Google launching driverless uber-like service next month

[CitizenVectron]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-13/waymo-to-start-first-driverless-car-service-next-month

 

Apparently they'v had 400 test families driving their Waymo cars for the last year. Looks like Google is going to get there before Uber.

[elbobo]

if they are fully driverless cars they are at least at level 4 autonomy if not level 5 which is a massive jump from the level 3 that car manufacturers are just starting to come out with.

[TwinIon]

My understanding is that in the early days of this commercial service, it'll still be limited to a pool of pre-approved riders and there will still be humans in the cars. Some of the riders in the test program do ride in cars without safety engineers. 

 

Still, it's exciting early days. 

[Guest]

I find this stuff very fascinating, particularly because I don’t like driving but live in a place where you have to have a car. I hope in the next 10-15 years I won’t have to own a car.

[Kal-El814]

18 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

I find this stuff very fascinating, particularly because I don’t like driving but live in a place where you have to have a car. I hope in the next 10-15 years I won’t have to own a car.

I too am eagerly anticipating new and creative ways for people to get pulled over for driving while black.

 

”Do you own this car?”

 

”No it’s driverl...”

 

”Step out of the car, sir.”

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

I too am eagerly anticipating new and creative ways for people to get pulled over for driving while black.

 

”Do you own this car?”

 

”No it’s driverl...”

 

”Step out of the car, sir.”

Not sure to laugh or cry.

[Kal-El814]

Just now, sblfilms said:

Not sure to laugh or cry.

Either one will be considered a hostile act, so do whatever feels best.

[Jason]

57 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

My understanding is that in the early days of this commercial service, it'll still be limited to a pool of pre-approved riders and there will still be humans in the cars. Some of the riders in the test program do ride in cars without safety engineers. 

 

Still, it's exciting early days. 

 

Honestly, if it's not ready to go 100% without human supervision then it's not ready to go. Uber obviously really fucked up with what they were doing that led to killing that pedestrian, but these babysitter drivers are also being given an impossible task. Nobody is going to be up to having nothing to do 99.9% of the time while still being fully alert and ready to jump in at a moment's notice in those other 0.1% of situations.

 

Level 4 seems like it's the worst phase of all this, since the lower levels of autonomy still require enough human interaction to keep the driver sufficiently engaged to actually intervene when necessary.

[TwinIon]

25 minutes ago, Jason said:

Honestly, if it's not ready to go 100% without human supervision then it's not ready to go. Uber obviously really fucked up with what they were doing that led to killing that pedestrian, but these babysitter drivers are also being given an impossible task. Nobody is going to be up to having nothing to do 99.9% of the time while still being fully alert and ready to jump in at a moment's notice in those other 0.1% of situations.

 

Level 4 seems like it's the worst phase of all this, since the lower levels of autonomy still require enough human interaction to keep the driver sufficiently engaged to actually intervene when necessary.

The in car engineers aren't just there to avoid catastrophic accidents like the Uber situation. They're there to look at all sorts of things that might help Google better the system. My understanding is that a lot of what they're watching for are issues where the car is being too safe. Waiting too long at stop signs or for left turns. There was a story about this going around about some of these struggles earlier this year.

 

I don't think those kinds of things mean that they're not ready to drive at all. According to the story in the OP, they've driven 5 million miles this year and average ~5k between instances when human drivers take over. Given the way these things work, I don't know how you'd ever expect them to get better without putting in the miles on real streets with real traffic. They're constantly trying to make better vision systems, be they lidar or radar, optical or IR cameras, but even with the best vision systems in the world, the algorithms driving the car are the things that need to improve the most right now. All told, I think that they're taking this whole process at a very reasonable pace.

 

I agree with your point far more when it comes to things like what Tesla is doing. Putting normal people into a situation where they might not understand the limitations of their car's autonomy seems far more precarious to me. Especially since those systems lack the advanced vision capabilities and much of the testing that Waymo is doing.

[Jason]

3 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

 

I don't think those kinds of things mean that they're not ready to drive at all. According to the story in the OP, they've driven 5 million miles this year and average ~5k between instances when human drivers take over. Given the way these things work, I don't know how you'd ever expect them to get better without putting in the miles on real streets with real traffic. They're constantly trying to make better vision systems, be they lidar or radar, optical or IR cameras, but even with the best vision systems in the world, the algorithms driving the car are the things that need to improve the most right now. All told, I think that they're taking this whole process at a very reasonable pace.

 

Let me parse this a little more finely. I'd probably agree that Level 4 is fine for freeways. But I'm far more dubious about letting it loose in urban areas.