Waymo Makes History: First Fully Self Driving Car With No Driver

[AnxietyRanger]

Excuse my ignorance, but why is it Vision AI vs Mapping/LIDAR? Doesn't Waymo use both? Are people arguing that Tesla's Vision AI is stronger (or will be stronger) than Waymo's?

Yes, Waymo has 360 degree vision, 360 degree lidar AND 360 degree radar.

And if Waymo does have strong Vision AI, why are they restricted to only pre-mapped areas? Or is it just out of caution?

It is a design choice I believe, so far. The car generates a 3D view of the world, with all the objects (stationary and moving) and locates itself on a map based on that very precisely. Then it uses all that info to drive. Without a map one thing it has been designed to use is missing.

Now, could they go outside of maps with the technology, I'm sure they could but that's not their initial priority. We shall see if they have that sorted before the vision AI folks get there.

 

[d21mike]

What worries me in the Waymo v. Tesla discussion has to do with safety. Waymo obviously has addressed not running over pedestrians and not swerving into other lanes that already have vehicles in them. My recent experiences with our Tesla suggest that Tesla hasn't even begun this exercise. They don't even use the cameras and sonar that is readily available in the vehicles. Following a dotted line seems pretty primitive in the scheme of things. When the line disappears and your car starts darting all over the highway (sometimes without any warning at all), it tells me Tesla is still several light years away from technology that even comes close to Waymo. I appreciate the advantages of geofencing, but Tesla doesn't seem to operate within ANY boundaries when it comes to safety of those driving or riding in their vehicles.

Do you think this is a FAKE Video because of what is currently available in the fleet?
Tesla Self-Driving Demonstration
See section at time = 1:30 where there are 2 ladies walking on the side of the road. The car slows down a lot for safety I assume.

If you feel that is FAKE like some others do then I understand your post (I highlighted you post above). But if you think it is REAL then you would have to think that they just have not got it to the point to release it to all of us that have purchased FSD.

And if REAL then what is the big difference between this VIDEO and the WAYMO VIDEO. Is it the fact that the safety driver is in the front seat instead of the back seat? Of course the first frame explains that the driver is only there and does not touch the controls. Anyway, if my car could do that I would not care that I must set in the front seat. I do have the FSD Feature.

Since Tesla posted the video on their own web site I tend to think it is REAL until I see proof otherwise. If so, why don't we see some of those improvements in cars that have the FSD Option. I would love for my car to start recognizing Stop Signs and Street Lights. That would make a huge difference in surface street driving. The FW 2017.42 was a big improvement in navigating through intersections without lane lines so maybe we will start to see some of this within months instead of years (or "light years").

 

[NerdUno]

I have come to believe the Tesla video is FAKE for a couple of reasons. First, if you watch it carefully, you will note a number of places where footage has been spliced together. Second, I don't think we have a clue as to whether Tesla's video was produced with a stock vehicle or one with added hardware and/or software from either Mobileye or their current hardware manufacturer. It speaks volumes that the disengagement reports lasted only for about six weeks and then disappeared, almost as if they were piecing together a fake video and then quit on the project entirely.

 

[d21mike]

I have come to believe the Tesla video is FAKE for a couple of reasons. First, if you watch it carefully, you will note a number of places where footage has been spliced together. Second, I don't think we have a clue as to whether Tesla's video was produced with a stock vehicle or one with added hardware and/or software from either Mobileye or their current hardware manufacturer. It speaks volumes that the disengagement reports lasted only for about six weeks and then disappeared, almost as if they were piecing together a fake video and then quit on the project entirely.

Since you feel that Tesla is pretty much out right lying and doctoring up their video's then there is no way to compare what they are doing with what Waymo is doing. I have seen similar posts from others that agree with you.
Tesla does have another video where it drops off the driver and then parks the car without the driver. I assume you feel that was also FAKE meaning that it did not happen in the way they are presenting it.
Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Teslas

I do think they were trying to present what can be done with AP2 hardware. No where do they say this is completely different hardware then is being put in the cars at that time. But, I do agree that is really hard to accept those videos with the current capabilities of our cars.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

I don't think Tesla's video is fake.

I think it is a combination of multiple attempts (the actual run may be a single run, but the records show they tried many times to get it), probably some Nvidia code borrowed, heavily trained and mapped special scenario. It might also run some extra development hardware, but maybe not.

What I think, though, most importantly is that Waymo's videos are just a on a different level. I mean, they've been running around towns for years now. They are now carrying actual passengers on some of these cars.

That's just a on a different level for Waymo. It isn't about a video with Waymo. It is about actual people already being driven around in Waymo cars. That's just very different from one accelerated video on a specific route.

 

[d21mike]

I don't think Tesla's video is fake.

I think it is a combination of multiple attempts (the actual run may be a single run, but the records show they tried many times to get it), probably some Nvidia code borrowed, heavily trained and mapped special scenario. It might also run some extra development hardware, but maybe not.

What I think, though, most importantly is that Waymo's videos are just a on a different level. I mean, they've been running around towns for years now. They are now carrying actual passengers on some of these cars.

That's just a on a different level for Waymo. It isn't about a video with Waymo. It is about actual people already being driven around in Waymo cars. That's just very different from one accelerated video on a specific route.

I understand your point. But to be clear you mean "from TWO accelerated video's on TWO separate routes". But assuming not completely fake I really have high expectations of getting some of those features added to the FSD Cars within 2018 still under full control of the driver.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

from TWO accelerated video's on TWO separate routes

Frankly, I forget the details how it all played out - if you say so. Anyway, those late 2016 videos.

But assuming not completely fake I really have high expectations of getting some of those features added to the FSD Cars within 2018 still under full control of the driver.

I would really like that too.

I know people think I'm critical, which relatively speaking I guess I am, but most of all I'm a geek. I'm just really excited about new features. Heck, even Chill mode was cool for some odd reason. It is a new button to press. Entry Mode is very welcome.

This incremental auto-steering back and forth has become boring as heck, though even I appreciate that .36 onwards it has been better for me. GIMME NEW FEATURES PEOPLE!

 

[d21mike]

Frankly, I forget the details how it all played out - if you say so. Anyway, those late 2016 videos.



I would really like that too.

I know people think I'm critical, which relatively speaking I guess I am, but most of all I'm a geek. I'm just really excited about new features. Heck, even Chill mode was cool for some odd reason. It is a new button to press. Entry Mode is very welcome.

This incremental auto-steering back and forth has become boring as heck, though even I appreciate that .36 onwards it has been better for me. GIMME NEW FEATURES PEOPLE!

I do feel for the people that started with AP2 in 2016. In my case I started with .36 on 9/28/2017 when I got my car which was updated to .38 on the same day. So you could say me and TESS are still on our honeymoon.

I did post BOTH videos above which came from the Tesla Web Site under Videos. One from Oct. 2016 and one from Nov. 2016. One was only on surface streets and one including surface streets, freeway driving and also auto park. Very interesting videos which includes so much more then what FW 2017.44 is capable of doing.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Yeah, it has been a long year...

Let's hope next one is much better!

 

[electracity]

I understand your point. But to be clear you mean "from TWO accelerated video's on TWO separate routes". But assuming not completely fake I really have high expectations of getting some of those features added to the FSD Cars within 2018 still under full control of the driver.

If the autopilot group has stabilized Tesla should be able to deliver a very robust level 2 system in 2018 with most of the desired features working.

Fortunately for Tesla it will probably take years before any level 4 cars are sold to the public. They just need to get to the point where their level 2 is perceived as adding a lot of safety and comfortable freeway driving. It's too bad Tesla could not have had smooth development from AP1 to the present.

I wonder what truck company Waymo will work with. Their low speed system should have commercial niche applications soon.

 

[setoKaiba]

Do you think this is a FAKE Video because of what is currently available in the fleet?
Tesla Self-Driving Demonstration
See section at time = 1:30 where there are 2 ladies walking on the side of the road. The car slows down a lot for safety I assume.

If you feel that is FAKE like some others do then I understand your post (I highlighted you post above). But if you think it is REAL then you would have to think that they just have not got it to the point to release it to all of us that have purchased FSD.

And if REAL then what is the big difference between this VIDEO and the WAYMO VIDEO. Is it the fact that the safety driver is in the front seat instead of the back seat? Of course the first frame explains that the driver is only there and does not touch the controls. Anyway, if my car could do that I would not care that I must set in the front seat. I do have the FSD Feature.

Since Tesla posted the video on their own web site I tend to think it is REAL until I see proof otherwise. If so, why don't we see some of those improvements in cars that have the FSD Option. I would love for my car to start recognizing Stop Signs and Street Lights. That would make a huge difference in surface street driving. The FW 2017.42 was a big improvement in navigating through intersections without lane lines so maybe we will start to see some of this within months instead of years (or "light years").

I don't think Tesla's video is fake.

I think it is a combination of multiple attempts (the actual run may be a single run, but the records show they tried many times to get it), probably some Nvidia code borrowed, heavily trained and mapped special scenario. It might also run some extra development hardware, but maybe not.

What I think, though, most importantly is that Waymo's videos are just a on a different level. I mean, they've been running around towns for years now. They are now carrying actual passengers on some of these cars.

That's just a on a different level for Waymo. It isn't about a video with Waymo. It is about actual people already being driven around in Waymo cars. That's just very different from one accelerated video on a specific route.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Thanks for the quotes @setoKaiba.

IMO hard-coded GPS co-ordinates and graphics added in post-processing do not automatically mean fake - if the rest of the system (graphics drawing included) actually used the AP2 hardware and some prototype software. If it was some complete manual trick, then of course it would have been fake...

 

[NerdUno]

I suppose fake is in the eye of the beholder. But it seems to me that, if you say you can do it in your car, and it won't work in my car OVER A YEAR LATER, that's fake enough for me. It was a clear misrepresentation of the state of the Tesla autonomous driving suite that was coupled with a promise to be finished with all sorts of stuff by December, 2016. Guess what? Santa Claus is coming soon, and it ain't 2016.

 

[KarenRei]

Meh, sounds pretty standard for a product demo from what I'm used to.... film the product performing at its best (leaving out the worst), enhance / clip it up to look even better, and there you go. Pretty much everyone does that. It's not like Apple puts out ads for the iPhone that show green lines appearing in the screen and autocorrect putting boxes with question marks in your text.

Not saying it's right, but that's pretty much standard in promo videos.

I don't believe for a minute that Tesla didn't think they'd be further along today than they are. It's the nature of computer programmers (of which I am one, and Musk as well) to greatly underestimate the difficulty of a project you're taking on. The question is whether you can deliver in the end, even if behind schedule.

As for Tesla's recent statements about their new neural nets and the challenges of reducing the computing requirements for them, but how they've recently managed it... I'm inclined to believe that. These statements are quite plausible from a programming standpoint. I do expect to see them deployed at some point "within the next several months", maybe up to half a year. I don't expect miracles, but I would expect a significant improvement over current AP reliability.

 

[Yuri_G]

The fact of the matter is you're not going to be riding in a Waymo van anytime soon (unless you're in Chandler, Arizona). You also won't experience FSD in a Tesla soon either, but you will be able to experience increasingly better levels of autonomy over time. Waymo gets kudos for being first, but how much will this impact the current fleet of cars? I don't see a viable way for Google to get costs down quickly enough to make an impact before companies like Tesla achieve level 3 and 4 autonomy with less costly sensor suites.

 

[lunitiks]

About the "FAKE" demo video being discussed here...

A redditor called PM_YOUR_NIPS_PAPER (clever nick btw) - who claims he is / was training Tesla's computer vision network - posted this controversial tidbit yesterday:

That video was pretty much faked. The car was hard-coded with specific GPS positions and (x,y,z) locations of traffic lights on a very controlled route. They held 3-4 trial runs and picked the one that worked the best.

All the rectangular bounding boxes and colored line/region segmentations on the "AI view" were done after the car had made the trip, for visualization and hype purposes.

I can't exactly say my sources, but if that video was true over a year ago, why is the current autopilot much worse than what is portrayed in the video?

Ok I can accept the hard-coded GPS stuff. But if this guy is for real... Man, a lot of time was wasted by a lot of people last fall "analyzing" the bounding boxes, the way the (demo) car seemingly detected the "motion flow" of surroundings, "lane lines", "road flow" etc. Was it actually just post production stuff? Some guy in a back room painting the video stream on his computer? Seriously?

Sure, this redditor could be a total FAKE himself. But I never thought of what he's claiming as even a possibility. The video is marketed as a Self-Driving "Demonstration" video. There are many definitions of "Demonstration", but a couple of them are:

demonstration
[dem-uh n-strey-shuh n]

noun
1.
the act or circumstance of proving or being proved conclusively, as byreasoning or a show of evidence:

2.
something serving as proof or supporting evidence:

English is not my tounge, but I think the video shouldn't have be called a "Demonstration" if that redditor is talking the truth. Rather an "illustration" or something else

Tesla Self-Driving Demonstration

 

[lunitiks]

About the "FAKE" demo video being discussed here...

A redditor called PM_YOUR_NIPS_PAPER (clever nick btw) - who claims he is / was training Tesla's computer vision network - posted this controversial tidbit yesterday:



Ok I can accept the hard-coded GPS stuff. But if this guy is for real... Man, a lot of time was wasted by a lot of people last fall "analyzing" the bounding boxes, the way the (demo) car seemingly detected the "motion flow" of surroundings, "lane lines", "road flow" etc. Was it actually just post production stuff? Some guy in a back room painting the video stream on his computer? Seriously?

Sure, this redditor could be a total FAKE himself. But I never thought of what he's claiming as even a possibility. The video is marketed as a Self-Driving "Demonstration" video. There are many definitions of "Demonstration", but a couple of them are:

English is not my tounge, but I think the video shouldn't have be called a "Demonstration" if that redditor is talking the truth. Rather an "illustration" or something else

Tesla Self-Driving Demonstration

This is actually off-topic, but IMO important enough to discuss in a thread of its own. So I made one:

FSD video completely fake?

 

[cronosx]

About the "FAKE" demo video being discussed here...

A redditor called PM_YOUR_NIPS_PAPER (clever nick btw) - who claims he is / was training Tesla's computer vision network - posted this controversial tidbit yesterday:



Ok I can accept the hard-coded GPS stuff. But if this guy is for real... Man, a lot of time was wasted by a lot of people last fall "analyzing" the bounding boxes, the way the (demo) car seemingly detected the "motion flow" of surroundings, "lane lines", "road flow" etc. Was it actually just post production stuff? Some guy in a back room painting the video stream on his computer? Seriously?

You think that the car draw square etc during your travel?
Not at all. Of course is post-production.
Ok, i understand that you see in all the sci-fi films that the computer draw lines around people etc, but it's done to show to HUMANS that it recognized it, but the car doesn't do it, it just 'detect' something and send some message like "human at coordinateX,X2,Y,Y2" and maybe it send the 'message' only if it's relevant like if it's in the path.
Now, it means that the car can't detect it? no.
Do you think that the square were painted by human following every single car in every frame? No, it's done by a software, probably the same software that's used on the car, just edited so it can output some more info so another software can draw the lines.

For the stop, yes i think they are hard-coded, in the way that you say "the stop is at coordinate X,Y", and at that coordinate it check the light ( or do you think that you can hard-code the state of the lamp? ), or do you think you can hard-code someone with the bike at coordinate X,Y? of course it's done by the car.
It's done everytime perfectly? probably not, that's why it's not in production.

And again, yes, of course the path is hard-coded, you have something like "turn here, and here, go straight here and here", but again, it's a problem?
Not at all.
Whene there is autonomous car, this "series of step" are simply what the navigator would pop-out, so no problem here, that's really the only part that's not a problem here.

To end this i just say that i'm with you, it's a video of "what could be when we solve some problem", not "what it's actually working", and it's ok.. it's implicit

 

[AnxietyRanger]

There is a rumor that Tesla is also using a mapping-first approach, like Waymo, and that Tesla used mapping-first based approach to make their famous FSD videos:

FSD video completely fake?

 

[Darmie]

Anyone find it interesting that a self driving car company needs a Zero tolerance page to talk about their drivers?

Zero Tolerance Policy – Waymo

Safety is an essential part of our mission to make it safe and easy for everyone to get around. To ensure the safety of our riders, Waymo does not tolerate the use of alcohol or drugs by any of our drivers. If you believe your driver is under the influence of drugs or alcohol, end the ride immediately and dial 911 to contact the authorities. You can contact us directly to let us know about any issues related to drivers under the influence of drugs or alcohol, by filling out this form or contacting Rider Support via the app or in the vehicle.