It seems like Waymo is well ahead of everyone else, but they had a mass talent exodus 2 years ago (many went to Nuro, Aurora, Otto, Argo, etcetera). I can't imagine that many smart engineers, already making good money even by Bay Area engineering standards, would quit to compete unless they really thought they had a chance.
There's just so much about the competition in this space I find fascinating.
Many were bored - they'd been working on it 5 years already.
Some thought the direction was wrong - not gathering enough test data (unlike Tesla).
Some thought they didn't have a big enough slice of the pie, and by moving to a startup and replicating the work they could earn way more through an acquisition by a carmaker.
Some saw the tech as fairly old. Remember much of Waymo's code was written by Urmson 10 years ago. Probably all C/C++. Not very nimble and quick to extend.
Some saw the fundamental approach wrong. Why not use neural nets for path planning and decision making rather than hand coded rules which will never cover enough cases to be good enough?
Some didn't want to be part of Googles risky approach. Too much pressure to get the cars on the road could kill people, and killing people, or the threat of it, is rather bad for morale. The leaders had this "even if it isn't perfect, it's better than current drivers" approach. Thats little comfort if it was your off by one error which caused the car to plough into a group of schoolchildren.
> would quit to compete unless they really thought they had a chance
I disagree. Autonomous vehicles were/are a gold rush, and there are companies with lots of money willing to pay Waymo's engineers to... "replicate"... their success at Waymo. Many of them had an expectation to be acquired by a company with no software chops but a significant stake in self-driving, and that's proved to be a reasonable assumption over the past few years.
For the engineers, it's kind of like chefs at restaurants leaving to start new restaurants that are the same concept, but don't have the same volume or brand recognition.
Yes, you have to start from scratch at the new company, but you also stand to profit much more (and do interesting, early-stage work).
If they can navigate which of the 800 Peachtree-named streets the car is on and which one it should go down next (minding all the crazy one way streets in downtown) without crashing into anything or anyone, they'll be doing better than most humans.
As an Atlanta resident, I can say that they have chosen some of the most challenging roads in the nation. The roads in Atlanta are a classic lava pattern. Many are literally the cow paths from town to town.
And we have some of the most aggressive drivers in the US.
I recall taking an Uber once and hearing the driver mention that he wished he could remotely drive the car. Was this idea ever taken seriously? I'm sure latency and creating the actual interface would be big problems.
[/digression]
From a political perspective, what's necessary until the safety drivers are no longer legally required? I believe there are a couple places that don't require them now, actually.
your visual system is finely tuned to be able to judge things like "how far away is that child in the crosswalk?"
you possess an internal IMU that provides instant and accurate feedback on acceleration and rotation.
you lose out on both of those when you perceive the world through any kind of display, whether that be a screen or even a VR headset.
think about your field of view when you look out the windshield of a car. including peripheral vision that's a 150° field of view. compress that fov to a screen, even a really good one. maybe three of them set side by side. can you still make out a street sign with 6" tall text from 200 feet away?
> From a political perspective, what's necessary until the safety drivers are no longer legally required? I believe there are a couple places that don't require them now, actually.
Essentially, the legislature of the state in question passes a law defining what's required for truly autonomous operation. That can be pretty much anything they want. The really interesting stuff starts happening when there's enough of these things driving around that we start getting accidents. How will insurance companies or the sponsor companies deal with that? What will happen in any lawsuits resulting from any accidents? I guess we'll have to wait and see.
It's a bit sad, but it's probably for the best that there's big companies with deep pockets and big legal departments behind this.
This should be interesting. I'd like to see the "driver profiles" created for each city, assuming that's possible to create from observing traffic in different cities.
It's an interesting point. The level of aggression needed to get cross-town in Manhattan at rush hour is clearly very different from how you drive in a smaller city with modest traffic.
I'm still of the opinion that this is pretty far out except maybe on highways but good to see experimentation under a variety of conditions.
Cruise Automation estimated it would take them about 6 months to learn a new city in preparation for a commercial deployment, which would include mapping, learning the quirks of specific intersections, signage, and presumably adapting their planning algorithms to local driving customs.
Very interesting—a sort of geographic and time-of-day based gradient across the parameters of the vehicle’s “profile” would be something very intriguing to hear more about.
I am hoping that partnerships with ridesharing companies help with the data collection aspect. If Lyft/Uber could lease a few cars from all/some of these companies, which would probably pay them to be driven around, it might be a win-win for both the consumers and the companies.
Also, faster data collection at scale might reduce the time taken to "learn a city"
[+] [-] Judgmentality|8 years ago|reply
There's just so much about the competition in this space I find fascinating.
[+] [-] londons_explore|8 years ago|reply
Some thought the direction was wrong - not gathering enough test data (unlike Tesla).
Some thought they didn't have a big enough slice of the pie, and by moving to a startup and replicating the work they could earn way more through an acquisition by a carmaker.
Some saw the tech as fairly old. Remember much of Waymo's code was written by Urmson 10 years ago. Probably all C/C++. Not very nimble and quick to extend.
Some saw the fundamental approach wrong. Why not use neural nets for path planning and decision making rather than hand coded rules which will never cover enough cases to be good enough?
Some didn't want to be part of Googles risky approach. Too much pressure to get the cars on the road could kill people, and killing people, or the threat of it, is rather bad for morale. The leaders had this "even if it isn't perfect, it's better than current drivers" approach. Thats little comfort if it was your off by one error which caused the car to plough into a group of schoolchildren.
[+] [-] smt88|8 years ago|reply
I disagree. Autonomous vehicles were/are a gold rush, and there are companies with lots of money willing to pay Waymo's engineers to... "replicate"... their success at Waymo. Many of them had an expectation to be acquired by a company with no software chops but a significant stake in self-driving, and that's proved to be a reasonable assumption over the past few years.
For the engineers, it's kind of like chefs at restaurants leaving to start new restaurants that are the same concept, but don't have the same volume or brand recognition.
Yes, you have to start from scratch at the new company, but you also stand to profit much more (and do interesting, early-stage work).
[+] [-] jeremymcanally|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BatFastard|8 years ago|reply
And we have some of the most aggressive drivers in the US.
edit: spelling.
[+] [-] _m8fo|8 years ago|reply
[/digression]
From a political perspective, what's necessary until the safety drivers are no longer legally required? I believe there are a couple places that don't require them now, actually.
[+] [-] asteli|8 years ago|reply
you possess an internal IMU that provides instant and accurate feedback on acceleration and rotation.
you lose out on both of those when you perceive the world through any kind of display, whether that be a screen or even a VR headset.
think about your field of view when you look out the windshield of a car. including peripheral vision that's a 150° field of view. compress that fov to a screen, even a really good one. maybe three of them set side by side. can you still make out a street sign with 6" tall text from 200 feet away?
[+] [-] ufmace|8 years ago|reply
Essentially, the legislature of the state in question passes a law defining what's required for truly autonomous operation. That can be pretty much anything they want. The really interesting stuff starts happening when there's enough of these things driving around that we start getting accidents. How will insurance companies or the sponsor companies deal with that? What will happen in any lawsuits resulting from any accidents? I guess we'll have to wait and see.
It's a bit sad, but it's probably for the best that there's big companies with deep pockets and big legal departments behind this.
[+] [-] dpflan|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghaff|8 years ago|reply
I'm still of the opinion that this is pretty far out except maybe on highways but good to see experimentation under a variety of conditions.
[+] [-] Fricken|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] izuchukwu|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cm2187|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wh-uws|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilaksh|8 years ago|reply
Everytime I see Waymo news I hope it's about that Phoenix launch and then am disappointed when it isn't.
[+] [-] Judgmentality|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] an4rchy|8 years ago|reply
Also, faster data collection at scale might reduce the time taken to "learn a city"
[+] [-] kuba77|8 years ago|reply