
Google’s self-driving car team prepares to spin out from Alphabet’s X - prostoalex
http://www.recode.net/2016/12/7/13875208/google-x-self-driving-spinout-alphabet
======
jayjay71
I'm curious what their first product will be and when it will be available.
Chris Urmson stated the goal was to release a self-driving vehicle by 2020,
after pushing it back from their original goal of 2017, and this was just
before he left at the beginning of the year. Since then Google also lost its
lead software engineer on the project who left to start a competing company
and he also took another senior employee with him, and Google lost several
more key members to Otto (which is now owned by Uber).

This space has become super competitive and it will be fun to watch what
happens. I still think it will be many years before we see a fully self-
driving car (where no driver is needed at all). I think the best way to do it
is to redesign cities to specifically accommodate self-driving cars. Honestly
though that might be something other countries such as China and Singapore are
much more reticent to pursue.

~~~
elmar
A full self-driving car with no driver will take more than 30 years, and
probably will only be possible on areas restricted to self-driving cars.

We will se first one to two seat fully self-flying vehicles than cars.

~~~
jrv
Considering that Elon Musk says we'll have full self-diving cars (from an
engineering standpoint) in 2 or 3 years, this estimate seems very pessimistic.

~~~
anexprogrammer
2-3 years in OK conditions, 30 years to cater for all the odd edge cases
humans take cars. Bad human drivers, Indian traffic, cyclists, animals,
narrow, unlit or poor roads etc. The other question is will the tech be there
before the licensing/legislation.

Somewhere in the middle there's probably a point where self driving is
demonstrably safer than human, even before they're "ready" for everywhere.

~~~
SEJeff
You're grotesquely underestimating what fleet learning will do for traffic
issues.

The way I see it (as a software engineer myself), is that each wreck that the
AP did not prevent gets added as a test case in the AP unit tests that all
have to pass. Also, each time a human wrecks, it could/will send the data to
Tesla to continue simulations and ensure AP would not wreck in the same
conditions.

How many of the wrecks, even fatal ones, essentially a different driver making
the same mistake over and over? Likely millions. Real fleet learning would
simply solve that problem once, and prevent thousands of fatalities as a
result. As more and more AP capable cars hit the road, this simply will
exponentially increase. Thirty years is laughable seeing how much computing
has improved in merely the past 20. Maybe 5 tops assuming the legal hurdles
are actually surmountable.

~~~
imh
That's such an inethical way to do it. You're suggesting that we just let it
learn from wrecks in the real world, instead of trying to prevent those wrecks
by other means? This, the Tesla strategy, feels despicable.

~~~
vidarh
Any attempt to prevent wrecks we do now are based on learning from past real
world experience. All fleet learning does is automate that process and apply
it to self-driving systems so that the learning is systematic and will help
everyone using said self learning system instead of having to wait for new
advice and/or new safety mechanisms.

------
kenoph
When I see news about self-driving cars I can't help but think about car DoS,
ransomware and hijacking. Not that this doesn't apply to "normal" cars, but I
suspect that "intelligent" cars will have Internet connection and, at some
point in the near future, inter-vehicle communication in order to cooperate
better. We already have a PoC smartlight worm.

~~~
user5994461
Put a physical button to enable/disable the network connectivity. That will
limit the damages.

Add a hard firmware reset button as well.

~~~
mille562
Playing devils advocate:

\- If the hack/virus was already installed, a network shutoff won't help much.

\- If a car is 10 years old with 10 years of safety updates/patches, resetting
to the original firmware might not be a viable solution. But there needs to be
a failsafe way of knowing the running software has not been tampered with.

~~~
Diederich
I concur with your overall points.

Rather than a firmware 'reset', a 'firmware safe mode' control.

This loads a super simple and infrequently updated image that lets the car
just be a dumb car, and nothing else.

~~~
iainmerrick
"Super simple" would be nice, but as I understand it, even "dumb car" software
is incredibly huge and complicated. (It's very unclear to me why that needs to
be so)

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zitterbewegung
Everyone comments about full self driving cars to consumers. Automating trucks
would be much more trans-formative than cars .

~~~
prostoalex
Why?

Most of the automation efforts revolve around "drive on the highway from point
A to point B" scenario. If you have a container that's that simple, rail is
much more cost-effective.

Trucking has fairly complex loading/unloading requirements, with scenarios
such as "haul 8 vehicles, unload them at 8 different addresses", "haul a load
of tomatoes and lettuce, do 5 drops at In'n'Out locations, 1 at Safeway, 1 at
Albertsons" fairly common. There's an understandable lack of trust in the
system, where the trucker is also responsible for ensuring the staff on the
recipient side is not unloading (i.e. stealing) too much or helping themselves
into another customer's load.

There's also "stop and wait your turn at weight stations", "stop to refuel" as
well as "stop at random checkpoints when crossing state borders" scenarios
that seem to require just way too much of human involvement.

~~~
gohrt
an automated truck doesn't mean a driverless truck. it means the driver can be
sleeping/tweeting/whatever during the boring hours between checkpoints/stops.

~~~
prostoalex
So level 3 vs level 4 autonomy, in other words? Usually when people use the
word "automated", they imply level 4.

I agree any sort of driver assistance tech at level 3 and below is beneficial
for public safety, I am not sure it's an industry game changer.

~~~
gohrt
The levels overlap and vary by environment. Your truck can be level 5 on long
stretch of highway, but then ring alarm bells and (if necessary, if the driver
does not take over) slow down to a graceful stop on the shoulder before
exiting the highway or maneuvering through a checkpoint or delivery.

------
boltzmannbrain
Curious to see the this team's approach relative to the TBD Chris Urmson
company...
[https://twitter.com/theAlexLavin/status/808230259078402048](https://twitter.com/theAlexLavin/status/808230259078402048)

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MichaelMoser123
is this a sign that they are preparing for GA ? What is known about the status
of the project?

(i asked this in a previous submission
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13130017](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13130017)
, asking again as the topic hit the front page)

Maybe this is related to the new laws in Michigan that allow self driving cars
- [http://fortune.com/2016/12/09/michigan-self-driving-
cars/](http://fortune.com/2016/12/09/michigan-self-driving-cars/) . Now they
have a potential market - doesn't matter how large, they count on it that
other states/countries will follow.

~~~
jessriedel
GA?

~~~
MichaelMoser123
general availability (released to the public); please excuse my parlance.

------
pyrmont
Title should be updated to clarify the spin out is from X, not Alphabet as a
whole: (see correction at end of the OP)
[http://www.recode.net/2016/12/7/13875208/google-x-self-
drivi...](http://www.recode.net/2016/12/7/13875208/google-x-self-driving-
spinout-alphabet)

~~~
dang
Updated. Thanks!

------
mikebay
Think to have a car, that Google is tracking all time (just for your own
security) haha

\- What a "Orwellian" dream life we gonna have. Cannot wait google to go on
medicine also. Then we all can use pills from google. But what will happend to
your car, your medicine and your home, if you dare to be opinionated away from
mainstream ? - what a nightmare!

~~~
kuschku
This is written very confrontational, but worth a discussion, so I vouched for
it:

Google has been known to lock users out of all their services if they are
believed to have violated the ToS of even one service.

Having self-driving cars from Google integrated into the same ecosystem could
have serious repercussions for users, so is this wise? Do we need legal
changes, or should Google just change their model for locking out users?

Forcing companies to serve users isn't really an option either, but Taxis have
to do that — how can we solve these issues in a realistic way?

~~~
adrianN
don't leave all the research to private companies. fund public research, make
results free, increase competition.

~~~
kefka
We do fund public research.

It is then considered the "property" of the university, which is sold as IPR
to the highest bidder to make money for the university. It is also summarily
locked behind academic paywalls but there are some solutions to that
(icanhazpdf , scihub).

We just fail on everything else in that sentence: make results free, and
increase competition.

Things might change if those laws were revoked, turning public universities
back to the public, and then funding them appropriately. 30% tax funding is
not "funding"... Let the privates do what they want.

~~~
dexterdog
Is there a truly private quality university? When I say private, I mean one
that is not considered a non-profit and thus pays no taxes on the piles of
money it rakes in.

------
elmar
Self-Driving Cars Will Improve Our Cities. If They Don’t Ruin Them @rmchase

[https://backchannel.com/self-driving-cars-will-improve-
our-c...](https://backchannel.com/self-driving-cars-will-improve-our-cities-
if-they-dont-ruin-them-2dc920345618)

------
ocdtrekkie
I have yet to hear Google has solved the main reason their Self-Driving Cars
aren't practical: That every road they drive on must be precisely mapped ahead
of time, at a much higher fidelity level than Google Maps/Street View is
normally done nationwide.

Tesla and other self-driving developers are working without the luxury of a
worldwide mapping database, and while not perfect, their products more or less
could work on any road, because they're based on input from the sensors. But
Google cars are dependent on input from Google servers, which means, where
that data is lacking, the cars can't drive.

If they're looking to run some sort of business to start making money, I could
maybe see like an Uber-like service across very small geographic areas they
have mapped. But the narrow fence around the area you can practically drive
with one makes it useless to sell as a consumer vehicle.

~~~
chucknelson
Source? I thought Google's cars used many sensors as well and weren't just a
"follow this high-fidelity map and hope it's correct!" technology.

~~~
amjaeger
If I'm not mistaken, this is the presentation that discusses mapping the roads
before autonomous travel. They compare the maps to what the car sees as it
drives.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXylqtEQ0tk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXylqtEQ0tk)

But there are a number of reasons the need pre-mapping are not a huge issue.
A) When autonomous cars start to be introduced people will still know how to
drive, and can pilot the car through unmapped areas. By the time everyone has
an autonomous car, and no one knows how to drive the world will be mapped. B)
Google has already shown with Streetview that they can create detailed, up-to-
date maps of most roads. C) This problem will likely be solved in time.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Premapping is still required as of today, but they do collect data to try and
correct those maps: [https://medium.com/waymo/building-maps-for-a-self-
driving-ca...](https://medium.com/waymo/building-maps-for-a-self-driving-
car-723b4d9cd3f4#.6tp3y6t6i)

