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Waymo Starts To Eclipse Uber in Race To Self-Driving Taxis (sfchronicle.com)
Uber barreled into autonomous driving out of fear that it could end up as the MySpace or Yahoo of ride-hailing, a company with early gargantuan success that stumbled as times changed. Waymo, the self-driving offshoot of Google parent Alphabet, has pursued its ambitions more cautiously, accumulating long years of research and testing before pursuing a plan to bring its technology to the public. From a report: Now, as Waymo scales up its self-driving taxi service, Uber's fear could be coming to pass. This week, as Uber continued to reel from a fatal self-driving accident in Arizona, Waymo confidently pushed forward -- landing a deal to build 20,000 self-driving luxury SUVs with Jaguar Land Rover on top of its plan for thousands of Chysler hybrid minivans. Within two years, it aims to have thousands of fully autonomous taxis -- with no backup drivers behind the wheel -- on the roads, starting in Phoenix where it is already giving test rides.
The company predicts it will give 1 million robot-taxi rides a day by 2020. Waymo, the industry pioneer, logged millions of autonomous miles as it perfected self-driving technology. But over the years, engineers defected out of frustration that it was not commercializing the technology. Now with former auto executive John Krafcik at the helm, Waymo appears poised to launch a self-driving taxi service that could conceivably dominate that field, at least early on, the way Uber does now with human-driven cars.
The company predicts it will give 1 million robot-taxi rides a day by 2020. Waymo, the industry pioneer, logged millions of autonomous miles as it perfected self-driving technology. But over the years, engineers defected out of frustration that it was not commercializing the technology. Now with former auto executive John Krafcik at the helm, Waymo appears poised to launch a self-driving taxi service that could conceivably dominate that field, at least early on, the way Uber does now with human-driven cars.
As with any other form of dangerous machinery, I hope it at least comes with one of these...
https://i.stack.imgur.com/jrVP...
https://incompliancemag.com/wp...
Waymo probably has their LIDAR working, but I don't imagine that gets them very far ahead of Uber at this point. Humans drive 551,370 miles in all situations and all kinds of weather and road services without even a fender-bender. Even Waymo is doing a fraction of that per 'safety driver' intervention. Also it is a problem set that gets exponentially harder as you get closer to the goal of being significantly safer than humans.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
To get a sense of how far ahead Waymo is, take a look at the disengagements report Waymo published last year and then look at everyone else's. At least in California, Waymo has more miles driven than everyone else combined and their disengagement rate is much lower
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Waymo jumps ahead... that is what happens when your competition runs someone over. Now UBER stands for UBER = >U BEtterR get out of the way!
A) Killled a poor woman just because they were eager to put not-read-for-action-at-all vehicles on public roads B) Paid/settled the family of said woman into silence C) Ruined make-a-living-through-cab-driving for hundreds of thousands of low-income cabbies in dozens of developing countries with a fucking smartphone app.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
But I would gladly get into a Google car because Google is so benevolent.
Google may not be the Mother Teresa of tech objectively, but compared to Uber, they almost are Mother Teresa. And at least Google is capable of developing serious tech and has a track record of doing so. Having watched the video, I struggle to understand how Uber put a car this incapable of avoiding pedestrians on a public road at all. If you or I did that, we'd likely spend the rest of our lives in jail.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
The issue presumably is competence, not character.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Work smarter not harder.
The goal of capitalism is to drive the marginal cost of labor to zero. Why are people surprised when shitty jobs are destroyed (again) by less shitty ones?
I would gladly shove my dick in your dad's ass while that little faggot squealed like a pig.
I expect these vehicles to slow down traffic all over the place as they get befuddled by road obstacles that any child could understand. But now that there's (sadly) been a death, when will Waymo cause its first?
550K miles doesn't even begin to cover the fender-bender rate. You're quoting a number similar to *police-reported* accidents. According to the DOT "In 2016, there were an estimated 7,277,000 police-reported motor vehicle crashes in the United States, resulting in 37,461 fatalities and 3,144,000 people injured." That's roughly 440K miles per _police-reported_ crash, not 550K.
Problem is most accidents aren't police reported, and certainly not fender benders. Apparently, the average driver has an accident every 18 years. 18 x 12K miles is 200K miles.
Think about this: 550K miles is roughly a lifetime of driving for most people, yet I don't know anyone who's never had an accident of any sort. With an average accident rate of 550K miles as you state, accident-free driving would be routine. Yet, commercial drivers get safety awards and bonuses for 500K accident-free miles. Let's just say that many pro drivers never see that bonus money.
Definitely. They aren't sucking all of your personal information and selling it to others while shoving ads in your face. They are serious tech.
This is a taxi service. If the other companies can't keep up or if they also launch taxi services then within a generation or two once they work it'll be illegal to own and drive a personal car on public roads. Meaning you'll need to subscribe to a car subscription which'll be more expensive than owning your own and everywhere you go will be 100% tracked as well as what you do in the car and what you look like (security cameras inside car). The cars will actively scan and data mine everything, even your weight (my car can do that). It doesn't even matter if the cars are safer or not. Buying congress critters is easy. They even recently passed an unconstitutional law out of spite of one company doing something a single congressmen didn't like. Don't expect them to let you keep your car. They'll keep their cars because politicians need cars, just like they added exceptions for themselves to anti-spam laws.
The disruption of autonomous cars will ensure we'll live in interesting times.
So, yes, November 2017 had one case in 30,516.7 miles, which is pretty darned impressive. Conversely, April 2017 had 10 such disengagements
Well then it seems like the software is obviously getting better as we know they would have deployed a lot of updates to the system in that time, so surely the stupidest possible thing you could do is average these two points into an absolute number because it's obviously increasing in quality continuously...
Some simple math...If you take all the disengagements and divide by the total miles,
EPIC FACE PALM!!!!!!!!!
I continue to be amused that Slashdot, supposedly a realm of technically astute people, cannot and will not understand how fast true self driving cars are coming. Only the most basic technical understanding of the technologies involved is required to understand this is and will happen. But here on Slashdot, it continues to be denied vehemently.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I wonder more why they put a "driver" behind the wheel who obviously was neither qualified nor paying attention.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
So what are their plans, since they are not a taxi service and don't have the stuff Uber has set up around the world?
So they are going to licence the cars to Uber? Sell the Tech to the highest bidder or Lyft or buyout Uber or Lyft?
Even if they are ahead, they have no customer.
They can just rebrand as 'Death Race 2000: The Ride' and it'll be a smash success. Throw in an AR HUD, microtransactions, and it'll be a real hit.
Actually, Carmageddon might be a better license; kill off competing Uber cabbies to increase your surge pricing profits.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
This subject brings to mind a question. My post is not about the pros or cons of self driving vehicles or taxi services, not about Waymo versus Uber versus any other. It is an abstract speculation.
Will self driving cars have different types of accidents or injury rates than human driven vehicles? For instance, if there are crashes with injuries, will the ratio of pedestrian versus occupant injuries or fatalities differ between self-driven versus human driven cars, or between different self driving companies or technologies? Will the occupants be safer than ordinary cars, and pedestrians more vulnerable, or vice versa, or no difference? Will property damages likewise be different?
It would take an unfortunate many accidents to get such statistics, but such numbers might ultimately reveal important differences in one proprietary platform versus another. They could show which platform or technology would require better oversight or "retooling".
This question is purely speculative for now. My question is, for those of you that are knowledgeable about the technologies, are there any insights about how car crashes or injuries might differ between human versus self driven vehicles?
hack..
hack..
hack...
waymo.all().entertainment.search('Never gonna give you up').play();
waymo.all().navigation.left(100);
waymo.all().navigation.accelerate(100);
And hilarity ensues.
I mean, since they don't need drivers, they only need the cars and a place to park them during off peak hours. The whole business becomes a lot simpler if you do not need to hire drivers.
"Starts to eclipse" does not mean "Started 6 years earlier, spent more on development, is and always has been way in front both in amount of experience and effectiveness of the product."
Uber was a overly rushed attempt that threw a car out there that wasn't ready for public trials, and Phoenix was dumb enough to let them. Uber hasn't come close to replicating what Waymo is doing, and the recent crash (and idiotic darkened video response) pretty much killed their chances. Although I'm sure some city would be stupid enough to give them a permit, most will have requirements that Uber, as a company, just won't do. It's not that they lack the physical ability, it's that they won't, it's not how they've every operated, and they show no willingness to change. Patience and rigorous adherence to procedure are antithetical to their existence as a company. They're hemorrhaging money betting on this self driving taxi angle, and their own development is probably dead in the water. They will most likely end up buying their self driving cars from another vendor, possible Waymo.
AFAIK an intervention is not an event that would have been an accident, but rather a situation in which the control software of the vehicle decides that it cannot solve the current driving situation. Without human intervention such a car is expected to pull over in a safe manner. Also, self-driving car companies are offering the combination of software + human operators for these interventions. Hence the measure should be the same as for human drivers: miles driven per accident caused.
Computer simulation made easy -- LibGeoDecomp
Every day when I drive, I notice events that undoubtedly would not be correctly interpreted by a robot car. For example, reflections on bus shelters that look like a car rapidly crossing. People who appear ready to cross but are not looking at me. Cardboard box in the freeway that is clearly empty because wind moved it a few inches. Car approaching rapidly in rearview mirror who will probably try to squeeze between me and car in adjacent lane to get ahead. Lots of car body language situations where a stupid move is likely before long. Etc.
People bring all their knowledge to any problem, and can do so in less than a second. No one knows how often that happens when we are driving.
There won't be any injuries that would have statistical significance. It will be a big hit to medical industry and car repair shops. Try playing Go or chess against an AI and you see how impossible it is for it to fail once it has been trained well enough. It will see and predict nearly perfectly. Humans on the other hand don't even watch where they drive.