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peppertree | 1 year ago

After using FSD 13 for 2 weeks I'm convinced we are close to solving self driving. Too bad the everyone lost interest and now robotics is the hot new thing.

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bobsomers|1 year ago

As someone who worked in V&V for AV systems for a decade, it’s exactly the kind of thinking displayed here that has held back real assessment of AV safety for years.

There is absolutely no meaningful signal about a system’s safety that can be derived from one person using a system for two weeks.

At best it can only demonstrate that a system is wildly unsafe.

There is a very large chasm of 9s between one person being able to detect an unsafe system in two weeks of use and actually having a truly safe system.

n144q|1 year ago

And it only takes a (near) accident in 5 more minutes' driving to completely negate that.

Your observation from this short time window isn't enough to prove the usefulness of something as serious as life and death.

sangeeth96|1 year ago

I’m not sure if you’re generalizing to a specific region in your assessment but regardless, I doubt this is anywhere close to a solved problem given the crashes/incidents (so far) still associated with the tech and the dependencies IIRC on street signs and other markers.

re: region, I’d like to see it take on more challenging conditions, like in India for example where things are chaotic even for human drivers. I doubt that it’ll survive over here.

krisoft|1 year ago

> Too bad the everyone lost interest and now robotics is the hot new thing.

Self driving is robotics. Simple as that.

amelius|1 year ago

Quite simple robotics actually. Especially if you use Lidar. Basically IF (object present) THEN (do not go there) style of simplicity. Of course in reality there are lots of cases to consider, but each one of these cases is not rocket science.

Building a robot that can cook or fold a t-shirt, for example, is much harder.

cbsks|1 year ago

Note that Nvidia is also working on self driving. The Jetson robotics platform is based on the same SoC as the DRIVE platform, but is a separate product.

mhh__|1 year ago

Although the idea of self driving is obviously cool I think it's good that robotics take priority (if such a thing is possible) e.g. think of it like the invention of the washing machine as a liberating force on the world.

myvoiceismypass|1 year ago

Have you been a passenger in a Waymo? My only ride felt safer than every uber / Lyft driver I have ever had pretty much, so wondering how it compares to a beta thing you have to be able to take over in an instant.

hackcasual|1 year ago

Last time I was in SF I took 3 waymo rides and attempted a fourth. The attempted one was cancelled after 15 minutes of waiting for it being 2 minutes away. As best as I can tell, the waymo was stuck at an intersection where power had been lost and didn't understand it needed to treat it like a 4 way stop.

2 rides went fine though neither was particularly challenging. The third though the car decided to head down a narrow side street where a pickup in front was partially blocking the road making a dropoff. There was enough space to just squeeze by and it was clear the truck expected the car to. A few cars turned in behind the waymo, effectively trapping it in as it didn't know how to proceed. The dropoff eventually completed and it was able to pull forward

seydor|1 year ago

Cars are robots without arms

mdorazio|1 year ago

Waymo already solved self driving years ago. Tesla still has a long way to go.

e_y_|1 year ago

Waymo is pretty good (but not perfect) as far as safety, but there's too many ways it can get stuck. Including vandalism from humans like "coning". And if a significant number of them are on the road, it could gum up traffic when that happens.

I still think it'll do well because even if you need to hire 1 person to remotely monitor every 10 cars (I doubt Waymo has anywhere near that many support staff) it's still better than having to pay 10 drivers who may or may not actually be good at driving. But to really take over they'll need to be much more independent.

ksec|1 year ago

>n February 2024, a driverless Waymo robotaxi struck a cyclist in San Francisco.[132] Later that same month, Waymo issued recalls for 444 of its vehicles after two hit the same truck being towed on a highway

I am not entirely sure that is solved. And certainly not years ago. And it is only close in US where the data are trained. Doesn't mean it could be used in Japan ( where they are doing testing now ) driving on the different of the road with very different culture and traffics.

echelon|1 year ago

Is there anyone even close to Waymo in this game? Is Waymo going to own the entire market?

doublepg23|1 year ago

Isn't that the difference though? I've never even seen a Waymo and I've been successfully driven by Teslas many times.

lm28469|1 year ago

In a very small subset of cities, road conditions, weather condition, &c. Basically US grid cities with 300 days of sun per year