Comments
PurpEL t1_ivwuvhy wrote
Why bother having the chairs like that tho? There is a better way to use space
Richard_Ainous t1_ivwwf9e wrote
If you made it limo style people would fuck in them
Saint-Iroh t1_ivwyip1 wrote
Just put cameras in the taxi for people fucking
Wait…
cannibaljim t1_ivx7y5j wrote
Then post the videos to pornhub. A second revenue stream for Waymo!
Toytles t1_ivy0fn2 wrote
Just make the interior a nice hard plastic that can be hosed down after each ride. Maybe even put automated nozzles in the ceiling and a drain on the floor.
T0ysWAr t1_ivxedfx wrote
It’s a given
merlinsbeers t1_ivy7fdp wrote
When they take out the driver's seat they can reverse all the seats. Way safer for passengers.
professor_mc t1_ivvf7jz wrote
Waymo has been very active in Phoenix. I see their cars all over central Phoenix every day. We have straight roads and plenty of sun so pretty ideal operating conditions. I’m sure they will quickly expand the service area based on how many test runs they are making all across Phoenix. We have the Super Bowl here in 2023 and I bet they use that to show off their service.
astral1289 t1_ivxbal8 wrote
Yeah I’m trying to figure out what new here. I first rode in a driverless Waymo as the sole occupant of the van a couple years ago.
merlinsbeers t1_ivy7m0a wrote
I think this is about having more that are driverless. They've been mostly using passive drivers for safety and analysis up to now.
T0ysWAr t1_ivxef0z wrote
How much cheaper is it?
Cueller t1_ivy9633 wrote
Doesnt matter honestly. Fucking uber takes forever to find a driver in DC.
lughnasadh OP t1_ivv0hx1 wrote
Submission Statement
This puts Waymo in the global lead when it comes to robo-taxis. Cruise in San Francisco is trialing a service with no safety drivers, but it only operates from 10pm-6am. Baidu is trialing operations in two Chinese cities without safety drivers, but are still basically in test mode, with very few operational cars.
If I were Uber or Lyft, I would be worried. You need these companies a lot more than they need you, if they need you at all.
blinknow t1_ivv0q6r wrote
And no tips 😂
TheRealJuksayer t1_ivwd8xc wrote
If there's a way I can make sure that tip goes to the vehicle itself and not the company... I think I would do it. These computers have a really good memory.
cludinsk t1_ivv8hih wrote
Waymo has been testing in Phoenix for a couple years now, and in the Bay Area. Can’t wait for them to test in major cities/places with snow/etc as well, Phoenix is less challenging.
Cdn_citizen t1_ivvb8m1 wrote
Pretty sure snowy places will get it last lol you can’t read ice on the road with sensors or predict how your car will react when on it lol
OozeNAahz t1_ivvq5my wrote
They will just send them to a storage lot when inclement weather hits till it is completely gone.
I figure they will probably use them like a flock of birds and send them all south for the winter to work in warmer cities.
OriginalCompetitive t1_ivw1q3d wrote
Probably not even necessary. How many days do cities with snow actually have snow sitting on the roads? A dozen or less?
Cdn_citizen t1_ivw3bwm wrote
It’s less so snow sitting on the roads as to the melting and freezing cycles over night that’s the issue. Plus I’m in Canada and sometimes a polar vortex can keep it so cold that even road salt doesn’t work and ice remains on city roads.
In that case snow + ice = bad time to be self driving and lack the intuition of a human driver.
Boring_Ad_3065 t1_ivvn53z wrote
You probably could, but I’m certain it’s more difficult and more expensive. I’m also guessing heavy snowfall or rain messes with a lot of the sensors. Guessing it’ll be years before they work out those scenarios most of the time.
Cdn_citizen t1_ivw3lh3 wrote
I’m honestly not even sure they’ll ever be able to. The sunlight at dawn and dusk already blinds the sensors on my car’s lane keeping sensors and stops it from functioning
baelrog t1_ivxd17w wrote
Sunlight at dawn and dusk also blinds humans, so there's that.
Cdn_citizen t1_ivy4y0m wrote
Humans can put on sunglasses and lower sun visors.
Ambiwlans t1_ivwqxux wrote
Visibility is an issue but sdcs have superhuman reflexes and have no fear or surprise. Ice isn't an issue, they'll be far safer from loss of control than humans.
The biggest issue in snow is neither of those. It is that humans drive very differently in a way that'd be illegal typically and that's challenging for sdcs. Learning that where the lanes actually are matterless than where people are driving, etc.
Cdn_citizen t1_ivy5ozh wrote
That's the issue, Sdcs don't have a fear or surprise in addition not intuition either.
It can't for example anticipate a person crossing the street from behind a vehicle and possibly prepare to brake if that person actually ends up crossing or if they are just getting into their car. A human driver would have their foot over the brake or be prepared to move away from them should they unexpectedly cross.
I'm not sure where you're from but people drive and follow the rules of the road when it snows in Canada. The only exception would be the lane markings being covered but my car can't see the lane markings when it rains anyway so that's not a snow issue.
Also sdcs can misread signs, a human far less likely to do so. For example HOV signs.
Ambiwlans t1_ivy8ln3 wrote
You fundamentally don't understand the tech you're talking about.
Fear and surprise doesn't make faster reactions, it makes worse ones. Imagine sdcs are people driving where time is slowed down 100 fold. Their reaction speed is that much better. Reaction speed to a sudden object for a person is 750ms ... a sdc is maybe 20ms. It isn't close.
And yes, when snow covers lane markings, humans stop using them. They also drive to avoid deep snow and ploughed snow. This is very erratic behavior that needs to be learned. Vision isn't the issue. With some radar types and quality maps, a sdc could see like it was a clear summer day during whiteout conditions.... but other drivers would appear to have gone insane.
Cdn_citizen t1_ivytwxs wrote
I don’t have to understand the tech. I’m testing it every day with real life scenarios. It’s not anywhere near ready.
You are so sold on your beliefs you’re not looking at reality. Have you not noticed all the car ads stop pushing self driving and more towards driver assistance this year?
There’s a reason.
P.S, You can downvote me all you want but that does not change the facts.
tidbitsmisfit t1_ivwal7v wrote
why even bother with snow areas? just do easy areas and build out the company
04HondaS2000 t1_ivvals8 wrote
Is it cheaper than Uber?
x2040 t1_ivx67b2 wrote
I saw a comparison that had an Uber at $27 and a Waymo at $4.50 for same route and time
cjeam t1_ivxjxe4 wrote
Yeah but they’re both subsidising with VC money, just Uber less so now. It’s not a fair market comparison yet.
Toytles t1_ivy0lfj wrote
Are you serious? That’s fucking incredible 😳
baelrog t1_ivxcxzp wrote
Would the UBER drive be paid more than $22.50 in this case?
TheDieselTastesFire t1_ivy65sp wrote
Drivers for uber and Lyft do NOT make the money you pay to the company. It's not related at all. I drive Lyft and I get between 15%-35% of the fare. I've made $7.00 on an $80 ride before.
T0ysWAr t1_ivxeh5e wrote
Difference should be more as the notmal car is cheaper
Saint-Iroh t1_ivwykzb wrote
Asking the real questions
R0ud41ll3 t1_ivxvmvz wrote
I imagine the driver's salary is a big part of the cost of running a taxi + Waymo needs to have attractive fees to get the maximum people having their first driverless taxi experience so they have to be way cheaper than Uber.
Test19s t1_ivvbtz4 wrote
What an interesting decade. Living up to the promise that I saw when the first self-transforming Transformers launched in Jan/2020…in ways both good and bad.
MegaNodens t1_ivwgpcs wrote
How do accidents work with driverless cars? Like does the passenger have the obligation to stay with the car and get the other driver's insurance?
Ambiwlans t1_ivwssw1 wrote
At this point, a waymo rep will show up in like 45seconds. They often tail their own vehicles.
But yes, you're required to stay. Imagine you're a passenger in a crash and the driver dies. Same rules apply.
fuzzy_viscount t1_ivy06rw wrote
Yeah that’s not gonna be sustainable and completely eliminates a labor benefit if you still need a human.
Cueller t1_ivy9ey0 wrote
Its for testing. And in a downtown area they can just station an accident recover car.
Given they have a dozen cameras on the car, pretty easy to have a fully documented accident for the police.
MegaNodens t1_ivwuzy8 wrote
That makes sense, I suppose it's way too soon to have this sort of thing on anything but a very short leash.
funky_bandersnatch t1_ivy35ga wrote
This is not true. There is no law against refusing to be a witness.
muskateeer t1_ivwqsb4 wrote
It would be the same way it works with Uber. Of course the passenger wouldn't have to handle the incident.
charlie_nosurf t1_ivz2f1r wrote
Should be:
Car pulls over, new Waymo car is called immediately for passengers, passengers move to new car, driver of the other car/police wait for Waymo rep to arrive...
Or something like that.
bxsephjo t1_ivvjiq3 wrote
It seems like Waymo exclusive operates in Phoenix. If their models don't currently allow them to handle other cities well, would this be a case of their machine learning over-fitting the training set? And if so how do they overcome that in order to expand?
Leburgerking t1_ivwosvn wrote
They have about ~10 training cities around the US. Waymo also operates in San Francisco, and their automated trucking division is starting to operate in Texas. Some of their training cites include Kirkland, Washington and Novi, Michigan.
Ambiwlans t1_ivwrk3t wrote
Overfitting if they tried to just release this software everywhere i guess. But they're not doing that.
Their strat seems to be to learn each location vs tesla which is trying to learn to drive generally.
2001zhaozhao t1_iwccuik wrote
It's just a small pilot test, I would think they would start by testing in one city regardless of how advanced their tech is.
LeagueReplays2 t1_ivwkhef wrote
It's not an ML problem. Waymo uses Lidar, because that's what google started with over a decade ago and they never moved past it. Lidar is pretty bad for self-driving for many reasons, they hit a brick wall with it years ago and haven't moved past since.
So it's either scrap the company, or try to make something of it. So they picked a city with the second lowest rainfall anywhere in the US, and pre-programmed in some areas of the Phoenix metropolitan area into the car. Streets, lane counts, how to make turns at each intersection, how the lanes match up, markings...etc. Once pre-programmed, they lock the cars in the area and drive the pre-programmed routes, using Lidar to try not to bump into stuff.
The gimmick here is in the strange definition of level 4 autonomy. Unlike the other levels, level 4 allows for geofencing. This makes it pretty misleading since it means if you train your car to drive around an empty parking lot without a driver, and nowhere else, that's technically level 4 autonomy and you can market it as that. Cars have been able to self drive around a parking lot since the 90's if not earlier, and self navigate entire deserts since like 2001, so it's not really an impressive feat.
They're hoping it will be good enough to start robo taxi services in areas they can get the pre-programming working well enough to not keep failing. But there really isn't a point, they have to perpetually re-program the cars by re-scanning the entire geofenced area. It stops being economical the moment any other competitor makes actual self driving cars that aren't based on gimmicks.
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No-Operation3052 t1_ix6j9jz wrote
LIDAR, paired with a very high definition map, can be very good. It's quite unlike the vision sensing that Tesla is trying to do. LIDAR, in general, won't hit things because LIDAR is very good at sensing obstacles (particularly in dry clear weather). So if you are a risk averse self-driving company then LIDAR makes a lot of sense because, above all, you don't want to hit anything.
Tesla's vision system still tries to hit things, a lot. It is still confused by what is actually in front of it, a lot. If you set a Tesla loose in Phoenix without a driver it would probably hit something within an hour. Also, if I'm not mistaken Waymo is also using vision to supplement the LIDAR. I think Waymo used the kitchen sink approach throwing virtually every kind of sensor at the problem of not hitting things.
ihateshadylandlords t1_ivvfpxv wrote
I feel like self driving cars are similar to fusion in the sense that they’re always 20 years away. Hopefully the testing goes well and they can expand.
maskedpaki t1_ivw9dgz wrote
These aren't tests
The tests with vetted passengers were already in downtown pheonix
This is a real FSD open to anyone 24/7 no safety driver service in downtown pheonix.
Self driving is here. Just a matter of expanding at this point.
ihateshadylandlords t1_ivwdqg0 wrote
No it’s still in testing if it’s relegated to one city. Otherwise they would’ve rolled out to other cities.
maskedpaki t1_ivwez7j wrote
So if I sell a product in one country it's undergoing a trial even if it's open to all customers there with no restrictions ?
By this definition most everything is "in testing "
Let's not play with semantics. This is a product. They obviously can't sell rides to 8 billion people overnight. That doesn't mean it's still in testing.
LeagueReplays2 t1_ivwl4xf wrote
This isn't semantics, you're skimming over the actual significance of being in a single city. It's not just because they started thejre, their technology relies entirely on pre-programming the entire area the car is geofenced in into the car, and then continiously maintaining and updating it. It can't self-drive anywhere it wasn't pre-programmed to self drive in. For this reason, the technology is not likely to actually scale past working in a single metropolitan area.
Unbelievable_Girth t1_ivzgajh wrote
But it's not meant to be used everywhere. If they set out with a goal to make a specific area viable to be driven, then they have accomplished that goal and are now selling their product. They can move to another area and then it would be considered "testing".
ihateshadylandlords t1_ivwfpmt wrote
Is Waymo a company that intends to provide thejr service to one city only? Let’s face it, this is another step for the company. If all goes well, they’ll venture into other cities.
Ambiwlans t1_ivwrakt wrote
The tech exists, we're just not sure about profitability.
kerodon t1_ivwtmn3 wrote
What are the average costs compared to current ride share pricing? Google suggests it's on average a bit cheaper but not a lot of concrete numbers I could find.
tatakatakashi t1_ivx1bvo wrote
Your face when the robot tells you the meter is broken and it’s gonna be $80 cash
TopofGoober t1_ivyhdlg wrote
This will make driving so much safer. It’s going to be a battle to get it done, but over decades this will be the way of driving.
FuturologyBot t1_ivv60ja wrote
The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh:
Submission Statement
This puts Waymo in the global lead when it comes to robo-taxis. Cruise in San Francisco is trialing a service with no safety drivers, but it only operates from 10pm-6am. Baidu is trialing operations in two Chinese cities without safety drivers, but are still basically in test mode, with very few operational cars.
If I were Uber or Lyft, I would be worried. You need these companies a lot more than they need you, if they need you at all.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/yrqwqk/waymo_launches_the_worlds_most_advanced_robotaxi/ivv0hx1/
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merlinsbeers t1_ivy78jh wrote
The use of LIDAR in addition to cameras makes it safer, more reliable, and more likely to continue improving.
KoriroK-taken t1_ivyhxo9 wrote
Man. Getting stuck behind one of those cars blows. Their reaction time feels so slow.
It's like getting stuck behind a student driver, going 5 under the speed limit and looking really insecure about weather or not they can make that turn.
Paskhall t1_ivz1v02 wrote
Good idea! In one of the most dangerous place for pedestrians and cyclists. What could go wrong.
carpitown t1_ix3v15h wrote
I figured fully autonomous big rigs would be the first to be approved. They drive less complex routes and can opt to drive during periods of low traffic.
How did passenger cars get so far ahead?
avatarname t1_ix5ciy0 wrote
It was 12 years ago when I first learned that Google was testing self driving cars, then it felt like sci-fi... and even now it still kinda does, even if it is more normalized now. It takes a bit longer than I expected, but we are going in that direction and that's cool.
AmazingDom14 t1_ivx3u6x wrote
It'd be nice if trams weren't phased out so this wouldn't have to be the alternative
Shakespurious t1_ivw0f92 wrote
I have my doubts here: I see a lot of videos showing Tesla autopilot doing a so-so job, still needs human intervention every few miles.
markmevans t1_ivw2i9s wrote
Tesla only uses cameras for it's self-driving. [1] This is theoretically possible but actually really difficult to implement in a way where the car "understands" all situations.
Waymo uses cameras, radar and lidar for its self-driving. I think they also use GPS and super-detailed maps. This makes it much easier for Waymo to track the road (from maps) and know the distance to obstacles even if it does not know what the obstacle is.
Basically, Tesla is trying to make a self-driving car that uses only the information available to a human which means their AI has to be way "smarter" than Waymo's.
[1] I think Tesla is adding radar, but I'm not sure about that.
Gaff1515 t1_ivwawuh wrote
Tesla has recently removed radar from all cars being built.
Ambiwlans t1_ivwsh9g wrote
https://www.teslafsdtracker.com/
This patch is averaging 126mi per disengage. Nowhere near Waymo at this point but they are making steady progress. And not really 'every few miles' anymore.
[deleted] t1_iw1jk4d wrote
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Anotherburner42069 t1_ivwcore wrote
Anyone want to set an over under on how long it takes for one of these to turn a pedestrian into chunky marinara?
Sirisian t1_ivv7m7a wrote
I cannot wait to see the no steering wheel vehicles on the road when they're finalized. The US a few months ago okayed such vehicles. Some people asked before why they had steering wheels and this is why. It's a whole regulatory process.