Waymo

[diplomat33]

Good article:

Waymo is full speed ahead as safety incidents and regulators stymie competitor Cruise

Waymo Chief Product Officer Saswat Panigrahi told CNBC that the self-driving car unit hasn't seen a change in tone from regulators or a shift in public perception.

www.cnbc.com

Some interesting new info:

• Waymo is well ahead of 10k trips in each city (SF and Phoenix) every week and increasing.
• Waymo has 25,000+ virtual vehicles driving continuously 24/7 in simulation, learning from each other.

 

[Doggydogworld]

• Waymo has 25,000+ virtual vehicles driving continuously 24/7 in simulation, learning from each other.

At least they can scale their virtual fleet

 

[diplomat33]

At least they can scale their virtual fleet

They will scale their real world fleet too.

 

[spacecoin]

They will scale their real world fleet too.

Dolgov said >0.5M rider-only rides (not counting employees) this year so far. That's not bad. I'm bullish based on the comment he made in the video you posted (taken down now?).

There was another interview on the same channel/event with Mustafa Suleyman (Inflection, DeepMind co-founder). He said he was very bullish on Waymo based on conversations with Jeff Dean (DeepMind/Google Research).

Heres the Dolgov link again (working) - at this timestamp - he seems to be referring to the Zeekr robotaxi as the "next generation hardware and that comes with break-throughs in software". Sounds great to me

Here's the Suleyman video - ts for Waymo quote:

 

[diplomat33]

Dolgov said >0.5M rider-only rides (not counting employees) this year so far. That's not bad. I'm bullish based on the comment he made in the video you posted (taken down now?).
There was another interview on the same channel/event with Mustafa Suleyman (Inflection, DeepMind co-founder). He said he was very bullish on Waymo based on conversations with Jeff Dean (DeepMind/Google Research).

I am very bullish on Waymo. They got the powerful compute infrastructure of Google running simulations at scale 24/7 and employing cutting edge AI/ML to solve autonomous driving problems. They got the immense resources of Alphabet behind them. They got a proven safety methodology. As you mentioned, they got a new vehicle in development with next gen hardware and software breakthroughs that should be even better than the current 5th Gen that is already very capable. They are doing millions of unsupervised self-driving miles in various locations and weather conditions. And they have already scaled quite a bit from just one geofence to now 2 cities and 700,000 driverless rides per year and growing, with LA and Austin coming soon. And the fact that Dolgov has confirmed many times that full autonomy on personal cars is in their future road map, is also very encouraging. Waymo has a lot going for them. If Waymo loses, it will be because of dumb management, because they certainly have all the advantages on their side.

Heres the Dolgov link again (working) - at this timestamp - he seems to be referring to the Zeekr robotaxi as the "next generation hardware and that comes with break-throughs in software". Sounds great to me

Yeah, I caught that. It is exciting. The 5th Gen is already very capable as it can do safe unsupervised self-driving in various urban environments and in rain and fog. This 6th Gen hardware with software breakthroughs should be even better. I imagine the 6th Gen will be cheaper too. It should bring Waymo one step closer to affordable self-driving that works everywhere.

 

[spacecoin]

If Waymo loses, it will be because of dumb management, because they certainly have all the advantages on their side.

You can't lose if you're the only player Clearly they have a multiple years over everyone.

I edited my post above, but I was excited about what he said re Gen 6: "next generation hardware and that comes with break-throughs in software".

 

[diplomat33]

You can't lose if you're the only player Clearly they have a multiple years over everyone.

Waymo is years ahead of everyone. By "losing", I mean if Alphabet decided to pull support because it is costing too much or they think Waymo is not profitable quick enough. You never know if corporate management decides to muddle things up.

I edited my post above, but I was excited about what he said re Gen 6: "next generation hardware and that comes with break-throughs in software".

I also edited my response above to respond to your edit.

 

[ThomasD]

Buffalo is supposed to get some Snow Tonight. Will Waymo be out on the Streets?

 

[rbt123]

Buffalo is supposed to get some Snow Tonight. Will Waymo be out on the Streets?

Short answer is no. They were doing some data collection in November with intention of doing snow testing in January.

Presumably they will drive the same routes and compare snow-weather output to good-weather output.

The lighter side of The News: Snow go; Perfect timing, abridged version; A T-shirt-worthy quote

Read the offbeat tales our reporters have gathered for this week's Off Main Street column.

buffalonews.com

 

[EVNow]

Waymo is years ahead of everyone.

You keep saying this without proving any evidence.

 

[diplomat33]

You keep saying this without proving any evidence.

The evidence is Waymo's 700,000 driverless rides this year. The best metric of autonomous driving is unsupervised FSD when you can remove the human driver from the car completely because true autonomous driving implies no human supervision. And Waymo is doing it now in 2 major cities and not just a few "demos", they are offering a full commercial service to the public, with over 700,000 rider-only trips this year, no human driver, 24/7! And they are poised to add 2 more cities next year. Nobody in the US comes close to Waymo's driverless metric. Cruise seemed to be close but they got shut down. Zoox is only testing unsupervised FSD in a few miles. Everybody else, including Tesla, is still at the supervised FSD stage.

 

[diplomat33]

And to be clear, I am not saying Waymo's autonomous driving is perfect or solved. I am not saying Waymo has won. I am merely saying that Waymo is currently ahead of the competition since Waymo has more unsupervised FSD miles than anyone else in the US.

 

[jabloomf1230]

You keep saying this without proving any evidence.

Given the uncertainty surrounding how often Waymo institutes centralized control of its vehicles, I have to agree. In any case, assuming minimal centralized control, it seems clear to me that Waymo is ahead of Tesla in limited geographic areas.

 

[diplomat33]

Given the uncertainty surrounding how often Waymo institutes centralized control of its vehicles, I have to agree. In any case, assuming minimal centralized control, it seems clear to me that Waymo is ahead of Tesla in limited geographic areas.

Not sure what you mean by "centralized control". If you mean remote control, there is none. Waymo has been very clear that they never remote control their cars. Here is a quote from the Waymo Chief Product Officer on how "remote assistance" works. He says "there is no remote person driving the car":

Most autonomous vehicles have remote operations teams. How does Waymo’s work?

I want to clarify that the driving is done by the Waymo Driver on the car – there is no remote person driving the car. You can think of it like air traffic control, in a way. Air traffic control doesn’t fly the plane, but the pilot may ask a question to air traffic control, “Hey, I’m observing a very anomalous situation here, what is the intent?” And there are very basic binary questions that can be asked that a person can respond to provide clarification when that’s not immediately clear from the scene.

For example, you could have a set of cones blocking a street, but there could be a large enough gap where you could go in, so it’s a bit ambiguous on whether or not you should go in or stop – that kind of a question can be asked and there’s an answer… And it’s designed to do the right thing even when support isn’t available.

Source: Waymo is full speed ahead as safety incidents and regulators stymie competitor Cruise

The fact that there is no human safety driver in the car and the driving is done by the Waymo Driver with no remote control, makes the car fully autonomous, unsupervised FSD.

 

[jabloomf1230]

Not sure what you mean by "centralized control". If you mean remote control, there is none. Waymo has been very clear that they never remote control their cars. Here is a quote from the Waymo Chief Product Officer on how "remote assistance" works. He says "there is no remote person driving the car":



Source: Waymo is full speed ahead as safety incidents and regulators stymie competitor Cruise

The fact that there is no human safety driver in the car and the driving is done by the Waymo Driver with no remote control, makes the car fully autonomous, unsupervised FSD.

Okay so it's like ATC as you stated. In any case, we don't know how often this happens.

 

[diplomat33]

Okay so it's like ATC as you stated. In any case, we don't know how often this happens.

In terms of autonomy, it is completely irrelevant how often it happens since it does not make the car any less autonomous. That's because, the way Waymo does it, the remote assistance does not control the car or disengage the autonomous driving. So the Waymo is still fully autonomous whether it happens every 1 mile or every 10,000 miles. It does matter but for other things like scalability and cost.

 

[Yelobird]

In terms of autonomy, it is completely irrelevant how often it happens since it does not make the car any less autonomous. That's because, the way Waymo does it, the remote assistance does not control the car or disengage the autonomous driving. So the Waymo is still fully autonomous whether it happens every 1 mile or every 10,000 miles. It does matter but for other things like scalability and cost.

I believe what most are referring to is IF this human wasn’t there to answer the cars beckon for help/advise it would stop unlike an aircraft.

 

[diplomat33]

I believe what most are referring to is IF this human wasn’t there to answer the cars beckon for help/advise it would stop unlike an aircraft.

I don't think we can assume that. Waymo's CPO says that "it’s designed to do the right thing even when support isn’t available". That implies to me that the Waymo might stop or it might take some other action it deems appropriate if the human is not available to answer. Basically, the Waymo is programmed to make a decision on its own when remote assistance is not available. So we cannot say that the Waymo would always stop if remote assistance is not available.

 

[Yelobird]

I don't think we can assume that. Waymo's CPO says that "it’s designed to do the right thing even when support isn’t available". That implies to me that the Waymo might stop or it might take some other action it deems appropriate if the human is not available to answer. Basically, the Waymo is programmed to make a decision on its own when remote assistance is not available. So we cannot say that the Waymo would always stop if remote assistance is not available.

So we can’t prove it would stop, nor can we say it won’t.

 

[diplomat33]

So we can’t prove it would stop, nor can we say it won’t.

Correct. All we know for sure is that the Waymo would try to do what it thinks is the right thing when remote assistance is not available.