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Waymo's Autonomous Vehicles Are Driving 25,000 Miles Every Day (techcrunch.com) 101

Posted by BeauHD from the it's-over-9000 dept.
With Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval at the National Governors Association, Waymo CEO John Krafcik announced a huge milestone: Waymo's fleet of self-driving vehicles are now logging 25,000 miles every day on public roads. The company reportedly has 600 self-driving Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans on the road in 25 cities. Waymo has also driven 8 million miles on public roads using its autonomous vehicles, "meaning the comopany has been able to double the number of autonomous miles driven on public roads in just eight months," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The company also relies on simulation as it works to build an AI-based self-driving system that performs better than a human. In the past nine years, Waymo has "driven" more than 5 billion miles in its simulation, according to the company. That's the equivalent to 25,000 virtual cars driving all day, everyday, the company says. This newly shared goal signals Waymo is getting closer to launching a commercial driverless transportation service later this year. More than 400 residents in Phoenix have been trialing Waymo's technology by using an app to hail self-driving Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans. The company says it plans to launch its service later this year.
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Waymo's Autonomous Vehicles Are Driving 25,000 Miles Every Day More

Waymo's Autonomous Vehicles Are Driving 25,000 Miles Every Day

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  • I didn't think those minivans could go over 1000 mph.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      I didn't think those minivans could go over 1000 mph.

      They can when falling off cliffs.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tuidjy ( 321055 )

        Nope. They are not aerodynamic enough for that. Falling off a cargo plane, maybe. Falling off a balloon in the stratosphere, definitely.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by thsths ( 31372 )

      Exactly why thought. Why are Slashdot headlines always incorrect?

      Slashdot - fake news for fake nerds

  • The most frequent users will be hookers. No question.

  • I was wrong. AI and automation are right around the corner! I really can't wait to get my autonomous car, or even better, to hail one!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Sorry to disappoint, these things are not "AI". They are just a result from around 50 years of dedicated, specialized automation research. And automation is a very, very old thing.

  • 'Simulations' mean NOTHING (Score:3)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Friday July 20, 2018 @07:15PM (#56982968) Journal
    Neither does toodling around at 25mph or less.

    • Do you have any idea what the average speed in town is? I'll bet it's less than 25. Also, miles driven in simulation do not help test the sensors, but they do help test the driving logic.

      • Do you have any idea how little I care?
        • If you don't care, why the bitching about simulations and speeds?
          • Because I'm intellectually offended at SDC fanbois who swallow the media hype and other associated bullshit when I know damned well the entire approach to AI they're using for this and many other things is no different than it was in the 90's and is clearly not up to the task, should not be allowed to be used where human lives will be lost because of it. You can believe all the hype and bullshit all you like but I'm not fooled.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        The funny thing is that their simulated miles is only 4 times more than Tesla's real-world miles on active mode and 2 times more than Tesla in shadow mode.

        At their current driving rate, it would take them over 130 years to match Tesla's active AP miles and double that to match its shadow mode miles.

        • At their current driving rate, it would take them over 130 years to match Tesla's active AP miles and double that to match its shadow mode miles.

          Autopilot doesn't do what their system does. Tesla could have infinitely more miles and still be behind, because their training is for a system with lesser capabilities.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mlyle ( 148697 )

          > is only 4 times more than Tesla's real-world miles on active mode and 2 times more than Tesla in shadow mode.

          > take them over 130 years to match Tesla's active AP miles and double that to match its shadow mode miles.

          Is one of these reversed?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Actually, almost all tricky situations are at low speed.

    • Neither does toodling around at 25mph or less.

      You mean the scenario that the vast majority of people find themselves in, the vast majority of traffic hazards occur in, and the vast majority of road variance exists in?

      Yeah I'm sure they're much better driving straight lines down highways! /sarcasm.

  • Hopefully, Waymo will catch up to Tesla and start giving them some competition.

  • Fully autonomous or sort of autonomous? (Score:3)

    by Nkwe ( 604125 ) on Friday July 20, 2018 @07:32PM (#56983050)
    Are these miles fully autonomous (meaning no human in the car) or are the miles with assistance (human in the car, ready to take over or "assist")? If with assistance, what is the rate of help the cars get on some sort of statistic that can be compared over time? (Maybe "assists" per 1000 miles or something like that.) The statistic in the headline sounds impressive, but is it?
    • They're unsafe and they know it so they're all supervised by a human. This is all just media hype from marketing departments because if they don't start turning a profit on this after all the millions invested in it stockholders will revolt and heads will roll. Meanwhile the 'technology' is still nowhere near ready for general use and so far as I'm concerned never will be.

      • You are ENTIRELY wrong about pretty much every thing you said.

        1) They are NOT surpervised, the people are in the back seat of the car, not the front seat.
        2) They are ARE safe.
        3) This is not just media hype, they are already safer than a human during normal driving (i.e. no rain, no snow, no fog, during the day.).
        4) You personally have no idea what is ready and will change your mind once you realize the question is not "is this safe?" but rather "Is it safer to ride next to a truck driver using speed pills

        • Post your PhD's in cybernetics and your directly witnessed accounts of all this testing to back up what you're saying. Nothing you said is based on verifiable facts, it's all just your 'beliefs' because you're an SDC fanboi and are 'believing' what they're feeding you. Meanwhile I know damned well these shitty excuses for AI aren't up to being responsible for human lives and would rather WALK than ever trust one because I know the technology is more hype than it is reality, they're desperate to make money o

    • Waymo autonomous cars drove 352,545 miles in California between December 2016 and November 2017, and disengaged from autonomous mode 63 times [thedrive.com]

      No idea if the car was about to do something dangerous, or was disengaged because the driver got impatient. If the car chose to disengage, that's a small enough number that in areas with good data coverage, a driver in a single call center could take over remotely.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        No, it's not. Why? Because the hypothetical driver in that call center would have to familiarize himself with the situation first. That can take a bit, in the meantime the car would sit in traffic and block the road in the best case... or hit something in the worst case.

        This 'we let the autopilot drive and a human takes over when it can't deal with things' works in situations where you can freeze things (like a simulation on a computer), but it doesn't work in a moving vehicle where things can go from OK to

    • Are these miles fully autonomous (meaning no human in the car) or are the miles with assistance (human in the car, ready to take over or "assist")? If with assistance, what is the rate of help the cars get on some sort of statistic that can be compared over time? (Maybe "assists" per 1000 miles or something like that.)
      The statistic in the headline sounds impressive, but is it?

      It's also missing details such as weather, temperature, types of roads (i.e. pavement vs gravel), how well the roads are marked, traffic conditions, time of day, construction/road changes, amount of pedestrians/cyclists, etc.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      This is not the "proof of fitness" stage, this is still the "research" stage, so with human and, if done right, with additional safety features. This does mean that these systems can drop back to human control even when the automatics are just a bit concerned, but could actually handle the situation.

      • Yes, still research. But the humans in the car are in the back seat,
        which means the human can NEVER control the car. If they touch the controls, the cars pull over and stop. Waymo is not working on driver assisted tech, they can already do that. They are researching fully driver-less situations.

        The current problems they are working on are

        a) bad road conditions (fog, rain, snow, gravel, etc.)

        b) weird crap, like animals in the road.

        c) end point issues - when to reject the requested pick up or drop off p

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          To be able to make the car "pull over and stop" is a form of control. I should not have to say this. But it is good to know their stuff is good enough to have this minimal level of human backup.

    • I have seen videos of the cars in action. In those videos, there is no person behind the wheel - that seat is empty. Passengers are seated in the 2nd row, not the front row.

      https://waymo.com/ [waymo.com]

  • A world where I can already verbally tell my 2018 Toyota to call Mother. A world where I still have Mother, at age 96.

  • Death rate? (Score:3)

    by Moof123 ( 1292134 ) on Friday July 20, 2018 @07:49PM (#56983112)

    With all that data in hand, what should we expect as a death rate compared to the current death rate in developed countries? How about pedestrian and cyclist fatality rate estimates? How about operator intervention rates on typical US roads (i.e. crappy poorly maintained and often mismarked)?

    All those simulations and miles are just a big round number, I want to know what the scorecard looks like. If these things were near perfect there would be no need for such continued voluminous testing and refining.

    • Re:Death rate? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Saturday July 21, 2018 @12:44AM (#56983952)

      We should expect something like 10% of what we have today. Sure, that is still a large number, but think of the improvement. Eventually, it may be much, much lower though, but that may take a few decades. This tech is hard.

  • Would welcome a system to help cut down on wreckless drivers. The police are developing AI to process their video footage so a similar supply of info likely available to these companies if they could setup a system to take feeds. Also to deter poor drivers if they knew greater chance wreckless driving might be monitored.

  • Wow 25,000 miles a day?!? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20, 2018 @08:41PM (#56983260)

    That's way mo' than I imagined!

  • The goal of a car that performs better than a human gets closer. As human drivers are one of the major risks to limb and life, this is a good thing.

  • No such thing as a secure, networked computer.

    Hacker breaks into duh big computers Hacker sez: "Attention all self-driving Toyotas in the world. Turn hard left and accelerate to maximum NOW."

    Carnage ensues. We told you so.

  • Call me when they are driving miles per hour, because that is what real-world cars do.

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