
Google's Self-Driving Car Gets Mixed Reviews - mhb
http://www.ktvz.com/automotive/31083190/detail.html
======
doubleconfess
Wow, this reporter was horrible. He reminds me of those clients who when you
show them the early stages of their site after a few weeks of work, point out
everything that doesn't work as a huge the-sky-is-falling catastrophic event
that is proof of the project's eventual demise. This reporter got to sit in a
car that is doing things that a few years ago still seemed like science
fiction and yet he had these niggling complaints:

 _For now, at least, the car only drives routes it's been trained to drive._

Google is pretty good at mapping things.

 _Since the Google car only just got its learner's permit, it drives
accordingly_

I think this is meant as a literal statement. The car is able to drive of its
own accord, but needs an adult present who can take over if needed. But did
you just say that the GOOGLE CAR HAS A LEARNER'S PERMIT?? That's amazing!

 _Then there was the jerking halt on a side street caused by a car that
stopped a little abruptly almost two car lengths ahead._

If you don't think the software is going to err on the side of caution for
YEARS after widespread usage, you are mistaken. Eventually we will be so used
to trusting these cars that we will probably be napping on the way to work, so
who cares that the car hits the brakes a few more times than it should?

And eventually I'm sure these cars will be a model of efficiency, with fast
moving currents of cars zipping here and there. One step at a time.

 _Surprisingly, one thing the car can't do all on its own is use the turn
signals._

Hey, how come when I click this button on my site does nothing happen??? THIS
PROJECT IS A COMPLETE FAILURE!!!

 _If Google can get there before a major automaker beats them to it, I'll be
really impressed._

The most preposterous statement of all. Please get the reporter on the line
and let me place a bet of Google vs all the automakers combined on who will
release this technology is first. Assuming that Google hasn't locked up all of
the pertinent technologies, this wouldn't be a fair fight.

~~~
ColinWright
I'm really disappointed to see this as the top voted reply. Of course the
reporter is wrong, of course his article can be ripped apart, of course this
is a momentous achievement and the reporter is just too ignorant to know that,
and we're all clever enough to see how amazing this is.

You're missing the point and the lesson:

    
    
        This is how normals think.
    

I've written more here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4018684>

Don't just laugh at the ignorance, learn from it.

~~~
semanticist
On a slightly meta note, HN comments are weighted by the average karma score
of the person leaving the comment, not just the number of up-votes that
specific comment received.

So this comment being at the top could easily be down to the poster's
karma/average karma.

~~~
ColinWright
I'm not convinced that's true, and would be interested to know your evidence.
In particular, the commenter in question has no average karma, apparently not
having made sufficiently recent previous contributions. Looking at the
contributions made, they don't look to be the sort of thing that garners lots
and lots of karma, but I only really glanced at them, so that impression could
be wrong. But I doubt it.

It's impossible to tell without comment scores being displayed, but my feeling
is that any ranking influence from average karma must be small, if any. I'd be
interested in any concrete information, even if circumstantial.

If, however, I find that average karma does have an effect, I'm going to stop
replying to individuals, stop providing information, stop correcting
misapprehensions, and concentrate on only submitting populist items. That's
clearly what PG would want, if that's how the ranking systems work.

------
jessriedel
> Disappointing because it's clearly not going to be ready for public use for
> years and years.

> That step still seems -- to me -- many years off

Than you, KTVZ reporter. I will take your expert opinion into account.

~~~
rallison
FTA: _For now, at least, the car only drives routes it's been trained to
drive. My ride in Washington DC was along a route that Google engineers had
driven with the car earlier. Google refused to allow the car to be driven
anywhere beyond this well-studied environment, at least not with the media
tagging along._

Reporter, did you even ask the Google engineers about that? For a media demo,
it is not at all surprising that they would use an already driven route. The
reporting here was a bit disappointing.

~~~
alain94040
_Reporter, did you even ask the Google engineers about that? For a media demo,
it is not at all surprising that they would use an already driven route. The
reporting here was a bit disappointing._

Actually, no, this limitation has been well documented (but cleverly brushed
aside). The car doesn't see and understand the road ahead, it follows an
invisible line on the ground, and can stop if it detects danger. It doesn't
read signs.

So yes, demos are impressive, but slightly misleading.

~~~
jedc
I'm pretty sure there's no "invisible line on the ground". From what I've
read, the route simply needs to be mapped at a higher resolution than most
roads have been mapped before.

------
revelation
_The first will be allowing the car to stray from routes that it has been
specifically trained to drive._

I think the author is hugely overstating the importance of this.

~~~
antonioevans
I live in NYC and the best use-case for this is taxis. Taxi do not take the
same route twice. Traffic is a nightmare during different seasonal, temporal,
or accident events. So like a Garmin device it should be able to "remap" the
trip.

In our lifetimes this will be possible but maybe not in next 1-3 years. (I
hope I am wrong)

~~~
revelation
Google has covered large parts of the (populated) world with Street View.
Pictures [1] indicate that the cars were equipped with laser sensors. So
Google probably has enough data to have the cars drive new routes.

But thats not the point. Most of peoples daily driving routine is the same
routes over and over, commuting to and from work.

Going even further: I'd imagine that you could train the car on a specific
route by driving it manually. Such information could be crowdsourced, much as
Google already does with its traffic data on Maps.

[1]:
[http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/streetviewca.jp...](http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/streetviewca.jpg)

~~~
Qworg
I believed that as well, but now I'm not so sure. The density of data gathered
by the Velodyne on the self driving cars is far higher than the SICK lasers in
that picture. Also, the scene may have changed in the interim.

~~~
revelation
Yes, but we're still talking cars that measure metres by metres, and streets
with lots of extra room. As you mention, the scene may have changed - so
trying to preplan the whole route to the inch will only hurt you. What is
needed is basic data above GPS, and I think the Street View lasers can be
that.

~~~
Qworg
I'm sorry I was unclear - I meant that the scene could have changed since the
Street View team was last through.

The Google Maps data is surprisingly bad - we saw several presentations about
the Car, and they highlighted how awful it really is.

I don't think that they're preplanning. I think that they're analyzing the
scene for differences to simplify and speed calculation. Having good a priori
data is really powerful.

------
ColinWright
So many of the comments here are pointing out the flaws in the reporter's
account and, quite rightly, scoffing at their ignorance.

But there's a lesson to learn: he's an ordinary person, and this is what he
thinks about the demo!

So don't just dismiss it as completely missing the point. Learn and understand
that this is how the normals think. This is an important lesson for we who
write code.

This really is how the normals think.

Dismiss and ignore it at your peril and loss.

------
fghh45sdfhr3
The lack of a turn signal made me chuckle.

That is such a software development moment :) Probably too easy to implement,
that's why they forgot it.

But the fact that the car often needs the human to intervene is a bit more
interesting. Why would a human better know if there is enough space for two
cars to pass each other in a narrow street?

~~~
to3m
The lack of turn signals makes me highly suspicious. There is more to this
omission than meets the eye, I am quite sure of it. As you say, adding turn
signals in should be straightforward. The computer presumably has its turns
planned far enough in advance. So why doesn't it?

I am actually even less inclined to trust these so-called "self"-driving cars
now. Not like I even trust the human-driven variety all that much...

~~~
haakon666
If the turn signals are not on the CAN bus it could be annoying to implement.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus>

~~~
to3m
They've made a self-driving car. The merely annoying parts are going to be the
fun bits! Everything else is going to be difficult, if not bordering-on-
impossible. I find it very difficult to believe that there is any technical
barrier to computer-operated indicators.

------
ajays
FTA: " _But the biggest step will be to create a car that will let me just sit
in the back seat with no-one at all in the driver's seat. . . . If Google can
get there before a major automaker beats them to it, I'll be really
impressed._ "

A major automaker has as much chance of beating Google as a 350lb man has of
beating Usain Bolt at the 100m dash. The automakers aren't really known for
doing cutting-edge software, you know.

~~~
simulate
No major automaker will produce self-driving cars because self-driving cars
greatly reduce the need for private car ownership. A two-car family might be
able to manage with a single car if that car can drive itself to pick up
individuals. Groups could pool their money to buy a single car the same way
that fractional ownership of jets happens today but on a mass scale. The
number of cars parked unused could go down substantially. Self-driving cars
are a huge benefit for society and cities especially but a disaster for car
companies.

~~~
msg
Today's driving scenarios will be served by a small pocket of tomorrow's
automated power, granted.

If we have self driving cars, fast switching and routing, we may find
ourselves in possession of a packet switched human transportation network. I
think we'd need a lot of cars in that world. They might become commoditized
like the PC was, but still a profitable business.

------
samineru
> The data from each situation would be ingested and analyzed so the car could
> learn what to do in the future. Those lessons could, hopefully, be applied
> to a broad range of driving conundrums.

This is huge. Maybe a handful of cars are learning there way around slowly,
but if they have legitimate automatic learning systems, imagine two or three
thousand cars all learning _together_.

~~~
CognitiveLens
This is a major piece in the overall puzzle that the article doesn't really
explore. Google's greatest strategic advantage is _networked_ systems - each
additional driverless car is a mobile, sensor-packed learning system for _all_
other driverless cars. I strongly doubt that the plan is for each car to
'learn' how to handle each new driving situation independently - as soon as
one car learns a behavior, they all learn that behavior.

That level of networked learning system is probably not fully mature, but it's
certainly not far from reality.

------
rangibaby
This won't be the last critical review that Google gets. History has shown
that people are incredibly quick to dismiss and attack things they don't
understand.

A good (recent!) tech example would be the iPhone: back in 2008; it's kind of
funny now, but my first impression of it was "huh, where's the stylus?" and I
wasn't alone. The amount of "No stylus, so it's hard to use" FUD being spread
around was incredible.

Now my two year-old son tries to swipe on my computer dumbscreen to go to the
next photo. The "People of the land.... morons" opinion curve is probably
going to follow the same trajectory; they will dismiss and criticize until
they can't remember how crappy driving a car really was.

------
lumberjack
Can the lack of automatic turn signal be due to some legal implications? Like
for example, the car falling in the same position as other car with assisted
driving technologies.

Or perhaps it's just a quick way to change the car's route?

------
nthitz
No turn signals? How could they have not put those in yet?! Next you will tell
me it won't tune the radio to my top songs on google music!

------
drbawb
First thing I'm going to do w/ my Google Car is put a label that says: "PRESS
IN CASE OF SKYNET!" under the kill switch.

