The camera is bird's eye on the google presentation. And it is a recording.

So jitter/flicker can be cleaned up/smoothed out and the data can be massaged in ways that a real time system may not be able to do.

This is a presentation. I'd be /very/ surprised if this animation was from RAW data as-is.

Also there seems to be Lidar data (point clouds) which Tesla doesn't have.

So while this means bounding boxes may have less detail in Tesla's system this is not an issue as long as they are not smaller than the physical object.

Having worked in the automotive space in the last five years and seen lots of those I'd not say one is less impressive than the other.

Those scenarios from Google were obviously selected for the presentation, but very much represent state of the art in _real time_ processing for autonomous driving systems from the time of the presentation.

I’m not sure what is implied with saying it’s a recording - both the Google and Tesla presentations are “recordings” and equal opportunity to pick best case examples, but I would bet strongly there is nothing not RAW = “real time“ for their respective compute platforms.

The top down viewpoint helps show off the quality (still by no means perfect) of the world representation. If you projected Tesla’s model into 3D you would see far more jitter than in the video overlay for a variety of reasons.

That said, I think comparing them directly on specific technical components is a bit of a sidebar. They are taking two very different paths along the way to a still ambiguous problem. Both are leading their respective approaches, but have fundamentally different and unproven assumptions.

Also worth looking not just at how accurately objects are detected but what the visualizations show about the intent of other road users. The Google video shows predicted trajectories for important objects in a number of scenes. We don’t get to see any of that clearly from Tesla, and that is by no means a small part of the problem. Not sure if it is there and not shown, just highlighting there is a lot more downstream even once you are finding objects reliably in the sensors.

It diminishes the comparison when just the lidar for a waymo car costs more than the entire tesla vehicle.

So, not only can you afford a tesla vehicle, you can go out and buy one today.

According to [1] Waymo produces its own lidars. In 2017 it costed $7500 without being mass produced.

Edit: wording.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/8/14206084/google-waymo-self...

I guess I CAN afford a Tesla...

I was just answering to the claim "when just the lidar for a waymo car costs more than the entire tesla vehicle". Which is clearly wrong.

The tesla you can afford still does not have self driving capabilities either btw.

I made this joke as I found disparity between the message its reply humorous. If you disagree, feel free to ignore my comment. That aside, it is quite cool how Waymo cut costs by 90%: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo-invests-i... (perhaps there are newer developments of which I am not aware). The old numbers indeed exceed the price of most teslas...

I see, I missed the joke I think, reading again, it was quite obvious, sorry about that.

All the Waymo vans I've seen have had multiple lidar sensors, I think 4?

Can you go out and buy a fully self driving Tesla today? Because that would be the relevant comparison.

Can you buy any sort of waymo at all?

LIDAR will get cheaper and smaller though. I think Tesla’s argument that cameras+ML+tons of data>LIDAR is more compelling.

The real question is cameras + ML + tons of data vs LIDAR + cameras + ML + tons of data

It will still be power hungry and mess up aerodynamics even if it is smaller. Tesla is looking at the entire picture of autonomous + EV which IMO is a better strategy.

> The camera is bird's eye on the google presentation

The car is aware where it is in the world, so a birds eye view is more representative of what the waymo car actually sees, it’s just one of the many ways the waymo car has better data to work with

Your comment makes no sense. Besides the fact that this is showing Lidar scans with depth and 3D textures (does look cooler), the relevant part which is feature detection is a lot poorer. It doesn’t seem to detect lane markers or boundaries, sidewalks, traffic signs, or show path estimates like you can clearly see in the Tesla video. Plus the texturing implies the route is pre-mapped while Autopilot is doing all the work in real time.

Your comment just doesn't make any sense in context of the linked video. I can only assume you did not watch the video. I have uploaded the most important scenes to imgur so you don't have to waste your time finding the key scenes. The results will surprise you because they show exactly all the features that you claimed that google didn't have. https://imgur.com/a/6zHt8vP

In the Waymo video there are vector narrow lines added on top of the broken white line of the image view, there are also a vector boundary of the centered line and boundaries, and 3D box for cones. You are clearly not looking closely enough, or might not want to.

But still - there are Tesla's driving everywhere, including ones with autopilot enabled, and I have yet to see the first Waymo car on the road...

The technology might be/seem superior, commercially Tesla has cleary won the race..

>Tesla has cleary won the race..

But Waymo is pilot-testing autonomous taxis and Teslas have a "greater than zero chance" of making it to your destination without intervention.

First Mover Advantage is still pretty important though.

Tesla is selling cards today, Waymo is not. Tesla's cars are good-enough for most of the buyers so Waymo's technical superiority has to bs much much better warrant the attention and change in public perspective.

On very important thing is tesla has established that your will get better with software updates over time. Other cars have nice adaptive cruise control and self-driving tech but the thought that the car you bought today can in a few months drive better is a massive psychological advantage imo. I don't think Waymo can compete on self-driving features anymore. They have to make the better car and driving experience as a holistic package to stick

>Tesla is selling cards today, Waymo is not.

Tesla sells cars for which FSD doesn't exist, Waymo is using FSD on cars they don't build.

The business models are different. Why is the natural assumption that everyone will own their FSD car?

> Why is the natural assumption that everyone will own their FSD car?

Great point.

Tesla exists for people who want to own/drive their cars with cool tech and the dream of FSD down the line via a magical update

Waymo's launched Waymo One as a taxi service but it's only available in one region. My understanding has been that they want to buy a fleet of cars, outfit them with their FSD tech for a taxi service? (So competing with Ridesharing services as an autonomous alternative)

There is certainly plenty of room in the market for people both models

Wow. This is what I’d expect from a large company. Full 3D representations with super smooth object recognition. Tesla’s looks like a student project compared to that.

Although I wonder which is more truthful. I bet Google’s demo takes significantly more computing power, was cleaned up for the demo, etc

This is sort of a natural consequence of LIDAR.

Turning point clouds into objects is child's play compared to plucking objects out of cameras.

Waymo is at least 5 years ahead of Tesla. They are running driverless self driving cars already on city streets. My Model 3 can’t even navigate a parking a lot half the time I use the summon feature.

Ancedote: this evening in Mountain View, the driver of one of Waymo's test vans had to take over (I watched her grab the wheel).

The van had come to a complete stop with room to pass a USPS truck (it appeared safe to me from 25 feet away), and didn't begin moving again for a few seconds. She then took control.

The waymo cars have always been timid. That's why most of the collisions involve the waymo car getting rear ended. They don't move when other drivers expect them to.

Of course, this is annoying, and being so timid that you get rear ended is unsafe, but the Tesla approach would be the delivery truck is detected as a stationary object and ignored, so the vehicle would accelerate to the set speed in 3 seconds and slam into it. (See the many reports of Teslas running into stopped emergency vehicles). Of course, Tesla will tell you that their car isn't really self-driving with one side of their mouth, while telling you your car is equipped for self-driving out of the other side.

> Of course, Tesla will tell you that their car isn't really self-driving with one side of their mouth, while telling you your car is equipped for self-driving out of the other side.

This is my biggest worry with the way this is promoted. It’s false advertising and misleading to consumers. I wish more companies (in all industries) would be held accountable to accurately portray what they are selling.

Tesla promotes autopilot as safer than a human driver but blames the driver when there is an accident. How can autopilot be safer than a human if the only way to safely use is with a human monitoring it?

It's hard to extrapolate anything from this, as they may have intentionally been testing some new variation on an algorithm that made it more reticent. Besides, it doesn't sound like the car was unsafe, just timid. A crash would be way worse.

In one very small geo, waymo is maybe 1-2 years ahead.

Tesla hasn't even started the certification process for self driving in any state. Without seeing disengagement reports and looking at how long it took summon to get released to market after initial preview(3 years), 5 years is being optimistic for Tesla. Realist would say they'll never be self driving with the current sensor setup. All the cars that farthest along by looking at miles driven between disengagements are all lidar based cars.

Quick question: if you summon Model 3 and car gets in an accident, would Tesla pay for the repairs?

No. You agree that you are in control of the car.

How do you control the car if you're not even in it?

If you release the summon button, the car comes to a stop. You are supposed to be able to see the car visually at all times so you can release the summon button and avoid problems.

In addition to stopping when releasing the button, it also shows you the path it plans to take on a satellite map on your phone. So you know where it is going.

Some people have problems with it, but it works great for me. It's pretty awesome to have the car pull up to me on a rainy day. Part of it is parking in a smart place on the way in.

This already happened several times after they first rolled out the feature a few months ago (minor accidents). No, Tesla did not pay (nor would I expect them to).

I wonder how courts decide on that...

Of course the software running in the current Model 3 can't compete with Waymo, that's a idiotic demand. That is just arguing in bad faith. We have no clue how far they are as that software is internal.

How much of the Google video is eyecandy versus actual processing imagery?

Fake it until you make it ;-)

That reminds me of all the "AI power" we already use which is backed by low-wage contract workers who listen in.

Google search was curated by humans for a long time. Last guy I met who was doing it, now works for an SEO firm. Things like house insurance, medical insurance etc is highly hand tweaked.

Please understand, Tesla works only with only Camera & Radars (at L2 level). Where as Google Waymo works with pretty expensive and lot of redundant sensors ie., 360degree LIDAR, cameras & Radars (at L4 level). Tesla sells vehicles in volumes, Waymo doesn't (as it is exhorbitant). Hence comparison is not apple to apple. I do agree Visualisation in the google video is more appealing. I assume Tesla also has state of art visualations for their algo development.

they're only redundant if it's actually working and they're not necessary. Nothing is actually working right now in terms of actually self driving the car. So little early to say redundant.

What are these levels you are referring to? We drive just fine with two cameras.

That doesn’t have anything to do with the technology used to implement it.

I might have mis understood the OP’s point with their parenthetical remarks.

And two actuators in every eye ball and two big actuators between the head and the main body.

Because our field of view stinks.

Waymo may be planning to develop overpriced self driving cars to gather data automatically for cheap self driving cars while simultaneously experimenting.

Note that Google's system operates in pre-mapped areas and uses lidar.

So it operates under the conditions that we expect the commercially available product to operate under? Yeah cool thanks for the caveat.

No, it operates in an infintessimaly small test area.

So where can I buy a Google car today?

I have mixed feelings about this. I realize the number and types of sensors that exist in Waymo's cars provide far more data to the driverless car. But then when I really think about it, humans have been driving with only 2 sensors (eyes) for a long time with relatively good success. With the improvement of computer algorithms to help the cars make better decisions than humans, I'm not 100% sure if the long-term solution will require all the extra sensors.

My guess is the added sensors may get Waymo to market sooner, but if Tesla can commoditize this technology for far cheaper they will win in the end.

>humans have been driving with only 2 sensors (eyes) for a long time with relatively good success.

1.25 million die a year in road accidents. We should try to do better than human.

But also keeping speed high enough. You won't have many fatal road accidents with speed limited to 5 km/h. But it won't be very useful transportation. Those timid cars might be safer but people might prefer more aggressive style to reduce travel time.

Sure, but if we can match that number of fatalities with self driving cars it will inarguably be a success from a utilitarian standpoint.

Humans also have 20+ years of experience living in human society. You need to develop AI as strong as humans to match that.

I don't think that the videos contain the information necessary to make this judgment.

Plus Tesla still does not report disengagements to the CA dmv, right? It seems so strange to me that their HQ is there and they do not report any testing there.

Either Tesla: (1) Call it a 'driver assist system' and carry that definition beyond all reasonable bounds. I've read the regulation, I don't think that defense would stand up in court. (2) Does physical testing somewhere other than California. The testing regulation is fairly onerous, and I could see them saying 'nah' we'll do this in Arizona, Nevada, etc.

You're right they don't report disengagements, but they still maintain a autonomous test vehicle permit in the state, according to the DMV website. Very strange indeed. I think (2) is probably right.

It'a (1).

For Reporting Year 2018, Tesla did not test any vehicles on public roads in California in autonomous mode or operate any autonomous vehicles, as defined by California law. As such, the Company did not experience any autonomous mode disengagements as part of the Autonomous Vehicle Tester Program in California.

https://electrek.co/2019/02/13/tesla-autonomous-mileage-cali...

They actively avoid reporting test results in CA.

Nothing about that changes due to semantics (your #1) or if they test elsewhere (your #2).

Why is that strange? Does Tesla strike you as conventional?

It strikes me as evasive.

After seeing reviews of the Tesla Autopilot vs Openpilot it became clear to me it is way to early to trust Tesla's Autopilot (and Openpilot).

They both use visuals only and are easily confused when situations are a little different than 'normal'.

I even think Openpilot performed a little better than Autopilot but because Openpilot only has a forward looking camera it fails often on tight corners.

Google on the other hand is aware of the complete 3D surrounding. So even if road marks are gone or are unclear it still can estimate where the vehicle should be on the road.

Tesla’s system can still estimate where the car should be without markings, just like humans do with their vision.

Well it you look at some videos you can see that there are times Tesla thinks repair lines are road marks especially when the sun is reflected by the lines.

When the car has no real idea of its position in 3D space this gives problems.

Same as humans, except it has GPS, radar and other sensors to help.

"Inside Waymo's Secret World for Training Self-Driving Cars" -The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/insid...

This was a really really good read, especially into how Waymo simulations could generate data like seen in this video. It's from 2017 but still an extraordinary article for the quality of engineering insight.

I was waiting to see if someone would post this. And that was 5 years ago.

On the contrary. When you know the Tesla system is running on real time on a hardware accelerated card IN the car, it becomes way more impressive than a google presentation made with supercomputers after a long time of processing.

A simulation vs actual?

Well, there's no harm for Google in publishing more since the project will inevitably be "sunset" and is an uneconomical research prototype, while Tesla's is a production version that people actually use.