Google Has Stopped Developing Its Own Self-Driving Car - Report (techcrunch.com)

Google has reportedly shelved its long-standing plan to develop its own autonomous vehicle in favor of pursuing partnerships with existing car makers. From an article on TechCrunch: The Information reports that Google's self-driving car unit -- known internally as Chauffeur -- is working with established automotive names to develop cars which will include some self-driving features, but won't ditch the steering wheel and pedal controls. The firm is already working with Fiat Chrysler, per a partnership announced in May, and that could be the start of others to come. Google first set out to do away with the steering wheel and pedals approach, but this backtrack is from Alphabet CEO Larry Page and CFO Ruth Porat who found the original approach to be "impractical," according to the report. That's despite Google's autonomous vehicles clocking over two million miles of tests on public roads.

Comments

Colour me suprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Like everyone is going to abandon a well-proven UI just like that, on Google's say-so.

Re:Colour me suprised

[Rei]

You walk before you run.

Google's approach may be best in the long run. But good luck convincing regulators and the public to entirely eliminate drivers before you've fully convinced them on the benefits of letting computers assist drivers.

Re:Colour me suprised

[TWX]

There are simply too many conditions in which a self-driving car could occasionally need a human pilot, and the vast majority of those are when a quick decision that is not safety related is required, and the rest are when the vehicle is operating on something other than conventional roads.

For example, if I'm going to an event in a rural area I'm probably going to have to park in an improvised parking area on an unimproved or only marginally improved surface. I may have to drive down a trail that itself is unimproved or only marginally improved, either following the directions of humans waving at me or else following something like the occasional orange cone or even the tracks of previous vehicles. A self-driving car is probably not going to interpret the directions of a teenager with a yellow safety vest and will instead see the person merely as an object to avoid colliding with. It will not see bits of orange tape on the ground or ruts as a path. It probably won't handle being told to enqueue to park in rows, peeling off after the next vehicle to park per human-guided hand signals.

In this kind of scenario, which is common to outdoor concerts, festivals, campgrounds, renaissance festivals, theme-parks, lodges, and many other situations, a car that cannot be directly driven by a human being would not be able to function. The vehicle may well drive the vast majority of the time on its own, but it still needs to be capable of being occasionally human-operated or at least very directly human-instructed. Entirely eliminating the conventional driver controls makes that difficult.

Furthemore, having owned many vehicles in various states of repair and condition for around twenty years now, I do not want a vehicle to be stranded when its autonomous systems have malfuctioned. Flat out that's a non-starter. Vehicles break. This is a fact of life. I don't want a vehicle with no issues with the powertrain to strand me because the controller can't figure out how to drive on the road. If nothing else, in general emergencies it may be necessary for me to make decisions that the vehicle is not capable of making itself, like in having to drive in the aftermath of a hurricane or tornado when the roads are messed up with debris.

Don't get me wrong, the idea of a vehicle functioning as a hackney carriage, getting in and telling it where to go and it does that, has appeal, but I don't want it to only function that way.

Re:Colour me suprised

[flink]

For example, if I'm going to an event in a rural area I'm probably going to have to park in an improvised parking area on an unimproved or only marginally improved surface. I may have to drive down a trail that itself is unimproved or only marginally improved, either following the directions of humans waving at me or else following something like the occasional orange cone or even the tracks of previous vehicles.

Heck, this is pretty common in an urban environment. If there is utility work going on, you'll see a few cones strewn about to vaguely indicate you are to use one of the oncoming lanes, with a cop looking down at his phone waving at you desultorily.

Re:Colour me suprised

[TWX]

Yeah. One of my neighbors works for Intel and has been working on their autonomous vehicle project and we've talked about it. Basically in an urban environment where The Authorities are closing or modifying the route of the street it is expected that they would have to use some kind of barricade with the ability to instruct the cars that the road does not match the original configuration and to follow an alternate path, and the police officer or other traffic-control person would have to have some kind of similar technology in traffic-control devices.

Thing is, while it *might* be possible for a venue to obtain the cones or other barricades from a rental place, I would not expect that the human-held devices would be generally available if only to prevent them from being abused for things like stopping vehicles to rob the occupants or for carjacking. I would expect that tight controls would be necessary, and even the cones themselves might be subject to close regulation and scrutiny if they're capable of actively communicating with vehicle controllers. Otherwise it would be far too easy for someone to do something malicious.

Re:Colour me suprised

[Catbeller]

You're imagining we're going to reengineer reality to fit the app?

Re:Colour me suprised

[TWX]

There are Commodore 64's still running just fine today.

And nearly all Dell Optiplex GX270s and GX280s failed within five years because of faulty capacitors.

I have about 50,000 computers and about 3,000 switches and routers that I deal with on a regular basis. I have to replace enterprise-grade switches monthly due to failures in equipment that's less than five years old. We routinely replace circuit boards in laptops and tablets. I know how often computers and computing devices fail. Do you?

Re:Colour me suprised

[bws111]

Around here it is pretty common for bystanders to take on the role of 'flaggers' around an obstruction until emergency equipment arrives. The 'obstruction' could be an injured (or dead) animal in the road, debris, an accident, a fallen tree, you name it.

Re:Colour me suprised

[TWX]

How is irrelevant. That it occurs in everything from computers to the sprinkler timer that runs one's irrigation system at home, or to the thermostats that regulate the HVAC, or to security cameras, or to water heater controls, is what's relevant, and it does not give me any warm fuzzy feelings for the automotive industry either. It's very likely they will make just as bad of decisions as everyone else that uses electronic components does.

Re:Colour me suprised

[TWX]

It really annoys me when the sensors designed to detect a fault condition fail long before the fault condition itself occurs. I've had to replace O2 sensors, oil pressure sending units, coolant temp sending units, and help others with timing sensors because the damn electronics failed before anything else.

Dumb idea

[Geoffrey.landis]

Yep. Ditching the steering wheel and the pedals would be really, really dumb. It would mean that if the car had a problem it would be stuck where it is.

Steering wheels are useful.

Re:Dumb idea

[Mashiki]

Yep. Ditching the steering wheel and the pedals would be really, really dumb. It would mean that if the car had a problem it would be stuck where it is.

Surprise! The very high end cars have already done this. Lexus, BMW, Rolls Royce, several others all have drive-by-wire systems, the steering wheel is controlled by individual electric motors(sometimes a single motor). And and electric motor on the pedal simulates the feel of hydraulic pressure.

Re:Dumb idea

[MightyYar]

Unless you know otherwise, the steering and brakes always have mechanical fail-safes. In particular I'm familiar with the Infinity Q50 system.

Re:Dumb idea

[TWX]

Steering hasn't really worked that way for decades. Under the dasboard, the column bolts to structural elements. A shaft from the column enters a universal-joint and then continues through another shaft to another universal-joint, then through the firewall and down to the rack and pinion bolted to the body of the car, which in-turn moves the tie rods to push and pull on the steering knuckles. Automakers usually introduce a series of rubber isolators through the shafts to further reduce vibration.

This system helps to protect the driver from being impaled on the steering column in a severe accident, the u-joints will allow the deforming car body to not press the whole column right at the driver, the part bolted to the dash remains bolted to the dash while the shafts bend around each other in a sufficiently serious accident.

You're probably going to get as much feel through the vibrations from the suspension through the chassis into the body then through the dash to where the column is mounted as you would through the shaft.

Re:Dumb idea

[bws111]

If your car has a problem today (say, electrical failure) while you are moving you can steer to the side of the road. If your car has a problem today when you are not moving someone can push your car while you steer it to the side of the road. Neither of these are possible with no wheel, you are going to be sitting IN TRAFFIC with no way to move til the wrecker gets there.

Re:Dumb idea

[MightyYar]

I don't think he meant road bumps, but the rotational pressures on the wheel as the tires encounter rotational forces. The trick for quality manufacturers is to get the steering to have very little slop so that the steering and road feel is accurate.

What!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google abandoned a project?! No!

I worked for them for three years.

Behind the scenes it's a fucking catastrophe of half-assed and half-finished projects, with literally thousands of abandoned services that nobody knows anything about, because all the hot-shot college hires moved up or out after proving how badass they were to get hired by Google.

Nobody there wants to maintain anything, and their age discrimination practices prevent them from finding anyone who comprehends what that entails.

Fuck em.

Re:What!?

[Rei]

They really do seem to love the concept of getting "hot shots". They once tried to headhunt me after I won the Underhanded C contest one year. Um... that contest is about doing malicious things in the middle of tasks you were assigned to do and getting away with it - is that really a skill you want in your programmers?

Re:What!?

[TWX]

If I sanitize this for polite company, it sounds like you're describing a company that has ideas that are greater than its ability to follow-through with, and is short-sighted enough that it doesn't perform the kind of maintenance that brings the product to a state of long-term maturity.

Given their abandoning and shutting of several APIs throughout the years I happen to agree and I find it annoying that they do this. It's also definitely colored my view on trusting a third-party to continue to maintain services on my behalf that are not locally-hosted on my own equipment. After all, I don't really know when they'll yank the rug out from under me.

Re:What!?

[OzPeter]

is that really a skill you want in your programmers?

Maybe not the malicious part, but I can see them coveting the part that implies you know the language and systems so well that you can see where assumptions would break down and have the intelligence to exploit them in novel ways. That shows a level of mastery that few people have (otherwise we all would have won such competitions).

Whether you apply your powers for good or for evil is a different conversation.

Re:What!?

[Ghostworks]

Besides Google's cultural issues, the fact remains that a whole car is difficult to build: heavily regulated, expensive components, very competitive established market. It is foolish for any company to enter making a new car when they could just sell their hot new tech into cars.

The feeling in the industry right now is that the car is the new cell phone: generally untapped and ready for rapid improvements and new service roll-outs. All the head units basically are Android devices now (to manage the tuner, the CD player, Bluetooth connectivity, the DVD player, GPS/maps, OTA updates, etc.).

Apple tried. Google tried. Samsung is about to try. And all of them learn sooner or later that these projects have 5-year ramps and 10 years of support, that the hardware is 10x costlier than they are used to, and that the OEMs and end-customers have zero tolerance for their "move fast, break shit" attitude. Completely difference business cultures. Honestly, the best way to make a buck is to partner with OEMs and sell a drop-in peripheral or service. Anything else will fail.

Re: What!?

[reanjr]

Google is primarily a data analytics company. Any products which aren't directly tied to collecting, analyzing, and disseminating data are just side projects for Google to see if they can quickly take advantage of thier data to create new technologies.

Re:What!?

[swillden]

Google abandoned a project?! No!

Google isn't abandoning the project, they're just going to sell systems to carmakers rather than becoming a carmaker.

I worked for them for three years.

I'll have my six-year anniversary as a Google Software Engineer in February.

their age discrimination practices prevent them from finding anyone who comprehends what that entails.

I could debate the rest of this post, but I'm replying just to pick on this point. I see absolutely no indication of age discrimination at Google. I'm nearly 50 myself, and not the oldest person on my team. My previous team included several engineers in their 60s and one guy in his early 70s (former Bell Labs guy; crazy smart and achieved independent wealth decades earlier but enjoyed working).

About the only thing I can see in Google's hiring process (for SWEs, anyway; I have no knowledge of the process for other areas) that remotely smacks of age discrimination is that the interview questions assume that the candidate knows their CS fundamentals well: algorithms, data structures, big-O complexity, etc. That stuff is clearly top of mind for new CS grads, not so much for professionals who've been in the field a few years.

However, professionals who know this and take a little time to brush up before going into the interview do fine. Recruiters point this out to candidates and are willing to delay scheduling the interviews if needed. I asked the recruiter to wait a couple of weeks so I could brush up and I was hired. On the occasions when I interview someone who seems pretty sharp but struggles because they're rusty I strongly encourage them to go refresh their memory and try again.

Re:What!?

[swillden]

They really do seem to love the concept of getting "hot shots". They once tried to headhunt me after I won the Underhanded C contest one year. Um... that contest is about doing malicious things in the middle of tasks you were assigned to do and getting away with it - is that really a skill you want in your programmers?

Makes perfect sense to me. No, that's not a skill Google is looking for, but it's evidence of cleverness and deep knowledge of C programming and programmers. You'll note that winning the contest got you an opportunity for an interview, it didn't get you a job offer.

Re:What!?

[jdunn14]

It's also definitely colored my view on trusting a third-party to continue to maintain services on my behalf that are not locally-hosted on my own equipment. After all, I don't really know when they'll yank the rug out from under me.

This is incredibly important and I wish more people would kind of come to terms with this issue. I remember a while back when a javascript library was changed and broke a bunch of online applications. For a deployed project there is really no reason you should be pulling live from someone else's server/repository. Host it on your own server and periodically snap everything forward after testing that no one you rely on broke something you need. At the same time, make sure you actually DO test and move forward as things are updated, but if your app breaks because someone changed a library then the customer see the egg on your face, not theirs.

Re:I wonder...

[geek]

How many self-driving cars went into tunnels and stopped when they lost GPS and Internet connectivity?

None. They cache the GPS + map data for several miles in all directions for this type of scenario.

Agreed. Volvo gets it.

[bdwoolman]

I saw a short TV report about Volvo's autonomous car program. The idea is that the car will drive itself when driving is boring, and under good conditions. Roads in Sweden are usually very well marked BTW. They are actually testing a significant number of cars in Gothenburg.

When conditions merit human control the car will signal the driver to take control. If this does not happen in a reasonable amount of time the car will pull out of traffic and stop. The stated goal is zero deaths in Volvos by 2020. Also the CEO said that the liability issue was simple. Volvo would take full responsibility. He added that any company unwilling to own the consequences of this tech had no business making it. The interior of the car was modified so that the driver could do other stuff during the "boring" bits. I remember this because I cannot wait for autonomous cars to really start saving lives (Maybe my own). Thirty thousand dead in car crashes every year in the US alone. Let me count the ways. Okay. Maybe not right now.

Re:Agreed. Volvo gets it.

[tehcyder]

I like Volvo's attitude about this self-driving topic, but I had a class in college that pointed out the "stat" that Volvos were safer was mostly BS or unproven due to other factors. What factors? Well, at the time something like over 90% of Volvo drivers in the US were boring middle-aged people that didn't like to drive fast. The drivers were safer, they are supposedly also "more safety conscious" and so buy Volvos that tout being safer... and you see what potentially happens in this self-fulfilling prophecy.

I know it's hard for young people to understand, but the majority of the population are boring middle-aged (or older) people. The average driver is not a nineteen year old in a Ferrari. .

Driving is a social activity...

[skaralic]

What a lot of people fail to take into consideration about self-driving cars is that driving (in a city) is a deeply social activity (well, for good drivers at least). There are many signals that a person can read (vehicle type and condition, their occupants, the environment, time and day, pedestrians etc.) that do not fall into the standard list of signals you might associate with driving speed, turn signals etc. A lot of these can be very area-specific and require local knowledge. It will be difficult for software to ever match a human in these tasks. Having said that, computers excel in other areas, such as reaction time, so a hybrid approach where both the human and the computer are used should yield the best results. For really mind-numbing stop and go highway driving you can be on full auto. For city driving you switch to manual plus assist...

Besides, after a few years your on-board computer will stop receiving OTA updates and the required APIs will be discontinued so you will need that full-manual capability.

Re:Driving is a social activity...

[speedplane]

What a lot of people fail to take into consideration about self-driving cars is that driving (in a city) is a deeply social activity ... It will be difficult for software to ever match a human in these tasks.

I agree, but still very disappointed about Google's decision. Self driving cars will likely require thousands, or perhaps millions of little computer programs that can catch every possible scenario or combination thereof. It's a huge undertaking, but if anyone could do it, Google could. Now it seems they are backpeddling from that in order to get something to market faster. We'll end up seeing more half-assed product rushed to market (e.g., Tesla Autopilot) to please investors and the press. Long term prospects are not good.

Re:Not surprising

[Catbeller]

Those things on the road are not self-driving cars. They are apps that can, with human oversight, kinda imitate a human driver in careully orchestrated conditions. But there are *no* self-driving cars out there. And Google just gave up.

The real goal is self-driving trucks and taxis. They want to fire all the drivers and keep all the money, so there is a lot of *want* on the part of capital. But we haven't built an AI that can match a trained human. If we have such, they'd have shown the robots proudly whipping around the streets, unpiloted. There aren't. Maybe someday we can do it, but right now we're being bamboozed by billionaires who are bamboozling themselves.

Missouri rule: Show me.

Too many things a toaster can't do. The most important: actual human thought.

Re:Google was never going to make cars

[WindBourne]

actually, either apple or google could have bought faraday future and had it going.
Likewise, I have no doubt that Musk would gladly have helped either Apple or Google create auto making companies.

The problem when you put a steering wheel in

[presidenteloco]

I've read various estimates that it takes a human somewhere between 5 and 17 seconds to take over from a self-driving car when notfied, when they were concentrating on something else.

So this poses an interesting design dilemma. If you put in a steering wheel and manual brake pedal etc, and have a situation requiring emergency rapid action, and the automation system is in the middle of taking the action it computed is best, how do you PREVENT the human from providing contrary control input which in all likelihood will mess up the overall response to the situation, especially since they are very likely coming in way late.

In what circumstances do you keep the human input disabled, for reasons like mentioned above, and in what circumstances or after what delay do you let them take over. A combined control-input situation would be disastrous, like having the "backseat" driver sitting beside you grab the wheel in panic while you're in evasive driving.

So...

[BitztreamNotARealNam]

How's life in the hypocrite lane?