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China Transportation Technology

AutoX Becomes China's First To Remove Safety Drivers From Robotaxis (techcrunch.com) 37

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Residents of Shenzhen saw truly driverless cars on the road today. From a report: AutoX, a four-year-old startup backed by Alibaba, MediaTek and Shanghai Motors, deployed a fleet of 25 unmanned vehicles in downtown Shenzhen, marking the first time any autonomous driving car in China tests on public roads without safety drivers or remote operators. The cars, meant as robotaxis, are not yet open to the public, an AutoX spokesperson told TechCrunch. The milestone came just five months after AutoX landed a permit from California to start driverless tests, following in the footsteps of Waymo and Nuro. It also indicates that China wants to bring its smart driving industry on par with the U.S. Cities from Shenzhen to Shanghai are competing to attract autonomous driving upstarts by clearing regulatory hurdles, touting subsidies and putting up 5G infrastructure. As a result, each city ends up with its own poster child in the space: AutoX and Deeproute.ai in Shenzhen, Pony.ai and WeRide in Guangzhou, Momenta in Suzhou and Baidu's Apollo fleet in Beijing, to name a few. The autonomous driving companies, in turn, work closely with traditional carmakers to make their vehicles smarter and more suitable for future transportation.
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AutoX Becomes China's First To Remove Safety Drivers From Robotaxis More

AutoX Becomes China's First To Remove Safety Drivers From Robotaxis

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    • The fact that they aren't actually running these as taxis makes me think that maybe they are just putting them on the street to see if people vandalize a vehicle without a driver.

  • Driving (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Thursday December 03, 2020 @03:56PM (#60791244)

    The idea of having to drive most of the way to someplace will seem quaint by the year 2040, unless there are some high profile mishaps.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      It depends whether you're talking about something scalable, or shiny PR stunts. All of these driverless systems thusfar have used premade HD maps. You're basically driving on invisible rails. It's autonomy to the same degree that Lionel is.

      Unless one's plan is to HD map the entire planet and constantly keep it up to date in realtime...

      • Unless one's plan is to HD map the entire planet and constantly keep it up to date in realtime...

        Provided it has appropriate sensors onboard, the vehicles can do a lot of this themselves... constantly updating the database, taking infrequently-traveled routes when out of service, etc.

        • Provided it has appropriate sensors onboard, the vehicles can do a lot of this themselves... constantly updating the database

          This is how Teslas does it now. If a human is controlling the car, the car still collects data and uploads it. Tesla then uses that data to build-out their maps.

          Unless it is the first time a Tesla has ever driven on that road, it is in the system.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Rei ( 128717 )

            Tesla does not use HD maps.

            Also, pretty much by definition, if you're relying on cars to be able to build maps for you, then they have to be able to handle the road without maps, and to be able to tell if the maps are no longer accurate.

            • Teslas can either drive themselves or be driven by a human. They collect data in both cases.

              Also, even if a road is driven automatically the first time, it can drive slower and more cautiously than on a road that is already mapped.

      • Have you seen Tesla's latest FSD beta reviews?

      • Unless one's plan is to HD map the entire planet and constantly keep it up to date in realtime...

        Why would that be difficult? America has 4 million miles of paved roads. If you have 64 bits of data on every meter of road, it will all fit in $1 of storage.

        There are 270 million cars in America. They drive an average of 30 miles per day. So the average stretch of paved road has 2000 cars drive on it every day. They can record and upload data as they drive.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rei ( 128717 )

          If you have 64 bits of data on every meter of road

          HD maps, not maps in general. About a megabyte per metre.

          And it's not simply about data size, but rather, accumulating it all and keeping it all constantly current.

          Lastly, at least at present, these maps are created by special mapping vehicles under controlled conditions.

          • Lastly, at least at present, these maps are created by special mapping vehicles under controlled conditions.

            Not exactly. For example traffic data is certainly gleaned from regular cars.

            Any self-driving car is going to be locating itself by matching what it 'sees' against what the map says it should see. It must have some ability to perform approximate matching since sensors are susceptible to conditions, and because the world changes. But it would be surprising if the cars did not share information a

          • A megabyte for a photograph of one meter of road.. come on that is obviously false and is ridiculous. It can't possibly be true. Why would you need such ultra high resolution? There is no way any road looks the exact same as it was photographed even an hour back (lighting, dust, debris etc) .. if that's enough to confuse a car self driving won't work at all .. yet we know it does.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Rei ( 128717 )

              Not a photograph. A 3d model, of the road and everything around it. That's what goes into HD maps. That's what all of the companies that use HD maps are using.

              And you can refuse to accept reality all you want, but it doesn't make it any less real.

            • I think he meant a megabyte for each kilometer of road.
              Otherwise, he is full of shit.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Yes, HD map the entire planet. It's not "on rails", they just use the maps to assist and make corner cases and things like obscured views easier. Much like humans in fact, we rely on memory and drive more cautiously when in unfamiliar areas.

        Mapping is underway. Most of Western Europe and the US has been done, and most of Japan. I expect China has been doing the same, it's useful for other stuff like planning and disaster modelling too. They even use it to create virtual versions of locations for movies and

      • In the case of an autonomous vehicle, if they aren't literally on rails, then they are not in fact "on rails". That's hyperbolic bullshit.

        What they are is level 3, or 4 at best.

    • Nope.

  • Have you ever driven in China? I haven't but I have had a number of taxi rides there.

    Apparently there are two rules. 1) ANYTHING GOES except contact. 2) Any collision with a bus is the car's fault no matter the circumstances.

    Example in action. My taxi was behind some cars stopped at a light. There were four lanes our direction and the left three were backed up, and the driver wants to do a left turn. He swerves right, makes a left turn from the rightmost of four lanes, crossing in front of three

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by buravirgil ( 137856 )
      I've driven in China. Your 1st Rule is disadvantaged by a bias of comparison. Your 2nd rule is a use case too narrow to be extrapolated. I learned to drive in China by observing the proximal distances pedestrians maintain. After observing those patterns until my anticipations were aligned with reality, I moved up to a bicycle. Repeat. Then a motorcycle.

      You were served by an intuition to note how fundamental collision is to traffic patterns.
      Another Slashdotter is correct to mention sensors and to realize a

  • 4 year old startup? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bandraginus ( 901166 ) on Thursday December 03, 2020 @05:18PM (#60791576)

    Can somebody explain to me how a 4 year old startup can reach this level in such a short period of time? Waymo has been at it for 10+ years, and has the best engineers in the world.

    Are they standing on the shoulders of giants (either legally or illegally), or is it simply that easy to get to this level now because of general advances across the board in sensors and computing? If so, sucks to be the incumbents, who have poured billions into this.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by buravirgil ( 137856 )

      ~bandraginus

      Can somebody explain to me how a 4 year old startup can reach this level in such a short period of time? Waymo has been at it for 10+ years, and has the best engineers in the world.

      Are they standing on the shoulders of giants (either legally or illegally), or is it simply that easy to get to this level now because of general advances across the board in sensors and computing? If so, sucks to be the incumbents, who have poured billions into this.

      I have two books to recommend for the specious claim of "best engineers in the world": David K. Nobles, America by Design, and Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano.

      America's quasi-religious faith in prestige institutions + engineers meeting directly with MBAs and prioritizing MBAs' perceptions of what information they think they've understood readily explains a convenient analysis of ten versus four. As well as an ignorance of history's myriad examples of innovation and advancement resisting so reductive a metric

    • Can somebody explain to me how a 4 year old startup can reach this level in such a short period of time?

      A desperation-driven mix of espionage and corner-cutting

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      There are a few Western startups at a similar stage, it's not that exceptional. Zoox for example.

      The difference here is that Shenzhen's government is very accommodating and they have massive resources backing them up.

    • Perhaps it's because the infrastructure in China is different. More mobile 4g/5g and access to data. In addition to that a lot of the roads have barriers so that pedestrians can't simply cross the road, but have to use overhead pedestrian walkways. That means crashing into some random pedestrian is a significantly reduced problem. It's also assumed that liability will more likely be on the the random pedestrian for jumping over the barrier than on the robotaxi.

  • They don't care if shitty half-assed SDCs kill some people, they've got a surplus after all.
    • I'm always surprised by the level of denial (mainly in US citizens) when anything related to China's technology. It reminds me the Fox and the Grapes fable. And always downplaying Chinese advances with the argument of "Human Rights" as if US isn't responsible for massive violations of HR. Or the argument of "they copy" (remember US and the project Paperclip?) I don't think denial is the best approach.
      • Yeah well with regards to so-called 'self driving cars' I think all of them are crap regardless of who built them because the crappy excuse for 'AI' used cannot think therefore will never really be fully competent as a driver, and with regards to the bullshit argument that The West also commits human rights violations therefore it's somehow okay for China to completely disregard human rights, all I can say to you is "BITE ME" and also at least a coin-flip chance or better you're Just Another Paid China Shil
        • Well... I'm a psychiatrist and I can tell you that THAT'S what I call denial By the way I'm from Uruguay (can you find it on the map?). "Chinese operative" made me laugh! "Bugger the hell off" :-D Google "denial"
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  • I prefer to dodge my own cones thank you very much, some of the only driving I'd actually like to do!

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