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Post by ganews on Feb 8, 2019 10:21:07 GMT -5
Last night on the NPR commute they had a story about Waymo trying to make driverless cars, specifically for grocery delivery. Of course said cars had a human operator to take over. Pretty standard stuff. I guess robot grocery delivery is nice and all, but a lot of the people who currently use such services are the elderly and infirm. Is the robot car going to carry the groceries to the front door for grandma, and if not what's the point?
The detail that really caught me was that these things are set to not exceed 25 mph. I guess this applies only to residential neighborhoods but HAH! So many people are going to get pissed off driving behind these things and trying to zip around. Good luck with that on narrow "two-way" residential roads with street parking. I'm not endorsing speeding through back roads with kids in front yards, I'm just saying what's going to happen.
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Post by Dr. Rumak on Feb 8, 2019 10:57:13 GMT -5
Last night on the NPR commute they had a story about Waymo trying to make driverless cars, specifically for grocery delivery. Of course said cars had a human operator to take over. Pretty standard stuff. I guess robot grocery delivery is nice and all, but a lot of the people who currently use such services are the elderly and infirm. Is the robot car going to carry the groceries to the front door for grandma, and if not what's the point?
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Post by Dr. Rumak on May 20, 2019 7:54:41 GMT -5
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Post by nowimnothing on Nov 5, 2019 20:37:53 GMT -5
I parked in front of a Tesla at Target today. As I walked toward the doors I noticed a couple looking at their phone and kind of nervously out into the parking lot. I figured they were testing out the summon feature and stopped to watch. The car started to back out of the space, but then turned its wheels and started to go forward. I think it was trying to go into the empty space next to my van and then out to the other lane but our view was blocked and the guy got cold feet and stopped the car as his wife ran out to make sure it didn't hit anything.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Nov 18, 2019 1:28:29 GMT -5
The NTSB released 400 pages of documents from the Uber self-driving crash here that killed a pedestrian last year. These documents are a great example of why the city should NEVER have allowed the testing in the first place. It has been clear to me from the start that the fault was with Uber and the way the car was programmed and functioning. This is because every single day I drive the exact stretch of road where this happened, I know what the conditions are like, average traffic, pedestrian traffic, what it looks like at night, etc. We already knew that Uber had disabled the automatic braking system in the cars. They said this was disabled because the ride wasn't smooth enough. Because a smooth ride is definitely more important than safety, eh? We'll be looking at this below. But now the NTSB has released some other key details showing even more how Uber is at fault. As it turns out, Uber's programming doesn't recognize pedestrians as PEOPLE unless they are crossing in a crosswalk. So, it never identified Elaine Herzberg as a person because she was jaywalking. I'd like to take this opportunity to remind people that Uber was testing these cars in the University district, along every major street bordering Arizona State Univeristy, along with Mill Avenue, which is filled with bars that those college kids go to all the time. Anyway, so the computer did detect something in the road before the crash, but it didn't ID a PERSON. Just an "object". “As the [automated driving system] changed the classification of the pedestrian several times—alternating between vehicle, bicycle, and an other— the system was unable to correctly predict the path of the detected object." Again, she was walking straight across the road. And while Uber was concerned about the Volvo's auto braking system interfering in its programming, it only built in a one-second delay between crash detection and emergency action. In order to avoid false positives. Copying this from The Verge: "Uber’s vehicle detected Herzberg 5.6 seconds before impact, but it failed to implement braking because it kept misclassifying her. Each time the automated driving system came up with a new classification, it had to calculate a new trajectory for the object. A one-second “action suppression” was supposed to hand control back to the operator for manual braking. But if the operator failed to deal with the situation in that one-second interval — which, in this case, she did — then the system is designed to provide an auditory warning that collision is imminent and start a gradual (but not maximum) braking process." Let's also consider this: "Additionally, ATG did not have a formal safety plan, a standardized operations procedure (SOP) or guiding document for safety.” The local government did not require this company to submit a formal Safety Plan before testing these cars on some of the busiest streets in the metro area, which are filled with college kids, including a 1-2 mile stretch of road with bars, restaurants and a music venue. Thanks, City of Tempe!
Finally, Uber had switched from having two backup drivers in the car to only one.
Since this crash ALL of these things have been changed. But because government has zero regulations for these things, Uber gets away with this by saying, "Oops, sorry."
arstechnica.com/cars/2019/11/how-terrible-software-design-decisions-led-to-ubers-deadly-2018-crash/
Edited to add: I'd also like to add that on the previous page I mentioned how this area frequently had jaywalkers because the town put a huge paved walkway across the median between the northbound and southbound lanes. And this is a pretty wide median because the northbound and southbound lanes are physically separated at this point, in order to run across different bridges over Tempe Town Lake.
The town has subsequently ripped out the paved walkway and replaced it with natural desert landscaping.
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Post by nowimnothing on Nov 22, 2019 8:59:36 GMT -5
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Post by Dr. Rumak on Jan 31, 2020 12:14:36 GMT -5
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Post by ganews on Feb 6, 2020 16:55:40 GMT -5
If level 4/5 self-driving cars ever become a real thing that many people have, the self-driving software is going to be subscription-based eventually if not immediately, just like almost every modern software. It is inevitable. Maybe the manufacturer won’t unexpectedly remove it from the car while it is in motion...or rather won’t do it again after it happens once with tragic results.
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Post by Mr. Greene's October Surprise on Feb 8, 2020 11:45:15 GMT -5
Driverless cars probably would've saved Orson Bean's life, yesterday...
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Post by MyNameIsNoneOfYourGoddamnBusin on Feb 13, 2020 17:21:56 GMT -5
So, I know this is uncharacteristic, but I had a thought today. Would the popularity of driverless cars increase or decrease billboard advertising rates? Theoretically, people would be able to focus on them without the distraction of actual driving, but also would be less likely to be looking at the horizon out of their windows at all.
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Post by ganews on Feb 13, 2020 21:26:32 GMT -5
So, I know this is uncharacteristic, but I had a thought today. Would the popularity of driverless cars increase or decrease billboard advertising rates? Theoretically, people would be able to focus on them without the distraction of actual driving, but also would be less likely to be looking at the horizon out of their windows at all. By the time level 4/5 driverless cars are a widespread reality there won't be any billboards. The car will play ads at you at intervals unless you pay to turn them off like Spotify.
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Post by sarapen on Feb 20, 2020 20:11:13 GMT -5
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Post by Dr. Rumak on Mar 20, 2020 16:33:43 GMT -5
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Post by Desert Dweller on Mar 28, 2020 20:49:48 GMT -5
Not surprising, when as posted above, Uber's attempt had programming that believed pedestrians only exist in crosswalks. If the car can't recognize people outside of crosswalks, then there is a LOT of stuff it can't recognize.
Maybe humans aren't actually as bad at this as we think? And instead we should just build better mass transit? And work seriously on the problem of "last mile" transport.
Instead we have techies pouring billions into a tech solution for what is a governmental infrastructure problem.
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Post by ganews on Aug 26, 2020 11:08:16 GMT -5
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Post by ganews on Dec 8, 2020 18:19:00 GMT -5
Uber is out. I wonder what their plan is now to save their terrible business model.
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Post by Dr. Rumak on Apr 14, 2021 5:26:02 GMT -5
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Post by Dr. Rumak on Apr 18, 2021 19:49:44 GMT -5
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Post by ganews on Apr 21, 2021 7:14:05 GMT -5
Here I invested in a net launcher to rip off Amazon delivery drones, but if I had just waited I could be knocking over golf carts for free pizza.
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Post by ganews on Apr 23, 2021 14:13:59 GMT -5
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Post by ganews on Oct 23, 2021 11:32:19 GMT -5
Who Will Listen To Country Music When Trucks Drive Themselves?
(it's a poor video but a pretty decent song)
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Post by nowimnothing on Dec 23, 2021 14:45:50 GMT -5
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Post by Jean Luc de Lemur on Dec 23, 2021 23:47:08 GMT -5
^^^ There should probably be something like L¼ for a lot of cars now, where under certain conditions you don’t have to just take into account not only the technical limitations of the car but how the car will interpret your inputs. It’s pretty easy to confuse cars made in the past five years—I’ve only done it with left foot braking which is not a usual thing by any means, but it was definitely striking to me how something mechanically pretty simple could turn into the automotive equivalent of Captain Kirk vs. Landru.
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Post by Dr. Rumak on Apr 10, 2023 7:45:37 GMT -5
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Post by liebkartoffel on Apr 10, 2023 9:41:44 GMT -5
Anxiously waiting for techbros to work their way through a few more iterations of automation technology and eventually just reinvent streetcars already. "Hmmm, how do we ensure our driverless buses can safely navigate their routes? Perhaps if we fixed them to some sort of guide or track, embedded in the road?"
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Post by Dr. Rumak on Aug 18, 2023 16:36:13 GMT -5
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Post by ganews on Aug 23, 2023 16:39:15 GMT -5
Over six years later, it's fun to read the first 2-3 pages of this thread. Where is the promised technical development? They had three years between the start of the thread and the pandemic. I've got a 2017 post quoting someone who predicted success by 2017...in 2012. Desert Dweller , are they still testing driverless cars on your campus?
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Post by Desert Dweller on Aug 24, 2023 22:17:38 GMT -5
Over six years later, it's fun to read the first 2-3 pages of this thread. Where is the promised technical development? They had three years between the start of the thread and the pandemic. I've got a 2017 post quoting someone who predicted success by 2017...in 2012. Desert Dweller , are they still testing driverless cars on your campus? Yes. It isn't Uber any longer. They pulled out after that crash where one of their cars killed a pedestrian that I posted about in this thread.
Waymo is still here. Well, I think Uber actually shut down their entire R&D on this and is somehow either backing or partnered with Waymo?
I occasionally post about my frustration with these stupid things. One time last year I got stuck behind one which clearly couldn't navigate road construction. The city was replacing the sewer system near my apartment. The roads had lanes shut down. But because it was underground pipe replacement, the lane closures weren't in straight lane lines. The orange cones would weave drivers in and out of lanes. The Waymo car could not handle this. It would stop every 20 feet or so, every time the cones directed traffic to weave into the new lane. It took me 20 minutes to go 1.5 mile, because there were no cross streets I could turn onto. Maddening.
These cars also have a habit of just stopping in the middle of the road. For no reason.
And I think I posted in another thread about how computerized cars don't do common traffic courtesy things that human drivers do. Such as forgo the right of way, and let pedestrians cross ahead of you when it is 115 degrees outside. Or, leave a gap at the exit of a parking garage so that cars exiting the garage can merge.
I'd much rather my city invest more in mass transit than back driverless car testing.
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Post by Dr. Rumak on Dec 18, 2023 8:24:58 GMT -5
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Post by ganews on Dec 18, 2023 10:06:30 GMT -5
What an unbiased source! I'll check back in six years to see if his prediction was as accurate as those that led me to start this thread six years ago.
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