Autonomous Car Progress

[stopcrazypp]

Double parking is how taxis work in crowded cities though. Has any taxi driver ever lost their permit for doing it?

I said as much in an earlier comment above. My point is taxi drivers and the like don't tend to make short promo videos promoting doing so like Cruise is doing. Not sure how snark about FSD Beta is relevant.

Here's an Uber ad in San Francisco by comparison, no illegal pickup/drop off in video:

 

[Bladerskb]

Have you watched any FSD Beta videos?
I guess they may not be regular people…

 

[diplomat33]

Early next year, Waymo will launch curbside delivery with their autonomous cars in SF, in partnership with grocery store Albertsons:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1466793600184954880

The service will first be limited to employees of Waymo and Safeway, which is owned by Albertsons, before opening up for other customers.

Waymo CEO says Waymo does plan to license Waymo Driver to automakers at some point:

The company doesn’t plan on making cars, but eventually it does expect to license its technology to carmakers, some of whom already are working on their own autonomous-driving systems, she said.

Full article: Waymo's co-CEO on the next stop for driverless cars: curbside grocery delivery

 

[EVNow]

The company doesn’t plan on making cars, but eventually it does expect to license its technology to carmakers, some of whom already are working on their own autonomous-driving systems, she said.​

What does this mean - did she say that or was that a commentary by the reporter ? It would be very weird for her to say that ...

BTW, did anyone know apparently in AZ they have been delivering for "years" ? Never seen any videos of that - or is it with human safety drivers ?

Deliveries are not new for Waymo Via, the company’s delivery system. It has been delivering goods in Phoenix for several years in partnership with UPS, AutoNation, and even trucking company J.B. Hunt.​

​

ps : For customers driverless delivery is a negative. You have to go to the car and pickup the groceries. I'd rather the driver delivers it and we go and pick it up when its convenient, rather than when the car comes. Unless it is cheaper than human delivery - nobody would want it (except as a novelty).

 

[stopcrazypp]

The company doesn’t plan on making cars, but eventually it does expect to license its technology to carmakers, some of whom already are working on their own autonomous-driving systems, she said.​

What does this mean - did she say that or was that a commentary by the reporter ? It would be very weird for her to say that ...

BTW, did anyone know apparently in AZ they have been delivering for "years" ? Never seen any videos of that - or is it with human safety drivers ?

Deliveries are not new for Waymo Via, the company’s delivery system. It has been delivering goods in Phoenix for several years in partnership with UPS, AutoNation, and even trucking company J.B. Hunt.​

​

ps : For customers driverless delivery is a negative. You have to go to the car and pickup the groceries. I'd rather the driver delivers it and we go and pick it up when its convenient, rather than when the car comes. Unless it is cheaper than human delivery - nobody would want it (except as a novelty).

Might work out ok if it's much cheaper than regular delivery, but for regular delivery nowadays, the costs tend to be hidden from consumer end already, so cost isn't going to be an advantage at the consumer end. Basically the costs have to be drastically lower for the business for it to make sense.

The pickup end also is an issue. For grocery services is this not as big a deal (the stores usually have personnel already dedicated to picking the groceries from the list and loading up), but for food delivery usually the food is just left on a table in the shop and the delivery people are the ones responsible for picking up.

 

[ThomasD]

Hopefully they can deliver multiple orders in one go.

The company doesn’t plan on making cars, but eventually it does expect to license its technology to carmakers, some of whom already are working on their own autonomous-driving systems, she said.​

What does this mean - did she say that or was that a commentary by the reporter ? It would be very weird for her to say that ...

BTW, did anyone know apparently in AZ they have been delivering for "years" ? Never seen any videos of that - or is it with human safety drivers ?

Deliveries are not new for Waymo Via, the company’s delivery system. It has been delivering goods in Phoenix for several years in partnership with UPS, AutoNation, and even trucking company J.B. Hunt.​

​

ps : For customers driverless delivery is a negative. You have to go to the car and pickup the groceries. I'd rather the driver delivers it and we go and pick it up when its convenient, rather than when the car comes. Unless it is cheaper than human delivery - nobody would want it (except as a novelty).

Who unloads and loads the trailers if the Waymo Via trucks are truly driverless

 

[diplomat33]

The company doesn’t plan on making cars, but eventually it does expect to license its technology to carmakers, some of whom already are working on their own autonomous-driving systems, she said.​

What does this mean - did she say that or was that a commentary by the reporter ? It would be very weird for her to say that ...

I will try to find the video or a transcript and check what she said.

BTW, did you know apparently in AZ they have been delivering for "years" ? Never seen any videos of that - or is it with human safety drivers ?

Deliveries are not new for Waymo Via, the company’s delivery system. It has been delivering goods in Phoenix for several years in partnership with UPS, AutoNation, and even trucking company J.B. Hunt.​

Yes, Waymo has done deliveries with the Pacificas in Chandler that were driverless.

Hopefully they can deliver multiple orders in one go.

Who unloads and loads the trailers if the Waymo Via trucks are truly driverless

There will be people at the departure and destination who can load and unload. You have someone at the warehouse that loads the trucks before it leaves and then when the truck reaches its destination, the recipient can unload the trucks.

 

[EVNow]

Yes, Waymo has done deliveries with the Pacificas in Chandler that were driverless.

"Has done" or "has been doing" ? Is it still doing ... are there videos / reports of people who continue to receive such deliveries?

 

[diplomat33]

"Has done" or "has been doing" ? Is it still doing ... are there videos / reports of people who continue to receive such deliveries?

Unsure. I just know that Waymo has reported making deliveries at various times.

 

[diplomat33]

Another little video from Cruise driving on misty day:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1466918573247324163

 

[ThomasD]

Are the State Police able to control the Semis for weight stations? Driving on portable scales and agricultural checkpoints?

 

[diplomat33]

Are the State Police able to control the Semis for weight stations? Driving on portable scales and agricultural checkpoints

The trucks are autonomous. They would be able to drive through the weight stations on their own.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Are the State Police able to control the Semis for weight stations? Driving on portable scales and agricultural checkpoints

Trusted weigh station bypassing, toll payments, trucking software

PrePass is the leading provider of weigh station bypassing, toll payment services and trucking safety software. The most bypasses means the most savings.

prepass.com

 

[Daniel in SD]

Good interview with head of trucking at Waymo.

 

[ThomasD]

Are they using the Semis to transport goods from the ports?

 

[Daniel in SD]

Are they using the Semis to transport goods from the ports?

We’re building a dedicated trucking hub in the Dallas-Fort Worth area as we grow our footprint in Texas and continue driving across I-10, I-20, and I-45. Located in South Dallas, this 9-acre hub will be built from the ground up uniquely for Waymo Via and our autonomous driving operations. It will be our primary operations center in Texas designed for commercial use with our carrier partners and be able to accommodate hundreds of trucks and personnel as we scale our presence in the region and enable increasingly large and complex testing needs on our path to fully autonomous operations. This hub will not only bolster our operations in Texas but is also well-suited to support long haul routes across the Southwest and connect with our Phoenix operations center.

Expanding our Waymo Via operations

These past few months have been busy for Waymo Via. We’ve been ramping up our testing to help advance our fifth-generation Waymo Driver on Class 8 trucks, hauling freight for carriers’ top customers, and continuing our ongoing work with Daimler Trucks to develop a robust L4 redundant vehicle...

blog.waymo.com

I-45 goes to Galveston, so maybe? They're not doing any driverless trucking yet as far as I know.

 

[diplomat33]

Argo releases standards for how self-driving cars should act around cyclists | TechCrunch

Argo AI, an autonomous driving technology company, teamed up with advocacy group the League of American Cyclists (LAB) to come up with guidelines for how

techcrunch.com

 

[Tam]

An insight into how Tesla has gotten to this point of radarless.

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2016: "At one point during the filming of the video, the car hit a roadside barrier on Tesla property while using Autopilot and had to be repaired"

There were questions on the validity of pre-mapping in this forum but Tesla made it clear in 2016:

"The route taken by the car had been charted ahead of time by software that created a three-dimensional digital map, a feature unavailable to drivers using the commercial version of Autopilot, according to two former members of the Autopilot team."

Objection to misleading name:

"Sterling Anderson, who led the project at the time and later started an autonomous driving company called Aurora, told Tesla’s sales and marketing teams that they should not refer to the company’s technology as “autonomous” or “self-driving” because this would mislead the public,"

RADAR:

"While it is not clear that they were influenced by the fatal accident, Mr. Musk and Tesla soon showed a renewed interest in radar"

and even LIDAR:

"They said the Autopilot team continued to develop the system using radar and even planned to expand the number of radar sensors on each car, as well as exploring lidar — “light detection and ranging” devices that measure distances using laser pulses."

But in the end, what we now get is the pure vision with a mixed review: Some love it, some report that it's worse than the radar version.

 

[EVNow]

An insight into how Tesla has gotten to this point of radarless.

A very heavily biased article by NYT. Whats new ?

 

[Tam]

A very heavily biased article by NYT. Whats new ?

Tesla does not believe in LIDAR but used it anyway to pre-map for the 2016 video (The same way as current GM SuperCruise does the LIDAR pre-mapping for its customers but GM says so without hiding the fact).

Tesla has not been very good at sensor fusions and vacillated between camera vs radar priority and finally gave up on the fusion and chooses pure cameras instead. Is it because it's too hard to work on fusion or fusion is unsafe for driving?

It's questionable that Tesla's technology is better than others. It's more like Tesla is willing to take a riskier route and let the customers participate in the risks with a price.