@diplomat33 My apologies, but I feel you misunderstood my statement regarding a hardware failure. Yes, Waymo has multiple sensor systems, which allow it to have more redundancy than a Tesla. I wasn’t stating a failure would result in a Waymo being unable to self-drive, only that in the occurrence of a failure on any self-driving vehicle, a procedure or system must be in place regarding 'doing what is most safe for the occupants and other drivers on the road'. Of course, a single failure on a Waymo vehicle may still be completely operational, which is definitely another benefit of having multiple sensor systems, and a huge benefit to having redundancies in place; however, in the case there is a catastrophic failure of a Waymo vehicles sensors (or any self-driving vehicle for that matter), there must be a process in place to do what is best to keep the occupants and other drivers as safe as possible. In this situation, I’m stating that the question regarding ‘What would a Tesla do if the cameras, radar, sensors, etc failed?’, is valid for every company pursuing self-driving vehicles and not a one-sided argument against Tesla, as a previous user had mentioned. Every company must have a process in place regarding this situation, no matter how many redundancies or sensor systems. If one would like to argue on the number of redundancies, that’s a different matter, and of course more are normally safer, and Waymo would have greater benefit for this.
Yes, L4-L5 autonomous cars need to have a driving policy for handling failures regardless of what sensors they have. In fact, Waymo robotaxis can automatically pull over without human intervention in case of failures. That's the big difference between L3 and L4. L3 means that the car can self-drive but cannot handle failures (hence why they still need a human driver). L4 is self-driving where the car can also handle failures on its own without human input.
Additionally, regarding your comment on Waymo’s 5th Gen FSD hardware; are you referring to the vehicle would be fine even with an ‘entire’ lidar failure, or just a single lidar unit failure?
If you are referring to a single unit, then yes there would likely be a backup lidar unit to represent the missing data in that area, and the vehicle would likely continue, possibly at a more cautious level as you mentioned. However, if we are referring to an entire lidar system failure, I don’t see this being true, especially since we’re all in agreement that no one has a Level 4 vision-only system on the road at this time. I could be wrong, but I personally don't see Waymo attempting to solve the self-driving problem via vision-only at this time (and for good reason, since Lidar is currently proven more efficient and accurate than a vision-only system). As I've mentioned before, Tesla and Waymo are working to solve the same problem, in 2 different methods. But yes, if you were referring to a single lidar failure, then I would agree that it should still be able to drive with the remaining hardware on the 5th Gen FSD hardware you mentioned.
Both. Waymo can self-drive if just one lidar fails or if all lidar fails. Although, I suspect the odds of all lidar failing at the same time would be infinitesimally small.
Waymo has camera vision that can identify all objects. Waymo also has camera vision that can read signs, read hand gestures and know the direction a pedestrian is facing to predict where they are going to move. So I think they could do self-driving with just cameras. Here is some more info on Waymo's 5th generation cameras:
"Our latest long range cameras and 360 vision system now see much farther than before, allowing us to identify important details like pedestrians and stop signs greater than 500 meters away. Through advanced design innovations, including custom lenses and precise optomechanical engineering, our vision systems enable much higher performance levels than cameras on cars today.
In addition, our new perimeter vision system works in conjunction with our perimeter lidars to give the Waymo Driver another perspective of objects close to the vehicle. For example, while our perimeter lidars detect obstacles directly in front of the vehicle with precision, our perimeter cameras provide our machine learning algorithms additional details to reliably identify objects, providing more context to the traffic scene.
Concurrently, our new peripheral vision system helps us reduce blind spots caused by parked cars or large vehicles. These peripheral cameras enable us to peek around a truck driving in front of us, seeing if we can safely overtake it or if we should wait. Together, these various types of cameras allow us to make decisions earlier, faster, and with even more information than we've ever had before."
Waypoint - The official Waymo blog: Introducing the 5th-generation Waymo Driver: Informed by experience, designed for scale, engineered to tackle more environments
Now, you might be thinking, if Waymo has camera vision that is good enough for FSD, why don't they pursue camera-only FSD? The short answer is because camera + radar + lidar makes FSD better and more reliable. Camera-only would not be as reliable.
Camera vision is required for FSD but camera vision will never be 100% reliable in all conditions. This is what the "bible" of autonomous driving, Safety First for Automated Driving says on page 47:
"As of today, a single sensor is not capable of simultaneously providing reliable and precise detection, classifications, measurements, and robustness to adverse conditions."
Note the word "simultaneously". Yes, camera vison can provide detection, classification and measurements. So you can do self-driving with just cameras. But cameras will not always do all 3 reliably enough at the same time and in all conditions. So you might be in a situation where cameras are 100% reliable at one thing like classification but not reliable enough at another thing, like measuring distance. By combining different sensors, cameras, radar and lidar, with different pros and cons, the sum will be greater than the part. The total combined sensors will be able to simultaneously provide reliable and precise detection, classification and measurements in a wide range of conditions.
It's basically a question of how reliable or robust you need your automated driving system to be. If you just want L2 or L3, camera-only is fine. And if you don't care if the car cannot handle all conditions, then camera-only is fine. So depending on the ODD, some L4 might even be ok with camera-only. But if you want L5, camera-only is not good enough because it won't be reliable in all conditions. And if you want a super reliable and super robust FSD then you need to combine cameras with radar and lidar.
Remember that Waymo is aiming for FSD with no steering wheel or pedals. That requires the highest reliability. In a robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals, a human will not be able to take over. And yes, L4 robotaxis can pull over if something goes wrong but you want your robotaxi to be able to self-drive as long as possible before it needs to pull over. And you want your robotaxi to be as safe as possible. So it makes sense to add extra sensors to give the robotaxi the most robust perception possible so that the robotaxi can safely handle situations on its own for as long as possible. That's why Waymo has so many sensors, not because their camera vision can't do self-driving.
I hope that makes sense.
