?
- Animats 12y ago
  That's happened to aircraft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593
  - smellsOniony 12y ago
    The transcript was chilling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593#Full_transcript https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593#Full_trans...

by kvogt 12y ago

woofyman 12y ago

Mashup ? That makes me feel so much better.

rezistik 12y ago
The part that should make you feel better is where they knew it wasn't safe, so they didn't release it. Prototyping by mashing things together is how a significant amount of products get started. Including cars.
- woofyman 12y ago
  According to Wikipedia, a mashup is a term used to describe web development and combining music. It doesn't denote to me rigorous engineering development. And no, it doesn't inspire confidence in me that they didn't release a mashup that was unsafe.
justin 12y ago
This is why Kyle cofounder a company worth $1 billion and you're just the guy making sarcastic comments on the internet.
- woofyman 12y ago
  I thought it was an odd adjective to use for a process where bugs equal death. He made a lot of money so that means a lowly developer can't question his choice of words ?
Animats 12y ago
"This is the Cruise RP1, the first autopilot for your car. ... Frees you from the pain of commuting, stop and go traffic, and long trips. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. ... Reserve yours at getcruise.com and join the driverless revolution." - Cruise RP1 commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEQqQj_zyHI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEQqQj_zyHI "Your Personal Chauffeur Keep your car. Just let it drive you." - getcruise.com "Be the first to experience Cruise. We're currently accepting 50 pre-orders for a 2015 launch. Order now to join the driverless revolution." - getcruise.com, a few months ago. (Now the site offers only a wait list.) If there's a "wrong impression" of Cruise, it's because that was the impression they deliberately gave. I have deep misgivings about almost-automatic driving. Full automatic driving seems to be within reach, and is not that far away. It's almost-automatic driving that's troubling. Suddenly handing control back to the driver when the automatic system can't cope is not going to work well. Commercial pilots have problems with that. Watch "Children of the Magenta" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10), where a chief pilot of American Airlines talks to other experienced pilots about how to use cockpit automation. Those are very well trained pilots. Yet this talk is about accidents which usually involved the end of a period where automated systems were flying the airplane, and then, for some reason, from conflicting traffic to weather to a runway change, the pilot had to take over. At that moment, sometimes the pilot didn't have full situational awareness, because they weren't flying the aircraft. That's when accidents happened. Drivers are not selected and trained like airline pilots. An almost-autopilot puts them in a situation where they may have to take over suddenly. One cannot expect drivers to do that with a high degree of success. The minimum safety requirement for automatic driving is probably to be able to pull over and come to a complete stop after a failure without user intervention. Or to drive slowly enough that slamming on the brakes is an adequate solution. That's probably why Google wants to initially deploy automatic driving on vehicles with a 25MPH top speed. At that speed, an emergency stop is a sufficient response to almost all problems. There's no need to be able to drive out of trouble at 25MPH. A high level of driver ineptitude has to be well tolerated. People are going to use automatic driving when tired, drunk, stoned, or looking at a phone. That has to work, and work well. If not, people will die. This is a very tough human factors problem.

neaanopri 12y ago

It would be terrible if a driver erroneously thought that the Cruise system was engaged when it wasn't, and crashed because of that. How do you try to minimize that risk?

Animats 12y ago
That's happened to aircraft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593
- smellsOniony 12y ago
  The transcript was chilling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593#Full_transcript https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593#Full_trans...