
Waymo Will Test Self-Driving Cars in Snowy Detroit - kbyatnal
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-26/alphabet-s-waymo-will-test-self-driving-cars-in-wintry-detroit
======
dpandya
This is pretty damn amazing.

HN is a pretty critical place most of the time but sometimes it's valuable to
take a step back. The challenges associated with building a car that can drive
itself are pretty insanely difficult (even something as straightforward as
"how do we get the training data?") and the fact that we're now at a point
where there's a possibility of self-driving cars working in snowy conditions
is pretty awesome.

~~~
wil421
I would be hesitant to consider it a self driving car if it can’t drive in
adverse conditions.

~~~
jdashg
I would gladly take it if it only worked on one of the 300 days of clear skies
I get a year.

90% of the way to true "self driving" is plenty to revolutionize things.

~~~
usrusr
Do you intend to drive on those other days, without any fair weather routine?
Automation unlearning is a problem with airline pilots, despite all efforts
like continuous flight reviews that drivers don't have.

~~~
mannykannot
That is a reasonable question, though we already have the situation where
people are driving in snow with little current, or even previous, experience
of those conditions. The biggest problem is going to be with people who have
never driven.

~~~
sobani
> The biggest problem is going to be with people who have never driven.

Isn't that basically what @usrusr was refering to? People who rely on the
autonomous driving so much that they basically forgot how to drive themselves?

------
myself248
About time.

I build autonomous/ADAS testbed cars in Detroit and it's astonishing the stuff
that the California cars get flustered by. LIDAR is baffled by snow, RADAR
sensors get packed with slush if they're mounted too low, etc.

~~~
beager
IMO if you solve for inclement weather and snow you've brought the
capabilities of autonomous vehicles to a nationally viable level.

~~~
akira2501
I wouldn't be that optimistic.. I grew up in Duluth, MN. A city that in 2
miles goes from 600' ASL to 1400' ASL, there are some roads with a greater
than 10% grade to them. It snows there, and not just any snow, lake-effect
snow. You really do need a special set of skills and roadway awareness to
navigate inclement weather in cities like this.

Detroit is a great step, but I'd really like to see some more challenging
areas handled before I'm convinced.

~~~
beager
I think a good question that follows from that is: how unsafe is too unsafe
for autonomous vehicles? Can we evaluate roads in some generalized way that
will not only prevent autonomous vehicle activity, but inform local
governments about when they should institute driving bans?

In an ideal world, I trust autonomous cars over human-operated cars. So if the
conditions are too dire for autonomous cars, I really don't want to be out
there with humans driving.

~~~
akira2501
> but inform local governments about when they should institute driving bans?

In the U.S. I'm not even sure what such a mechanism would look like? How could
you enforce this?

> In an ideal world, I trust autonomous cars over human-operated cars.

I don't understand this mentality out-of-hand, especially because I've been in
cars that have had mechanical failures. There is no mechanical system that is
perfectly reliable, and I'm not sure we're considering the emergent effects of
this properly.

Finally, unless you outright _force_ all drivers to use the autonomous mode,
then users can still take control of their cars as they see fit and we're
really not improving anything. Case in point, the video says that driving
deaths disproportionately affects young _people_. Which is garbage.. it
affects young _men_ who are 8 times more likely to die in a vehicle that
they're driving than a female of the same age. I don't know how autonomous
modes being available are really going to help this group.

~~~
maxerickson
If it is possible to get around in a car without driving, the standards for
licensing can be increased.

So all those young men can still do all the things they need a car for, they
just don't get to legally operate one until they have demonstrated a higher
level of proficiency.

And all the ones that aren't just total assholes can let the car drive when
they have been drinking.

~~~
mantas
Do things like speed and drive dangerously? I'm sure they'll pass a higher
level as well. Unless you'd implement a psychological test that'd reject too
temperament people.

~~~
maxerickson
You don't necessarily need psychological testing. For instance, just make it
easier to lose a license. Minor speeding could come with a license suspension
if such a penalty were less consequential.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>Minor speeding could come with a license suspension if such a penalty were
less consequential.

You realize that most states already do this, right?

~~~
maxerickson
Yes of course, but I'm talking about a 6 month license suspension if you get a
ticket for going 7 over, not a suspension after repeated severe tickets.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Many states automatically revoke your license if you get convicted of any
moving violation under the age of 18.

IMO it's a dumb, inefficient drag net because being black and driving 5-over
is not a strong predictor of whether or not someone will drunkenly drive off a
cliff on their way to prom.

------
hawski
Could the camera use the clear view screen [1] instead of counting on
windshield and wipers? Maybe it does already, I don't know.

Clear view screen is a round window that is usually located on a normal
window. This window rotates at ~1500 RPM, thanks to that it will not be
covered by snow or rain. It is used on ships and in locomotives.

It looks like this:
[https://youtu.be/uIwWnWvikkQ?t=24s](https://youtu.be/uIwWnWvikkQ?t=24s)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_view_screen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_view_screen)

~~~
cbhl
One of the biggest challenges with self-driving cars in snow is the snow in
the environment -- for example, how do you see the lane markers so that you
stay in your lane?

~~~
freeone3000
This is also a human challenge. You follow the tire tracks. If there are no
tire tracks, guess. You can have a margin of error of half a lane and be
within human parameters.

~~~
tjoff
How do you guess? Oh, you need another set of hundred million miles of
testdata for this case?

The thing is that it is vastly different from any other scenario a self-
driving car will ever experience or train for. Humans on the other hand grow
up with snow and know how it behaves, how it covers the environment and what
features are prevalent despite of it (and consequently, people not used to
snow that suddenly finds themselves in a snow-covered landscape often fail
_miserably_ ).

Falling snow can significantly cover both video and disrupt LIDAR immensely.
Just as our vision, thing is we already know how to cope with it, it is a
greatly different problem than driving in good/ok conditions.

------
akgerber
Detroit still seems like an easier environment than Uber/CMU's Pittsburgh,
home of barely-maintained brick roadways with blind corners on 20%+ grades and
icy winters.

~~~
excalibur
Not to mention its six radio stations, all of which are country. A brutal
environment for anyone to drive through.

~~~
colordrops
I believe there are a few companies working on piping music through the
internet.

~~~
linkregister
An inter-networked series of computers? Sounds like a fad.

~~~
Danihan
computertubes.

------
Waterluvian
I'm not an expert in perception or autonomy, but I've always had a loose sense
that winter driving would be an order of magnitude more complicated for
autonomous vehicles. It had me worried: what if technology presents a future
where the world is split up into industry regions based on climate? You have
some serious costs associated with doing business in a region that has winter.

"Available in Canada (summer only)"

"Shipping to winter regions is far more expensive because we need to use human
drivers half the year. So we generally avoid focusing on them."

Not a new problem. Geography has always strongly impacted industry. But
interesting to think of it from this perspective.

I'm excited to see attempts to tackle the truly difficult form of autonomous
driving.

~~~
mrtron
The rules for driving in snow are pretty simple. Go slow, pump the brakes,
give a bigger safety cushion for obstacles.

The problem is likely around vision. A lot of winter driving is done at an
unsafe level of visibility.

It is probably better having non static rules for roads. Snow should reduce
speed limits, and white out conditions should be used for emergency travel
only.

Unless you can utilize radar to obtain better visibility than human drivers,
in which case you could probably drastically reduce the number of winter
accidents.

------
stretchwithme
Hopefully, at night and where there are no street lights as well. The more
corner cases, the better.

I still would like to see more races. In the snow too.

[https://electrek.co/2017/02/18/self-driving-car-race-
crash-b...](https://electrek.co/2017/02/18/self-driving-car-race-crash-buenos-
aires-formula-e-eprix/)

~~~
CabSauce
Have no fear, there aren't any working street lights in Detroit.

~~~
robotnixon
Detroit is the largest city in the US fully lit by LED streetlights with over
65,000 installed since 2014.

Its easily recognizable from space:

[https://twitter.com/astro_kimbrough/status/82136198923045683...](https://twitter.com/astro_kimbrough/status/821361989230456832)

------
srcmap
Personally, I prefer to see Google/Waymo start deport 1-2 thousand self
driving cars/minivans in Silicon Valley near Google and FB's headquarters.

The near team (in 1-2 years) goal should be getting 20, 50, 95% of their own
employees off the personal cars for the daily commute.

Their parking lot should be empty after 2 years.

~~~
cbhl
Getting tech employees off cars doesn't need self-driving cars. Google is
perfectly happy to have shuttle buses, and pay for them, provided that housing
is sufficiently dense, and there is a place where the buses can legally pick
up and drop off employees.

~~~
barrkel
Probably the biggest problem with using mass transit is latency; having to
wait around doing nothing until your transport arrives. It's a constraint on
your schedule and adds a certain amount of stress to your day. And if your
desired departure or arrival time don't coincide closely with the schedule,
you're going to waste a bunch of time even if the transport is quick.

Subways solve this problem by running every couple of minutes. Buses generally
don't solve this problem well because traffic and alighting / loading delays
cause them to bunch up. But on-demand self-driving cars can solve this
problem, as long as there are enough of them close enough.

(It's also the problem Uber solved.)

~~~
bckygldstn
Bay Area buses don't solve this problem but many bus systems do. Compared to
an effective bus network, Bay Area buses suffer from:

* Short distance between stops (due to low housing density).

* Traffic due to lack of bus lanes.

* Long time spent at stops due to cash payments and/or single door entry, rather than proof of payment or tap on stations at every door, no cash allowed.

* Inaccurate/nonexistent realtime updates.

A bus every 30 minutes isn't a big deal compared to SF/Bay Area travel times,
but only if I can rely on a timetable/GPS to arrive at the stop 2 minutes
before departure and be confident with a scheduled arrival 2 minutes before my
appointment.

~~~
chrisseaton
> * Short distance between stops (due to low housing density).

Wait, this doesn't make sense. Lower density means shorter distances between
stops?

No, lower density should mean longer distances between stops, because you will
go for longer distances before another person wants to get on or off.

Higher density would mean shorter distances between stops because there will
be more frequently people wanting to get on and off.

~~~
richardknop
Low density means that there are less people per km within walking distance of
a bus stop which means you pick up less people. So it’s less efficient in that
way. High density means at each stop there is much higher amount of people who
live near the stop.

~~~
chrisseaton
How do you think that means shorter distances between stops for lower density?
You pick up less people per stop, but it's less also people over a given
distance, so it doesn't imply stopping more frequently.

------
smelterdemon
Time to find out how well autonomous cars will deal with potholes

~~~
helipad
I was just thinking how they'll need to make use of gyroscopes.

* Car has detected only 3 wheels touching road * Car is on Woodward * Proceed as normal

------
orf
As a society, are we ready for self driving cars? It seems to signal the start
of the next industrial Revolution, with truckers and taxi drivers going
extinct, with more industries to follow. Machine learning has so far been kind
of in the background, with this it's very front and center and will directly
impact millions of people.

Also, I've always wondered, if self driving car crashes who is legally liable?
Is it the programmer or the occupant?

------
excalibur
So you're saying we should keep an eye on Craigslist in Detroit for rare gift
opportunities this Christmas.

------
venturis_voice
The problem with self driving cars is that you can never rely on a human to
take over at a moments notice. Google perfected the self driving car over a
decade ago but found that once on the motorway (Freeway for my transatlantic
cousins) they literally switched of, rummaged around in the back did
everything other than be able to take over the wheel at a moments notice. So
google had to go back to the drawing board and design a car that could drive
literally everywhere! We covered the topic in part of our recent podcast. If
you'd like to listen debate or disagree! Skip ahead to 23.03 minutes.

[http://www.venturi-group.com/podcast/tech-teams-
productivity...](http://www.venturi-group.com/podcast/tech-teams-
productivity/)

------
ilaksh
Is Waymo still planning to launch soon in Phoenix? They were going to start
offering rides to the public this fall without the employee in the car. Or did
they change their mind? If anyone has ridden in those vans I am curious to
know how well their early rider program is performing in terms of not needing
the human driver to intervene. I check the news for a Waymo launch every day,
because it will be one of the most significant events in the history of self
driving cars.

~~~
faitswulff
From the article:

> Starting in April, Waymo began testing a free service with select passengers
> in Phoenix, using some of its 600 minivans from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles
> NV.

~~~
ilaksh
Yeah that's old news. I am referring to recent articles from a few weeks ago
where someone suggested that there was at least a rumor that they might launch
without any actual driver to the general public in Phoenix this fall sometime.

~~~
Fricken
The rumour traces back to a single anonymous source reported on by the
Information. I hope it turns out to be true, because in 2012 I made a 5 year
prediction for it and it's always nice to be correct about things, but we'll
have to see. From the outside looking in, they look to be pretty close, but
only the people at Waymo really know how close they are to doing it.

------
neom
I'm curious to see if we'll see the Dubai style autonomous drone taxi service
thing come to the US at some point. At least in major cities. Personally I'm
in favour of less cars and more walkable/bikeable urban spaces.
[https://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/2017/10/03/flying-taxis-
du...](https://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/2017/10/03/flying-taxis-dubai/)

~~~
skywhopper
It would need to actually exist first. A hovering drone is not exactly a taxi
service.

------
wiremine
> "Having lived through fourteen Michigan winters, I’m confident that there
> are few better places that will prepare our self-driving cars for winter
> conditions"

Lived in Michigan for 30+ years myself, on the West side of the state. We get
a lot of lake effect, and it's only 3 hours from Detroit. It's also 6 hours
from the middle of the U.P., where they get _real_ snow. And if they really
want to, they can go into Canada.

Should be a good set of real-world tests.

------
dswalter
Michigan is a great location to test self driving cars, because the lake
effect makes the temperature fluctuate around freezing. This means we go from
icy to wet frequently. It also helps that we get a decent amount of snow,
giving us a much wider range of driving conditions than the Bay Area.

~~~
QAPereo
There’s also the benefit of roads in every state of repair, from pristine to
essentially abandoned by the government.

------
dghughes
Context is a major part of driving it worries me when you see these videos of
self-driving cars slamming on brakes a metre or two from a pedestrian. A human
driver would see the person at the side of the road whether it's a marked
crosswalk or not. There are visual cues we humans know which mean "I'm going
to cross the street now" such as a pedestrian turning their head towards the
driver to make eye contact first, holding out one arm while looking both ways.
Slamming on the brakes at the very last moment isn't what I'd call a success.

As a Canadian who lives in the very snowy Maritimes I have a lot of experience
with driving in the winter. I started driving at age 14 and my job as a teen,
20s and 30s required me to drive in all conditions. Winter driving has to be
instinctive there is no time to think and as noted above also depends on
context.

If a pedestrian walks out from the side of the road and that road has a curve
maybe even a downhill curve what now? Slamming on the brakes even ABS may not
help. The inertia and being on an angle may (my guess is will) cause the
vehicle to slip towards the outside part of the curve. If the vehicle is in
the right lane it would slide into oncoming traffic.

Counter-steering at the very instant your vehicle starts to fishtail is a
learned skill that has to be instinctive. And when to use that technique or
when not to use it.

Slush is I think one of the most dangerous things a winter driver will face. A
driver who drives into a line of slush that may be left on the center line can
easily have their vehicle jerk violently to the left. It can be a situation
where you have less than half a second to react.

Brakes on a curve has to be one of the most common problems with inexperienced
winter drivers. I see it all the time even with drivers who I know have been
living here all their lives.

Who will scrape off all the optical sensors in the morning? I've had ice so
thick and so hard to get off you'd swear it was concrete glued to your
windshield. Not to mention the slush, snow, dirt-salt-water mix constantly
splashing up. Anyone with a backup camera knows it's a constant battle to keep
it clean or it's useless.

It will be interesting to see the results but I think there is far more to
self-driving in the winter than on clear, dry roads in warmer climates.

------
lukejduncan
I lived in Downtown Detroit for a two years. Unless things have changed since
2011, there aren't many streets outside of a narrow strip of Mid Town where
the city actually plows the streets. I'm curious how examples of government
mismanagement like this get highlighted. I can see the headline in the Detroit
Free Press now "Snow No-Go Zone: Waymo won't drive East Jefferson until the
city plows it."

~~~
joosebox
Uhh yeah, things have changed since 2011.

[http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2014/02/07/detroit-mayor-
announc...](http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2014/02/07/detroit-mayor-announces-
new-way-to-report-snow-covered-streets/amp/)

~~~
lukejduncan
That's pretty nice!

------
purplezooey
Lived in Detroit for several years and spun my car many times even as an
experienced snow driver. Should be fun.

------
0xbear
Exciting. Test it in rainy Seattle and freezing Alaska, too. If this works,
this would show real, tangible leadership in the field. No one can do this
yet, and autonomous driving tech is not to useful if it craps out in inclement
weather.

~~~
stephengillie
Seattle can have "grey-out" conditions, where spray from other cars combines
with the rainfall to dramatically limit visibility. It's rather terrifying to
drive through, where you can only see for about 20 feet in any direction.
Autonomous driving that entirely relies on computer vision will fail just as
poorly as human eyes - multiple sensor types are necessary. How many types of
sensor does this car have? I wish the article would have gone into that
detail.

~~~
gyc
And maybe some kind of communication/message passing between vehicles maybe
useful. For example, if a vehicle senses black ice in a certain part of the
road, it can pass that information to other cars so they know to slow down
when going over the same part of the road. So something like Waze but for road
conditions.

~~~
stephengillie
> _And maybe some kind of communication /message passing between vehicles
> maybe useful._

I've made this suggestion before, but all commenters remarked about the risks
of trusting another car, trusting another signal, hackers, script kiddies, and
other malicious agents. The safest inter-car communication was determined to
be adaptive cruise control.

~~~
randyrand
We trust traffic lights without much issue. What's the difference?

~~~
dymk
A central entity controls the traffic lights; anyone with a few grand can go
buy a car.

~~~
bryanlarsen
The same central entity also heavily regulates and monitors the roads. It's a
soluble problem IMO. Very difficult, but the benefits are significant.

------
sbrin
its impressive to see this coming full circle back to Detroit

------
benatkin
The singularity is near.

------
brailsafe
I feel like this is a nice start, but Canada and more mountainous regions of
the PNW will be the real proving ground. North Dakota, Minnesota and so on. At
least in terms of generalized technical achievement, not in serving the most
people in most situations. Winnipeg is a hellscape for driving in the best of
times. Driving through the prairies in a snowstorm was one of the scariest
experiences of my life, as well as the rockies with a thin layer of ice,
intense grades, little to no road markings.

As a recognized tangent to that tangent, there's a big problem up here in the
real North ( where basic necessities of life are ludicrously expensive. In
part, at least possibly, due to transport costs. Would be amazing if self-
driving vehicles could regularly deliver goods up there with no human risk on
ice-roads. May be a pipe dream though.

------
rambleraptor
I'm curious if we'll see the Detroit economy take off as a result of more
self-driving car work in the area. It seems like Metro Detroit hasn't seen
many of the tech gains that the coastal tech hubs have seen.

------
dsfyu404ed
Here's my bet. Their software designed to drive conservatively and likewise it
will be way too hair trigger with the brakes for use in the snow without
bringing a lot of changes of pants.

That's assuming they can deal reasonably well with the reduced visibility and
change in behavior of other drivers.

They'll probably also slide on a few right turns before they get the settings
fully dialed in.

------
meatmodule
I get a chuckle out of these threads. Humans are _unbelievably_ bad at driving
in the snow. If the only thing a self-driving car does in a whiteout snow
storm is come to a halt, it will already be dramatically safer than human
drivers. You can just hard-wire the car to not do stupid things. Taking human
judgement out of the loop has many wonderful outcomes.

[https://youtu.be/rhZCyQ3emQg?t=121](https://youtu.be/rhZCyQ3emQg?t=121)

~~~
benaiah
This is a bit aside from your main point, but stopping on a road in a whiteout
snow storm is _incredibly_ dangerous due to the cars behind you being unable
to see you until it is much too late to stop. I grew up driving two-lane
highways in Alaska with frequent semi traffic, several times in blizzard
conditions (to the point where the only way to follow the road was to drive on
the flat part of the just-fallen snow). You could pull over to the side of the
road, but you may not be able to get back on the road depending on your
vehicle and the snow level (and in remote, cold areas this may be deadly
itself).

You could say "just don't drive in blizzards", but on a long drive you may
often end up in a blizzard when you started in clear weather. Frequently this
happens in areas where there are no safe places to stop for miles.

I'm not an expert on self-driving car sensors, but it's not hard to imagine
that they could be made much less weather-dependent than the human eye.
Driving through blizzard conditions is incredibly disorienting and terrifying,
so the potential of better-than-vision detection of roads and traffic is IMO
the most promising way for self-driving cars to handle snowy conditions.

~~~
tomkarlo
Potentially, a self-driving car (or even Google Maps nav and a regular driver)
would not have this problem - it would simply not drive itself into a
situation where it's both in heavy snow and a place that's not safe to stop.
I've had a few times in California where I started a long drive in sun and
warm weather and ended up stuck in a snow-storm mid-drive (hello Sierra
passes)... it would have been nice if either my car or my map software warned
me this was likely before we set off.

~~~
DrScump

      it would simply not drive itself into a situation 
    

Autonomous cars would be coming from a _variety_ of vendors each with its
_own_ algorithms. It's not even guaranteed that they would communicate with
each other to arbitrate strategy under adverse conditions.

~~~
tomkarlo
It's not as if human drivers do, either. The closest we've come is Waze, which
would a trivial data set for an autonomous car to both utilize and supplement.

------
stephengillie
Self-driving cars feel like they are still in the early Alpha stage, while
self-driving robots are already in production in Amazon's warehouses.

Why are companies going through the great expense of constructing full-size
mock-ups if the domain problems haven't been solved on smaller mock-ups? Is
there a fundamental difference between a 400 lb self-driving robot and a 2-ton
self-driving robot - beyond the advertising novelty of being inside the car?
Edit: If both robots are outside on a driving track, not in the Amazon
warehouse.

And if "snow-vision" and other problems have been solved with smaller robots,
or in other domains, why do news articles like this treat the topic as though
it's entirely foreign and to be feared, instead of helping readers associate
these concepts with existing concepts to drive acceptance?

~~~
dontreact
I’m confused. What kind of smaller mock-up are you imagining? I bet that Waymo
considers lots of cases of driving solved (controlled environment parking lot)
and we are seeing just another step up in terms of the scale of the problem.

~~~
stephengillie
If you're just working on computer vision and world mapping, why do you need
something bigger than an RC car? I started with a sonar sensor and an arduino
on an RC car in 2012, and had a working prototype, but never secured funding
(and eventually became homeless).

~~~
jacquesm
Because an RC car with a sonar sensor and an arduino relates to a self driving
car roughly the way a bicycle lock compares to a bank vault.

Orders of magnitude in complexity difference and a much more hostile
environment to survive in.

I am not really comfortable writing this but seriously, if you have to ask
this question I am actually happy you did not receive funding (but I am
obviously not happy that you ended up homeless), that was not a prototype, it
was not even a proof of concept. It was maybe a small step up from a toy.
Sonar as a sensor may give you a little bit of input data but your arduino
does not have the processing power to extract meaningful information about its
environment from that data nor does that sensor give you sufficient
information that you would use to pilot a couple of tons of steel through an
environment inhabited by fragile humans.

~~~
gph
OP sounds like that semi-autistic guy who asked Elon Musk if they could work
together at the shareholder meeting. In his mind he's exaggerating his
work/abilities while dragging down what Waymo and self-driving researchers are
doing.

It's sort of sad to see.

