
Waymo heads to Atlanta to test its self-driving cars - Element_
https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/22/waymo-heads-to-atlanta-to-test-its-self-driving-cars/
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Judgmentality
It seems like Waymo is well ahead of everyone else, but they had a mass talent
exodus 2 years ago (many went to Nuro, Aurora, Otto, Argo, etcetera). I can't
imagine that many smart engineers, already making good money even by Bay Area
engineering standards, would quit to compete unless they really thought they
had a chance.

There's just so much about the competition in this space I find fascinating.

~~~
londons_explore
Many were bored - they'd been working on it 5 years already.

Some thought the direction was wrong - not gathering enough test data (unlike
Tesla).

Some thought they didn't have a big enough slice of the pie, and by moving to
a startup and replicating the work they could earn way more through an
acquisition by a carmaker.

Some saw the tech as fairly old. Remember much of Waymo's code was written by
Urmson 10 years ago. Probably all C/C++. Not very nimble and quick to extend.

Some saw the fundamental approach wrong. Why not use neural nets for path
planning and decision making rather than hand coded rules which will never
cover enough cases to be good enough?

Some didn't want to be part of Googles risky approach. Too much pressure to
get the cars on the road could kill people, and killing people, or the threat
of it, is rather bad for morale. The leaders had this "even if it isn't
perfect, it's better than current drivers" approach. Thats little comfort if
it was your off by one error which caused the car to plough into a group of
schoolchildren.

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kajecounterhack
> Some thought the direction was wrong - not gathering enough test data
> (unlike Tesla).

FWIW if you gather a ton of data and don't have simulation it's pretty much
useless. Also it's expensive to keep around large amounts of data. Tesla
didn't even have a simulation team until relatively recently.

> Some saw the tech as fairly old. Remember much of Waymo's code was written
> by Urmson 10 years ago. Probably all C/C++. Not very nimble and quick to
> extend.

Do you work in autonomous vehicles? Most teams are using C/C++. If you're not
waymo you probably use ROS.

If you've ever worked at Google you'd know their C/C++ stack is among the most
pleasant to deal with because much of the bad cruft from those languages is
abstracted away in stable libraries.

~~~
KKKKkkkk1
If you're not Waymo you probably use ROS. If you _are_ Waymo, then what do you
use?

~~~
agildehaus
I don't know if they've changed, but in 2013 they were using a modified
Ubuntu:

[https://youtu.be/7Yd9Ij0INX0?t=9m25s](https://youtu.be/7Yd9Ij0INX0?t=9m25s)

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jeremymcanally
If they can navigate which of the 800 Peachtree-named streets the car is on
and which one it should go down next (minding all the crazy one way streets in
downtown) without crashing into anything or anyone, they'll be doing better
than most humans.

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BatFastard
As an Atlanta resident, I can say that they have chosen some of the most
challenging roads in the nation. The roads in Atlanta are a classic lava
pattern. Many are literally the cow paths from town to town.

And we have some of the most aggressive drivers in the US.

edit: spelling.

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tabeth
I recall taking an Uber once and hearing the driver mention that he wished he
could remotely drive the car. Was this idea ever taken seriously? I'm sure
latency and creating the actual interface would be big problems.

[/digression]

From a political perspective, what's necessary until the safety drivers are no
longer legally required? I believe there are a couple places that don't
require them now, actually.

~~~
asteli
your visual system is finely tuned to be able to judge things like "how far
away is that child in the crosswalk?"

you possess an internal IMU that provides instant and accurate feedback on
acceleration and rotation.

you lose out on both of those when you perceive the world through any kind of
display, whether that be a screen or even a VR headset.

think about your field of view when you look out the windshield of a car.
including peripheral vision that's a 150° field of view. compress that fov to
a screen, even a really good one. maybe three of them set side by side. can
you still make out a street sign with 6" tall text from 200 feet away?

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dpflan
This should be interesting. I'd like to see the "driver profiles" created for
each city, assuming that's possible to create from observing traffic in
different cities.

~~~
cm2187
Like a self driving car that honks a lot in Rome or Mumbai?

~~~
dpflan
Change the classic saying: "When autonomously driving in Rome..."

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ilaksh
That's nice but when are they launching to the public in Phoenix?

Everytime I see Waymo news I hope it's about that Phoenix launch and then am
disappointed when it isn't.

~~~
Judgmentality
Supposedly they're launching in February, but I guess we'll just have to wait
and see.

~~~
gibybo
Where did you hear that?

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an4rchy
I am hoping that partnerships with ridesharing companies help with the data
collection aspect. If Lyft/Uber could lease a few cars from all/some of these
companies, which would probably pay them to be driven around, it might be a
win-win for both the consumers and the companies.

Also, faster data collection at scale might reduce the time taken to "learn a
city"

~~~
kuba77
Not really. Uber has its own stake in self-driving so it wouldn't make sense
for them to help competition with data collection for short term gains.

