Waymo's official company blog announces self-driving service expansions, funding, leadership changes, and technical posts on simulation and its driver system.
Commenters debate its safety statistics and mapping needs, and an employee points readers to its technical posts. HN links it for company announcements.
There seems to be a lot of misconception and misinformation about mapping. People (mostly influencers associated with Tesla) constantly cite it as a major bottleneck for scaling. And there are barely any technical details about the mapping process. Are you able expand on the following:
- Is the initial mapping effort very high and expensive? How long does it take, on an average, to fully map a city the size and complexity of San Francisco?
- How much of the mapping process is automated?
- How are the maps kept up-to-date? We know from Waymo's blog post a while ago [1] that the cars map continuously. But is human intervention required to verify an update (like a new construction zone that was encountered)?
- How much of the country have you already mapped? Waymo says they are testing in 25 cities, so I'm assuming the number is at least 25 cities.
- What does a vehicle do if it detects a mismatch of road conditions vs the onboard map? (I already know the answer, but this is one of the most frequent points of misinformation where people say it stops working)
Anything you can share without revealing your secret sauce is appreciated!
[1] https://blog.waymo.com/2020/09/the-waymo-driver-handbook-mapping.html
You can, today, go to Pheonix Arizona, download the Waymo One app, and summon a full self driving vehicle. This happened silently at the end of 2020, and was overshadowed by the ongoing pandemic doom and gloom.
https://blog.waymo.com/2020/10/waymo-is-opening-its-fully-driverless.html
On the subject of danger. Literally everything we do is dangerous to some degree. Everything. Self-driving does not need to be perfect, but only better than human drivers. We're likely already at that point with Waymo vehicles.
On the subject of automation. Humanity is on track to have the computational power to perform whole brain emulation decades before 2100. Even if we don't solve the general AI problem through other pathways, we will solve it through this path. Ethical problems aside, once this is achieved, everything will be automatable at a human level of competence.
https://blog.waymo.com/2020/10/waymo-is-opening-its-fully-driverless.html
> We’ll start with those who are already a part of Waymo One and, over the next several weeks, welcome more people directly into the service through our app
So...this is just an extension of what they currently do where it's not really open to the public? Waymo One is something you have to apply for and almost nobody gets in. It's not clear to me what "welcome more people directly into the service through our app" means.
Waymo is terrible at PR. I can't even tell what they're trying to say here. But there is no date. There is no definitive statement. It's just another vague press release about how they're going driverless "soon"
It's in the official waymo statement and was pretty easy to find: https://blog.waymo.com/2019/08/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against-otto-and.html
"Recently, we received an unexpected email. One of our suppliers specializing in LiDAR components sent us an attachment (apparently inadvertently) of machine drawings of what was purported to be Uber’s LiDAR circuit board — except its design bore a striking resemblance to Waymo’s unique LiDAR design."
It was also in many articles. The story is that they were reluctant to pursue it until that email, you can find a ton of sources in the wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski
Google engineer not working on Waymo, opinions are my own.
I think "driverless" here is different from "self-driving", i.e. 'Waymo uses “driverless” here to refer to operations in which the ADS controls the vehicle for the entire trip without a human driver (whether in the vehicle or at a remote location) expected to assume any part of the driving task.' at page 5 of that report.
I think this driverless mode is only available to public on Oct 8th [0].
[0]: https://blog.waymo.com/2020/10/waymo-is-opening-its-fully-driverless.html
Waymo is currently the only SAE Level 4[0] self-driving car in use, right? The wheel must not be used. Even though it is limited to two cities.
Their technology seems an order of magnitude above the rest, although factoring in its cost could make it look worse. (Can it turn a profit, when including the development costs?)
Tesla FSD is at best SAE level 3 (can need human fallback), and at worst level 2 (needs constant human monitoring).
[0]: https://blog.waymo.com/2020/10/revealing-our-approach-to-safety.html