
Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo - paul
http://www.driverless.id/news/video-breakdown-gms-unicorn-cruise-shows-off-level-4-skills-sf-passing-uber-maybe-waymo-0176031/
======
abalone
At the risk of sounding pedantic this is not a Level 4 demo. It is a Level 2
demo where the driver didn't have to intervene during the demonstrated route.

What's the difference? Apart from the legal requirement to have a diver ready
to take over in test vehicles (which necessarily makes it Level 2), the
fundamental difference is that you'd have to show _a lot more than one demo_
to establish that you've achieved Level 4. Level 4s are supposed to be able to
operate without human intervention at all within prescribed domains (e.g.
downtown cities). That doesn't mean operate one trip or one day or one month
without a disengagement -- that's still Level 2.

I'm super impressed by the demo but Cruise will have to show more data to back
up a Level 4 claim.

~~~
tigershark
I agree completely. And the video although not new is quite impressive. But if
the claim of the author that San Francisco is a tough city in which to drive
is true, than I fear that some parts of Italy (and probably A LOT of cities in
the world) won't have self driving cars for a very long time. When I saw the
video the first time I was very impressed, but I would have never imagined
that for someone that was a VERY challenging urban scenario. From the article:

    
    
        when we see the streets of San Fransisco conquered, then we know that self-driving is ready to come of age.
    

Seriously? And if you conquer the street of Naples what will come of age?

~~~
CoolGuySteve
This is moreso true for China and India.

If you've ever been to those countries, the first thing you notice as a
westerner is that the streets are chaos, traffic rules are barely obeyed, and
aggressiveness is required to get anywhere.

Meanwhile, Beijing and Dehli have extreme pollution problems partially caused
by cars.

If any place was in need of point to point autonomous ride sharing, it's Asia.
The reduction in cars would reduce congestion from the outset. But in the
future, protocol guided right of way negotiation could reduce congestion even
further.

~~~
fsckin
I tried to flag a taxi in downtown Shanghai for 45 minutes and finally gave
into the broken English speaking motorcycle taxi who had been circling the
block every five minutes.

Riding bitch through Hangpu to Pudong with a laptop in one arm while lane
splitting with aggressive (and otherwise bad drivers) all around was a rather
exciting experience.

Even with a skilled pilot, the adrenaline rush was similar to my first time
tandem skydiving.

~~~
signa11
> Even with a skilled pilot, the adrenaline rush was similar to my first time
> tandem skydiving.

following lines from neal-stephenson's cryptonomicon come to mind:

    
    
          "like Disneyland with the safety locks taken off"

------
Animats
Nice. It's annoying that they provide only 10x sped up video. Watching this
slowed down is helpful.

Notes:

* There are frequent steering twitches to the left. This may be associated with passing parked cars. There are similar twitches to the right when in the left lane of a one-way street.

* Crosswalk behavior when turning needs some work. The vehicle enters the intersection, then stops in the intersection before the crosswalk with people in it. This is a hard problem, because the system needs to recognize people waiting to cross but not yet in the roadway. When the light turns green, both the pedestrians going straight and the turning vehicle can enter the intersection, the pedestrians having right of way. The pedestrians now block the vehicle, and the vehicle blocks the bike lane.

* Left turns into multi-lane streets are too wide and into the wrong lane.

* On two occasions, the vehicle is stuck behind a doubly-parked vehicle engaged in loading. The options are to wait or to cross a double yellow line. There's a delay of several seconds, then forward movement. Suspect manual intervention.

~~~
abalone
I counted 30 seconds of being stuck behind the unloading van with no way to
pass without crossing double yellow. I didn't notice the autonomous green
light turn off though. Possibly the algorithm is, if you're stuck then certain
rules become flexible.

Worth mentioning, 30 seconds would feel like an eternity inside a car.

~~~
Animats
I assumed the "autonomous green light" was added in post-production, along
with the timer and the company logo.

Google had another crash last month.[1] As usual, it was probably the other
driver's fault. Other driver apparently botched a left turn in a two-lane left
turn intersection at Rengsdorf and El Camino. Google drives in traffic on the
SF peninsula every day, and we know exactly how many times they've crashed.
It's reassuring seeing all those miles with only the occasional fender-bumper.
It's not like Tesla slamming into something on a freeway at full speed. Three
times.

Still waiting for the CA DMV to post the 2016 autonomous vehicle disconnect
reports. Those cover December through November and are due Jan 1st, so DMV
should have them up by now.

[1]
[https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3d358211-3f0c-430e...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3d358211-3f0c-430e-b8db-b13392239e1e/Google_121116.pdf?MOD=AJPERES)

~~~
bluejekyll
> It's not like Tesla slamming into something on a freeway at full speed.

To be fair, Tesla is not selling a fully autonomous vehicle, yet, people are
treating it like one.

~~~
swsieber
And Tesla had encouraged that perception.

~~~
greglindahl
Tesla appears to be extremely clear to users as to the current state of the
system. Have you actually used Tesla autopilot? What did you think of it?

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
It's called "autopilot".

Too many people, myself included, that's all that matters.

They need to stop calling it "autopilot" until you can get in and fall asleep
in the back seat.

~~~
briandear
Airplane autopilot isn't designed to be used in the way you described. Should
aviation rename that as well?

~~~
anotheryou
Can't you go theoretically go to the toilet on autopilot? It won't land for
you, but while turned on it will keep the plane aloft until fuel runs out, no?

~~~
bluejekyll
I don't know the answer to this, but it's my guess that at least the pilot or
copilot must be at the controls at all times.

~~~
anotheryou
should be, but doesn't actually have to I guess. (still relatively empty up
there, so not so much traffic to avoid)

------
exDM69
"Level 4" means that no human intervention is required and in case of
conditions going from good to bad, the car can autonomously put itself in a
safe state.

That was nice and clean city driving in the video clips but nothing that
distinguishes it from "Level 3" (human intervention may be required within ~15
seconds or so) or even "Level 2" (human intervention may be required within
seconds, current state of the art).

~~~
JumpCrisscross
_I imagine a space defined by visibility, traction and road flatness. A large
space of Level 0 conditions, i.e. the conditions within most humans can drive,
encapsulates Level 1, i.e. cruise control, which mostly encapsulates
successive levels.

The benefit of this is you notice where levels "poke through," e.g. Level 4
may work on a sunny day, but a small change in rain or road conditions could
downgrade the system to Level 1. As time goes forward, the inner levels can be
expected to radiate out._

EDIT: Never mind. The point of "Level 4" is it is competent in all reasonable
operating domains.

~~~
exDM69
> Level 4 may work on a sunny day, but a small change in rain or road
> conditions could downgrade the system to Level 1.

This isn't the way it works. If a car says it can do "Level 4 on a sunny day"
it means when you sit in the car and engage the autopilot (and it says it's
safe to engage), then no human intervention will not be required during the
course of the trip. If conditions change, the car will be parked without human
assistance and wait for help (what happens next is outside of the scope). You
could be sitting in the back seat, or your kids could be in the car alone on
their way to school.

"Level 4 on a sunny day on some pre-certified highways" is ok. "Level 4 in San
Francisco traffic" is also ok, and much harder. "Level 4 unless it starts
raining and we'll deteriorate to Level 3" is Level 3, not 4.

This is the definition of autonomy levels from SAE, and they're pretty
strictly defined.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _This is the definition of autonomy levels from SAE_

 _It 's still domain dependent, right? If the rules say we're flattening
precipitation and visibility within normal bounds, fine, but sometimes you
have abnormal weather and badly-maintained roads. It is useful to compare
hypothetical cars that autonomously navigate conditions no humans would dare._

EDIT: Never mind. The point of "Level 4" is it is competent in all reasonable
operating domains.

~~~
exDM69
> It's still domain dependent, right? If the rules say we're flattening
> precipitation and visibility within normal bounds, fine, but sometimes you
> have abnormal weather and badly-maintained roads

No, it's not.

In Level 4, if there's "abnormal weather and badly-maintained roads", the car
must be able to deal with the situation and enter a safe state. It can say
"please sit down and wait for assistance" but it may _not_ say, "take over the
wheel".

In practice you'd probably disengage the autonomy and drive yourself, you
_take_ control and it does not _give_ you control. If you can't sit on the
back seat drinking beer or send the car to drive your kids to school (we're
not considering legislation issues here), it's not Level 4.

This is an important distinction. "Level 3 in most conditions" is good enough
to pass as "full autonomy" for most people, but Level 4 is a requirement for
not absolving the humans on board for any legal responsibility.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Got it. That's helpful. So Cruise/GM are 4G'ing a Level 3 vehicle?

~~~
exDM69
It's impossible to tell the level of autonomy from this article. What was
shown in this article could qualify as Level 2, 3, 4 or 5.

To provide proof of Level 4 autonomy with video (in certain conditions), it
would need to show adverse and exceptional conditions, such as terrible
weather, accidents ahead, all routes to destination blocked or any other
situation short of a force majeure disaster and then provide a safe
contingency for that.

In San Francisco, that would probably mean finding a parking lot where it is
safe to wait for assistance from your Transport Service Provide(tm). In rural
northern Europe where I'm from, it would mean parking on the side of the road
and calling your wife/mom/friend to pick you up :)

------
dorianm
Level 0: Automated system has no vehicle control, but may issue warnings.

Level 1: Driver must be ready to take control at any time. Automated system
may include features such as Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), Parking Assistance
with automated steering, and Lane Keeping Assistance (LKA) Type II in any
combination.

Level 2: The driver is obliged to detect objects and events and respond if the
automated system fails to respond properly. The automated system executes
accelerating, braking, and steering. The automated system can deactivate
immediately upon takeover by the driver.

Level 3: Within known, limited environments (such as freeways), the driver can
safely turn their attention away from driving tasks, but must still be
prepared to take control when needed.

Level 4: The automated system can control the vehicle in all but a few
environments such as severe weather. The driver must enable the automated
system only when it is safe to do so. When enabled, driver attention is not
required.

Level 5: Other than setting the destination and starting the system, no human
intervention is required. The automatic system can drive to any location where
it is legal to drive and make its own decision.

From the Society of Automotive Engineers

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Classification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Classification)

------
andrewem
Watching this video what struck me most was how overbuilt almost all the
streets were - they're designed for high speeds and devote essentially all the
space to cars. We know how to get at least a 3x reduction in fatalities, as
the Netherlands has done, with engineering changes that make human drivers
less likely to make mistakes and make their mistakes less costly.

~~~
bbarn
Really? The narrow downtown San Francisco streets? You should check out a
suburb sometime.

------
employee8000
Very cool. But am I mistaken that they didn't attempt to go through a 4-way
stop with massive pedestrians, like in PacHeights or Marina? I would be
curious to see how they fared with the obnoxious drivers skipping their turn
as well as the constant flow of pedestrians.

I'm also curious how it would react to going up Mason and California, where
there's a traffic light at the top of a steep hill. Last time I had to
physically pull myself up via the steering wheel to see anything, and as a
seasoned driver I was a bit worried.

~~~
gcheong
I'm guessing that will be part of Level 5 or at least we will be very close to
level 5(full) autonomy once complex situations like 4-way stops with lots of
pedestrians have been mastered.

~~~
kuschku
So you’re saying until we reach Level 5, autonomous cars will be entirely
useless almost everywhere except a handful of US cities?

~~~
stale2002
No.... They would work perfect on a highway WAY before we have cities figured
out. If autonomous cars and trucks work on highways, then millions of jobs go
poof.

~~~
ghaff
Fully agree with you until the last phrase.

Highway autonomy will be a nice feature but you still need a competent human
driver to be present for end to end transportation. So I still need to order a
car with a driver to get to the airport.

I assume that you're referring to trucking. It's possible that trucking
companies will set up depots right off the highway and will reduce drivers as
a result. But a lot of long distance container transport is already done by
trains so it's not immediately obvious that eliminating drivers for only the
highway portion of trucking is necessarily a big enough win to make it happen.
(Especially if autonomous driving systems allow for the driver to sleep in his
cab while underway.)

------
panitaxx
Pigeons and human have a pact. You continue and they will fly away in the last
second. Cars don't need to stop for pigeons. [https://youtu.be/xPCZtrac-
Ss](https://youtu.be/xPCZtrac-Ss)

~~~
cardiffspaceman
I hope you're kidding. In an area where they had just opened a freeway segment
for my commute, my car had a couple of "reverse bird strikes" \-- the car was
safe but the fate of the bird was unknown -- at the beginning of the new
segment. It's possible the birds weren't pigeons.

~~~
will_pseudonym
He was kidding. It's from Seinfeld.

------
blisterpeanuts
Dumb question: how do these systems distinguish a traffic light? Here in New
England at least, there's quite a variety of lights, many different modes
(red, yellow, green, flashing red, flashing yellow, no-turn-left red arrow,
no-turn-right red arrow, and different light technologies: old-fashioned
style, Fresnel lens, slotted shade.

Add to this complexity the weather conditions. Suppose the sun is shining
straight at you and you need to squint and shade your eyes just to make out
what the light is -- this happens to me frequently -- can the camera see the
traffic light and distinguish its color clearly under such conditions?

What about when it's raining, misting or drizzling, snowing heavily, etc. and
the traffic lights are these fragmented outlines that you, the human, can
heuristically distinguish but a machine might not?

One last thought: suppose it's right turn on red and first car in line is a
self-driving vehicle. Can it really look left and safely determine there's
enough time to beat the cross traffic? If it's highly conservative and just
waits until green, there could be ten irate motorists behind it and guaranteed
to honk and curse.

It's exciting technology but there are some very difficult problems to solve.
I worry that if these machines can't demonstrate 110% of a human's ability to
drive, they simply won't be implemented in many places except some very well
defined rigid routes that are free of problematical challenges and variations.

~~~
cbr

        red, yellow, green, flashing red, flashing yellow,
        no-turn-left red arrow, no-turn-right red arrow
    

You forgot flashing green, which does actually exist, at least in MA. You
treat it like a green light, but it could go yellow and then red if a
pedestrian presses the walk button.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
Yeah, that, and also a traffic cop standing in random spots waving cars around
an accident etc.

------
grogenaut
Random side thought: How do I signal in an ambiguous situation to the car on
who's going first. Like Super high traffic and I want to merge in front of
them or let them go first? Currently I do that with a wave. Which is super
effective on a motorcycle as people almost always say "sure we can squeeze you
in here" which lets me get places way faster.

~~~
tgb
I've read that insurance people strongly suggest to never wave: it's one of
the top things that seems to occur during accidents. It's hard to distinguish
from someone "waving you on" versus someone "waving to say thanks for letting
me go". Trusting anyone else to check for oncoming traffic is a terrible idea.
It's really easy to focus on the wave-giver and not check the rest of the
traffic. And even if _you_ are good at these, all waves are inherently
involving at least 2 drivers, and you can't really count on them being any
good.

I couldn't find any real information on this though. I think I picked it up
from Reddit comments. Some info does suggest it's legally complicated:
[http://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2014/03/06/244965...](http://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2014/03/06/244965.htm)

~~~
grogenaut
I was talking about at a 4 way stop or in 2 mph gridlock... Where is more like
a construction site than traffic. I almost got smeared once by believing a
blinker. Never again, I won't pull out until they are obviously in a turn.

~~~
tgb
Yeah there's not much else you can do at a 4 way stop if the timing is bad.

------
brianwawok
Good we need competition in this space. I love Tesla but if this is going to
end up everywhere, we need a few good players.

------
renlo
It looks like the car doesn't travel in a straight line (it wobbles) because
it's trying avoid parked cars.

~~~
CamelCaseName
Probably for the best. Someone could always open up a car door unexpectedly. I
imagine it would be very hard for a driving algorithm to read social cues and
notice drivers getting in/out of cars.

------
mikepurvis
Cruise was a sponsor of ROSCon in 2014, but had no booth or presenters:
[http://roscon.ros.org/2014/#program](http://roscon.ros.org/2014/#program)

Nor do they have any presence I'm aware of on Github. This is in contrast to
BMW, for example, who have made a number of contributions:
[https://github.com/bmwcarit](https://github.com/bmwcarit)

Anyway, just curious to what extent Cruise used (or still uses) ROS and open
source software in their stack.

------
ea2100
Funny to see the it slow down for the pigeon in the road at 14:50.

~~~
NAHWheatCracker
Hah, nice catch, I remember seeing it do that weird jig but didn't look rewind
or look close enough to figure out why it did that.

~~~
Jedd
There is a paragraph and video fragment describing this in TFA.

------
woofyman
>within 5 to 10 years we'll see these vehicles driving safely around San
Francisco

~~~
HappyTypist
Pretty ironic in consideration of "red lights don't apply to me" Ubers and
more sane but extremely slow grandma Teslas

~~~
thefastlane
how dare you emit an utterance that amounts to anything other than deification
of our future self-driving overlords and the peter-theil-worshipping engineers
who unleash them upon us!

------
dsfyu404ed
I said it before and I'll say it again:

You might not be able to turn an aircraft carrier on a dime but when you do
you've got an aircraft carrier.

GM (and the other automotive manufacturers for that matter) decided they
wanted in on self driving and electric vehicles, had a few meetings, wrote a
few checks and a few years later look at the result. Are Google and Tesla
going to reply with similar videos?

~~~
luhn
> You might not be able to turn an aircraft carrier on a dime but when you do
> you've got an aircraft carrier.

I'm not sure what this means.

~~~
bfstein
He's saying that while it may be more difficult to change strategic direction
of a $50B company (Ford/Gm/etc.), once you do, you have a huge company and
giant production line behind you.

------
rmason
Extremely cool feat. Next try Chicago or Detroit in January guys.

~~~
tomschlick
Thats one of the reasons why Uber chose Pittsburgh for development. We might
not get the same amount of snow as those cities but we get enough and have a
variety of terrain for them to use as test cases.

~~~
maxerickson
Chicago and Detroit don't get all that much snow.

(Southern Michigan gets quite a lot of snow. Prevailing winds are westerly so
lots of lake effect. Grand Rapids gets almost 2x the snow that Detroit gets.
Cleveland also gets more snow than Detroit, lake effect from Erie)

~~~
rmason
Once they can traverse Chicago or Detroit in the winter safely then they can
try Grand Rapids or Buffalo.

For the record in East Lansing we get a lot more snow than Detroit but we're
pikers compared to say Holland or Grand Haven.

~~~
bbarn
I drove in Grand Rapids and Chicago today. I'd take bad weather in GR than
here at home any time. More snow more often doesn't mean more difficult to
drive, more population and smaller streets here make it way riskier. Ice and
sliding are easy problems to account for in code, bad manners are not.

------
EGreg
What I'd liks to see with level 4 is millions of miles driven by a car with a
SOFT outer shell. That way collisions don't hurt other cars or even
pedestrians. Make the car's top entirely out of foam or something, when
driving without a driver.

------
scirocco
It's interesting how the autonomous car evolution is to a very large extent a
result from the private sector. Companies could have been asking the federal
government to install sensors in all stop signs, and under the street to
support this evolution. Rather, they look at the cities as they are and build
something that works with it. Sometimes I wonder if government should take a
more active role and ease the adoption by adapting cities to autonomus vehicle
(rather than the other way around as it is today).

------
teawithcarl
Each time the Cruise starts from a stop light, it's too slow.

Every time ... cars pass it, and dive into its lane (a typical reaction to
slow moving vehicles).

Still, nice accomplishment.

~~~
notatoad
It's hard to tell for sure what's happening in a sped up video like this, but
starting slower than other cars at the light isn't necessarily a bad thing,
depending on just how slow they're going. Going hard off the line is extremely
inefficient for very little benefit. Autonomous cars correcting that habit
could be good.

------
mavhc
Example edge case: Waymo cars know that police cars often stop behind other
cars and to expect people to be walking nearby.

Thought: Once we have 99% self driving cars it will be quite easy to convert a
portion of roads to pedestrian only at times when traffic is light: bollards
go up, lighting changes, cars informed to reroute.

------
bearlow
This looks very amateurish, no roundabouts, no give-way intersection. It's
really easy to stop at red lights or where then car in front of you breaks and
it emits another red light: if ( light == red) stop() ....

------
ilaksh
This video was posted quite awhile ago. Are we sure its not just Nvidia's
reference app configured by the Cruise people? Most of this stuff was in the
Tesla and other Nvidia Drive demos.

------
bsaul
Now that tesla has started to pretend selling autonomous cars now is making
sense, the field went from research ( where researcher honestly reports
shortcomings themselves) to the horrendous world of SV start up, where
everything should be considered a lie until the day someone can actually buy
the stuff and test for himself.

And so you end up with posts like this trying to analyse a video frame by
frame to assess the reality of the technology, and yet everyone including the
author tries to guess where's the catch ( is the green light really
trustworthy ? Why is the video accelerated ? Etc..).

~~~
ericd
Cruise is now owned by GM, which I really doubt is going to throw something
out into the market without testing very rigorously first.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
I get GM cars as rentals pretty often and while they're better than Chrysler I
don't have a lot of faith in their product.

~~~
ericd
My point was that they don't take a cavalier SV-style approach to testing
things.

~~~
greglindahl
Many Silicon Valley startups don't take a "cavalier SV-style approach" to
testing things, either. There are a ton of medical device startups, for
example.

------
Groxx
5-10 years still seems roughly accurate or optimistic. A tech demo does not a
consumer-purchasable licensed product make.

------
arnonejoe
Would be more impressed with a drive from Lombard and Van Ness to Telegraph
Hill.

------
0898
Anybody else think this was about scientology for a moment?

------
erikb
What is a level four skill?

------
Apocryphon
Good news for Lyft?

