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Fully Driverless Cars Could Be Months Away (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Real driverless cars could come to the Phoenix area this year, according to a Monday report from The Information's Amir Efrati. Two anonymous sources have told Efrati that Google's self-driving car unit, Waymo, is preparing to launch "a commercial ride-sharing service powered by self-driving vehicles with no human 'safety' drivers as soon as this fall." Obviously, there's no guarantee that Waymo will hit this ambitious target. But it's a sign that Waymo believes its technology is very close to being ready for commercial use. And it suggests that Waymo is likely to introduce a fully driverless car network in 2018 if it doesn't do so in the remaining months of 2017. [...] According to a report on The Information, Waymo's service is likely to launch first in Chandler, a Phoenix suburb where Waymo has done extensive testing. Waymo chose the Phoenix area for its favorable weather, its wide, well-maintained streets, and the relative lack of pedestrians. Another important factor was the legal climate. Arizona has some of the nation's most permissive laws regarding self-driving vehicles. "Arizona's oversight group has met just twice in the last year, and found no reason to suggest any new rules or restrictions on autonomous vehicles, so long as they follow traffic laws," the Arizona Republic reported in June. "The group found no need to suggest legislation to help the deployment." According to the Arizona Republic, a 2015 executive order from Gov. Doug Ducey "allows universities to test vehicles with no driver on board so long as a licensed driver has responsibility for the cars and can take control remotely if the vehicle needs assistance." Waymo is getting ready to take the same approach.
Check list.
* Favorable weather
* Well-maintained streets
* Lack of pedestrians.
* Everyone driving slow golf carts
* Shopping malls don't always work.
Sounds like not really ready for prime time, just cherry picked locations.
There are five SAE accepted levels of autonomy:
Level 0: No self driving features
Level 1: Some driver assistance
Level 2: More driver assistance
Level 3: Conditional autonomy
Level 4: Nearly autonomous.
Level 5: Completely autonomous.
When will it get here? Dates range from 2017 (Ol' Musky) to 2026 (president of IIHS) and beyond, from people in the know.
Every bit of driver assistance I think is a good thing, but Level 5 - true autonomy - is still a ways off, it seems to me.
Waymo's self-driving cars work by having an extremely detailed 3D map of the area in which they are driving (important details like the height of the curb are included). With such a detailed map, self-driving is easier. You don't have to do object recognition of things like stop-signs, you know where they are. If there is an unknown obstacle detected, the car can stop. It doesn't have to distinguish between pedestrians and trees, because the trees are all mapped out.
If Waymo wants the car to leave that small, well-defined area, then they have two options: map the whole world (at a much, much higher quality than Google maps), or develop new algorithms for self-driving cars.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Well, the summary hints at it, but in TFA it states it outright:
The company has built a real-time command center that allows self-driving cars to "phone home" and consult human operators about the best way to deal with situations it finds confusing. The ability to remotely monitor vehicles and give timely feedback on tricky situations will be essential if Waymo hopes to eliminate the human driver from its cars.
So they are taking a hybrid approach, at least initially.
Perhaps when it's Waymo/Google's cars that get stuck trying to make a left turn across a four lane road at an uncontrolled non-intersection during rush hour because Google Maps thought that was quicker they'll get around to correcting those suggestions.
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