Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

Re:Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality by ehsankia on Friday September 14, 2018 @12:45AM (#17984722)

Waymo is available right now, and has been for almost a year, to normal non-employee citizens, in Phoenix, albeit behind a private invite system. And as mentioned above, it'll become an open beta by 2019. Also, most of the limitation at this point has to do with regulation, they'd be in many more places if not for that.

That is much much closer than 2035.

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Re:Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality by pauljurczak on Friday September 14, 2018 @06:43AM (#17986154)

The question is, does it qualify as 100% driverless? I don't think so. Waymo service is partially teleoperated.

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Re:Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality by ehsankia on Friday September 14, 2018 @07:16PM (#17991855)

Do you have a proof for that? Waymo is actually the only car that explicitly does not allow teleoperating. They specifically made this decision to bypass the risk of being hacked and taken over.

The best a teleoperator can do is suggest a path to a car that is confused, and the car decides if the path is a good idea. We also don't know how often that's used. If it's rare enough, does it even matter? Does it not make it driverless if once in a while they need a little nudge?

That's like saying your car isn't a real car because 1% of the time you need to take it to the mechanic.

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Re:Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality by wpietri on Saturday September 15, 2018 @01:29AM (#17993127)

I think you're correct on the first part; "It does have humans in remote operations centers who can communicate with passengers and guide the car in complicated situations—like a cop sending cars the wrong way down a one-way street—but they never take actual control of the driving; it’s the car’s job to stay safe." https://www.wired.com/story/waymo-self-driving-car-service-p...

But yes, if a human has to get involved, I think it's correct to say it's not self-driving. In particular, what Wired describes is either SAE Level 3 or Level 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#Levels_of_dri...

Until it's Level 5, it's not really driverless.

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Re:Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality by pauljurczak on Saturday September 15, 2018 @08:14AM (#17993988)

Precisely, not Level 5. They are hiring for their remote operations through Adecco: https://www.adeccousa.com/jobs/self-driving-vehicle-operator... . This is a job where you sit in front of the display(s) with steering wheel in your hand and foot on the pedal. Remote driving - pure and simple. Not very scalable.

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Re:Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality by wpietri on Saturday September 15, 2018 @01:36AM (#17993146)

Yes, they are operating in secret right now, and are extremely hazy about what "operating" means. And they have said they'll be in open beta by 2019. But it wouldn't be the first time that a software project is late.

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Re:Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality by tigershark on Friday September 14, 2018 @03:36AM (#17985398)

Where did you read 2019? All the sources that I can find say that the initial commercial service launch will be this year.

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