How we’ve built the World’s Most Experienced Urban Driver
blog.waymo.com
blog.waymo.com
Yes it's amazing what they can do, but if after all this time they can't even react correctly in such a simple situation I really wonder if full self driving is feasible.
To me, it looks like the car rightfully stopped because it assumed the person was going to cross the parking lot.
The way it reacted it IMO just looks like clueless new driver.
Looking at that video seems pretty clear he's not going to cross. I'd expect at least some eye contact. If it were more ambiguous, as a driver, I'd probably gently slow down do I could stop quickly if circumstances demanded.
The computer will choose the action that minimizes the probability of harm. And they have more sensors and data in this situation.
I don't know if you can extrapolate from "can't react correctly in such a simple situation" for a few reasons. Fristly, I will point out that car stopped, but the complaint was that it was little bit more jerky than preferred. Also, automated drivers will excel and fail at different scenarios. Imagine the other way around: Imagine if Waymo's tech was ready for all roads, and we were evaluating letting humans drive in manual. One could say things like:
"I saw a human apply the break suddenly on the highway because they were checking their mirrors for a lane change when the car in front of the slowed down. The human had a delayed reaction because they were checking their mirrors. An automated driver would be able to analyze the lane change, and the traffic in front of them at the same time. Also the reaction time of the automated system is superior than humans... so I wonder if human driving is feasible."
I think when comparing FSD, one needs to compare it to human driving at some percentile, and not perfection :).
And yet here we see that the car either has a very slow reaction time or doesn't understand how pedestrians move around. That's what concerning me. Looking at the video again maybe, maybe the car thought the cart would roll further on the road when making the corner? That would justify the sudden reaction.
It's also the only interaction with a pedestrian in the video and I see no interactions with bikes. I'd say that if they were able to deal with those they would show it.
That said, there is also the factor of the car brake system. My hybrid car has a fairly rough transition from regenerative brake to the friction one which sometimes results in such sudden stops
Wow and really impressive demos to support their claims. Waymo's tech seems likely to surpass the capabilities of Tesla and others if it hasn't already.
Has there been any progress on an open test or benchmark that would reliably highlight the differences in performance and degree of autonomy provided by these competitors?
Waymo has been the consensus tech leader in this space for 10 years.
Route finding will be a bit more difficult, but other than that, it could probably be approximated as "if (closest_obstacle_in_front.distance > 30 cm) { drive(SPEED_SNAIL_PACE); } else { honk(); }"
7 USD is 5.99 EUR. That would be 1.58 EUR/liter. They aren't just approaching that, that is pretty much exactly the current price for gasoline with 10% Ethanol added in several German cities that I checked, with some fuel stations cheaper and some more expensive.
If you need E5 (older cars can't handle E10), you'll pay more than that.
Bloomberg have a nice visualisation tool : https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/gas-prices/#20202:United-...
Self driving cars are here and they’re not going away.
if a self driving car cant handle something like a guy in an orange vest directing traffic then its a very questionable venture even for scroogle or crapple. unexpected things happen on the road and corner cases happen all over, every day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdKCQKBvH-A
I think the thing that made me so furiously mad is that there's all these situations in the video that people might laugh at, but there are situations where I've been stuck in traffic in an emergency and if I found out it's because Google was trying to make it's next pentillionth dollar I would blow my top.
Can you imagine one of these during the Campfire evacuation?
One can think of all sorts of tail cases where some better technology is worse, but we should be careful not to let the tail cases cloud our overall analysis of a technology.
"I might not be able to escape if my whole town was on fire" is also an argument against virtually all public transportation - but clearly should not be used as a reason to disregard public transportation.
Maybe we should discuss whether the state of California should permit the development of dispersed towns where it's literally impossible for everyone to get up and leave, but it's probably neither here nor there with respect to Waymo. I would expect ten thousand Waymos to be able to get out of town in a relatively orderly and timely fashion, while ten thousand meat-driven cars in the same place and time is almost always an epic cock-up.