boxcardavin

8 ms·

31.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
Exactly, our mistakes are not inherently catastrophic. Stability is actually much harder than navigating.
32.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
Yo, I'm with that company doing the AV scooters and bikes, and yes it's much easier to nav than a car, we're looking at two magnitudes easier as far as computing power. We won't do autonomous with riders on-board so we c
33.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
Yeah, Seattle. Legislators and city govs have been super friendly and eager to help us, and we're still keeping really good pedal assist. The worst case scenario is in some areas we can disable throttles and make our pedal assist boost
34.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
I think you're exactly right. I'm a pretty hardcore cyclist and I commute 20 miles total every day but the number of people willing to exert massive effort for their commute is super small. My company is working on self-delivering
35.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
I tried to Buy It Now an item off Ebay just now and Ebay responded, "Sorry, this seller is on vacation, so this item is unavailable." Sinking ship.
36.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
Yes, nothing is more depressing than listening to the a16z podcasts where they're discussing the minutiae of well-established b2b saas strategies for capturing long tail revenue. Shit, let's build some robots instead.
37.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
Definitely, will be interesting to test. We have several cameras onboard so that we can see what happened but an equal concern with vandalism is how people feel about being watched. We want to avoid feeling like your neighborhood is suddenl
38.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
Hah, yeah it reminds me of a runaway shopping cart when you see our bike rolling. We expect people will get used to it eventually but we have some ideas to test in the future on how to make it more obvious, such as giving the bike a ‘face’
39.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
Weel, we're in Bellevue. It's a super fun problem to work on and one of the first thing we figured out was that trikes won't work because of their width and difficulty to ride, so we got a two-wheeled bike to balance. The aut
40.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
When a rider is onboard there’s no autonomy, the bike is only self-delivering.
41.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
This is absolutely the right analysis of how these systems work and why you can't expect autonomous cars to halt traffic deaths. What the Uber crash has shown us is that the tolerance for AVs killing people is probably exactly zero, no
42.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
As with laws, rules are made up by people and followed by some.
43.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
Interesting, hadn't considered a different bicycle shape so that it looks like it isn't empty at a glance. Will look into this. The delivery is totally possible, it doesn't really even take extra tech. The key insight we&#x27
44.
Show HN: Self-delivering autonomous bicycle
2 points by boxcardavin 8y ago|3 comments
45.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
The biggest ones produce over 5 megawatts at peak capacity, I think someone has built over 10 megawatts but I'm not sure. 5 megawatts is a pretty useless figure for most people to imagine, and I think imagining it in units of homes-pow
46.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
The Carnot limit applies specifically to heat engines but later proofs on the 2nd law of thermodynamics still cap the conversion of heat to useful energy. As long as you keep that in mind, 19% Carnot efficiency is really impressive for a sy
47.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
This is an incredible outcome and really shows how much work these UW grad students and Dr Smith have been working on low power passive tech. Great stuff, I wish more people in software were versed in physical tech so they could create hard
48.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
I drove into a dust storm in Central Washington in a rental Volvo several years back and autobraking saved me from rear ending a car. I made it out, but a huge pileup ended up happening just behind me. https://www.kiro7.com/
49.
by boxcardavin 8y ago
How do you imagine a self-driving bike would work? (serious question)
50.
by boxcardavin 9y ago
It tells you a lot, 20k cars in one city is a huge problem if you can't run while it rains, then you need to move them all to a storage location. If they do multiple cities then there are only so many without rain being likely, and exp
51.
by boxcardavin 9y ago
I wasn't commenting on feasibility or logistics, more on the state of their progress and if they can fully replace current services in cities or if it will augment them. If, for example, they don't work during heavy rain, then the
52.
by boxcardavin 9y ago
The big signal will be whether or not they launch this in a city that experiences a lot of rain, and what they do during bad weather.
53.
by boxcardavin 9y ago
Gyroscopic forces are not the dominant force keep a bicycle upright, this has been demonstrated with bicycles with counter-rotating wheels. Steering geometry of the front wheel is what self-stabilizes a bicycle.
54.
by boxcardavin 9y ago
Alex Roy is the most unlikable car reviewer out there, but somehow he keeps in the same circle as Demuro, Farrah, and (kinda) Harris. His reviews suffer because of his weird ego and self consciousness.
55.
by boxcardavin 9y ago
I kinda regret making the comment, but I'm also pretty informed by yours.
56.
by boxcardavin 9y ago
I couldn't make it very far through this video, I was reminded too much of an unattributed quote from Twitter, "Stephen Fry is a stupid person's idea of what an intelligent person is like".
57.
by boxcardavin 9y ago
You should read the history of retail, general stores used to be places you ordered goods from or where you had the counter person pick out your goods from the shelves behind them. Piggly Wiggly revolutionized this model by letting customer
58.
by boxcardavin 9y ago
No, I still expend enough power to keep my heart rate at ~160bpm during my ride, but now I cut my commute time in half and I ride more than twice as often.
59.
by boxcardavin 9y ago
I daily a Felt Nine E-20, it's a mountain bike with front suspension. I also have a Cube 400 and a Juiced u500 cargo bike. I recommend spending $3k on a bike with a Yamaha or Bosch motor, it's easy to justify that crazy price if y
60.
by boxcardavin 9y ago
I live in Seattle and there are a lot of hills when going east/west because it's a glacial area and the glaciers come down from Canada north/south. Fun!

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