Autonomous Vehicles, LEAF and others...

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Thanks to a thread over at TMC, I learned of these 3 videos from Yandex, a Russian company that I've mentioned before.

There's nobody in the driver's seat of the first video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhqyrze30bk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn_i6Mxc_Pw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUXxzDUw9eA

I guess they like Prius v wagons. They were used in videos 1 and 3 + some previous ones.
 
At 1:41 in the first video it pulls up behind a LEAF at a traffic light.

And the display on the tablet looks very similar to a product by a company I might know. (I'd recently seem their product close up)
 
AutoX sends its RoboTaxis to work in Shanghai
https://www.zdnet.com/video/autox-sends-its-robotaxis-to-work-in-shanghai/
https://www.zdnet.com/article/autox-corners-shanghai-self-driving-taxi-market/
 
lorenfb said:
GaleHawkins said:
I think Autonomous is going to become huge it the next 5 years.

Really? AVs are more difficult than some realized five years ago:

In 2015, I got obsessed with the idea of driverless trucks and started Starsky Robotics. In 2016, we became the first street-legal vehicle to be paid to do real work without a person behind the wheel. In 2018, we became the first street-legal truck to do a fully unmanned run, albeit on a closed road. In 2019, our truck became the first fully-unmanned truck to drive on a live highway. And in 2020, we’re shutting down.
...
https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-end-of-starsky-robotics-acb8a6a8a5f5
60 Minutes had a rerun of a story about autonomous trucking. They brought up Starsky and Tusimple. Starsky sent out their truck on the Florida turnpike w/o a safety driver behind the wheel. Oh well, that wasn't enough given the Medium post.

Video at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/driverless-trucks-could-disrupt-the-trucking-industry-as-soon-as-2021-60-minutes-2020-03-15/ is behind the CBS All Access paywall but it looks like the text is a transcript.
 
After doing some reading over the weekend and listening to some of Elon Musk's autonomous driving key employees speak it seems like there is no other company is as advanced in the industry as Tesla now in the last half of 2020.

https://www.iii.org/article/background-on-self-driving-cars-and-insurance

"A 2014 study by the University of Texas at Austin of how the advent of autonomous cars may change vehicle ownership found that each shared autonomous vehicle (SAV) replaced about 11 conventional vehicles. The study assumed that only 5 percent of trips would be made by SAVs."

Even proven hardware and software solutions is ONLY the first step necessary for full autonomous vehicles to gain full access to USA streets and interstates. Head winds in the political environment can blow progress backwards. I see Tesla's China market may offer the first options for full autonomous driving since they do not have political parties and liability issues like in the USA.
 
cwerdna said:
lorenfb said:
GaleHawkins said:
I think Autonomous is going to become huge it the next 5 years.

Really? AVs are more difficult than some realized five years ago:

In 2015, I got obsessed with the idea of driverless trucks and started Starsky Robotics. In 2016, we became the first street-legal vehicle to be paid to do real work without a person behind the wheel. In 2018, we became the first street-legal truck to do a fully unmanned run, albeit on a closed road. In 2019, our truck became the first fully-unmanned truck to drive on a live highway. And in 2020, we’re shutting down.
...
https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-end-of-starsky-robotics-acb8a6a8a5f5
60 Minutes had a rerun of a story about autonomous trucking. They brought up Starsky and Tusimple. Starsky sent out their truck on the Florida turnpike w/o a safety driver behind the wheel. Oh well, that wasn't enough given the Medium post.

Video at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/driverless-trucks-could-disrupt-the-trucking-industry-as-soon-as-2021-60-minutes-2020-03-15/ is behind the CBS All Access paywall but it looks like the text is a transcript.
update: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/driverless-trucks-could-disrupt-the-trucking-industry-as-soon-as-2021-60-minutes-2020-08-23 has the video not behind a paywall.
GaleHawkins said:
After doing some reading over the weekend and listening to some of Elon Musk's autonomous driving key employees speak it seems like there is no other company is as advanced in the industry as Tesla now in the last half of 2020.
LOL! If you believe it, then I guess you've drank the kool-aid and/or been deceived by their hype. You wouldn't be the first...

Ask yourself again why they don't haven't had diddly squat in terms of CA autonomous vehicle testing stats reported to the CA DMV (https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2020/02/26/disengagement-report-2019/ for the most recent year) ever since reporting was required nor anything equivalent to show in actual operation like that of Waymo, Cruise Automation or a robotaxi service that companies like Waymo, Aptiv w/Lyfy (in Vegas) and various Chinese companies have been running. Or, look at Mobileye's been doing (e.g. https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=582537#p582537). Mobileye looks like they've posted more videos at https://www.youtube.com/c/Mobileye/videos.
 
Tesla may be doing development in secret, without the required reporting. It doesn't make sense, though, to assume both that that is happening and that they are ahead of the competition, with no evidence beyond Musk's pronouncements.
 
As a reminder (which apparently was a response to Gale) was my reply at https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=10233&p=576960&hilit=dmv#p576960.

Do take a look at the CA DMV autonomous vehicle disengagement reports for all the years at https://web.archive.org/web/20190425134416/https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/testing for Tesla vs. say Waymo and Cruise Automation.

2019 at https://web.archive.org/web/20200229140627/https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2019. Tesla for 2019 did a whopping 12.2 miles. Per https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2020/02/26/disengagement-report-2019/, that year, Waymo did 1.4 million autonomous miles on CA roads w/a disengagement every 13,219 miles. This also assumes Baidu's results are bogus/totally suspect.

It's likely that Tesla is doing some of their on public road autonomous testing outside CA (thus not needed to report to CA DMV) but given Tesla's and Elon's style of hype, why can't they at least show they meet/exceed other known leaders in the space? Why won't they let reporters ride, film and report? How about the general public? How about a beta of a robotaxi like Waymo's been doing for years? It can start out closed w/NDAs and open up later, just like Waymo's done...

When Elon keeps making pronouncements then keeps missing them over and over, while others have already seemingly achieved his aspirations, it makes Elon's credibility in this space rather low and it leads to me to believe they're way behind the leaders + some others who aren't leaders.
 
LeftieBiker said:
Tesla may be doing development in secret, without the required reporting. It doesn't make sense, though, to assume both that that is happening and that they are ahead of the competition, with no evidence beyond Musk's pronouncements.

I need to get some bush hogging done right now but I will try to get you some links to get you up to speed how Tesla is a moving forward and with hardware and software.
 
^^^
Please watch the video at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/driverless-trucks-could-disrupt-the-trucking-industry-as-soon-as-2021-60-minutes-2020-08-23.

Re-examine the dates at https://www.inverse.com/article/55141-elon-musk-autonomous-driving under "A Comprehensive Timeline of Elon Musk’s Autonomy Timelines" that I pointed you to at https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=576960#p576960.

Look over the CA DMV disengagement reports for Tesla vs. a few leaders in the years I pointed you to.
 
https://www.autoblog.com/2020/08/26/vw-autonomous-audi-e-tron-china/
Volkswagen AG said on Wednesday it will start testing autonomous vehicles in China's eastern city of Hefei, its first in the world's biggest car market.

China has become a hot spot for trying out autonomous driving vehicles. Toyota-backed Pony.ai, Baidu Inc, Nissan-backed WeRide and Didi Chuxing are all testing autonomous cars in different cities as automakers and tech companies are investing billions in the technology.

Self-Driving Cars Learn to Read the Body Language of People on the Street
Game developers use motion-capture tech to teach Cruise’s autonomous vehicles to understand gestures
https://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/self-driving/selfdriving-cars-learn-to-read-the-body-language-of-people-on-the-street
 
cwerdna said:
https://www.autoblog.com/2020/08/26/vw-autonomous-audi-e-tron-china/
Volkswagen AG said on Wednesday it will start testing autonomous vehicles in China's eastern city of Hefei, its first in the world's biggest car market.

China has become a hot spot for trying out autonomous driving vehicles. Toyota-backed Pony.ai, Baidu Inc, Nissan-backed WeRide and Didi Chuxing are all testing autonomous cars in different cities as automakers and tech companies are investing billions in the technology.

Self-Driving Cars Learn to Read the Body Language of People on the Street
Game developers use motion-capture tech to teach Cruise’s autonomous vehicles to understand gestures
https://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/self-driving/selfdriving-cars-learn-to-read-the-body-language-of-people-on-the-street

China's laws may better promote self driving since they have more modern roads in some regions.
 
GaleHawkins said:
China's laws may better promote self driving since they have more modern roads in some regions.
In some parts of China, driving there is nuts. I've been to Beijing and Shanghai.

I watched all 4 parts of this when it originally aired: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTKRk4EEhYM. I really enjoyed it. I hope it doesn't get taken down. Skip to about 1:50 to see what driving is like there. Feel free to speed up the video via the gear icon, which I couldn't do when I originally watched it on my TiVo.

From what I recall of the video and my time there in late 08, it's about right. People don't drive very safely there and there's a lot of honking. Supposedly. Shanghai made unnecessary honking illegal long ago so what a friend of mine told me (who was living there) is that what I heard was already a HUGE improvement vs. before.

Skip to 19:20 or so for more a flavor of what it's like, esp. 19:28 to ~20:20. And, yes people cross the street haphazardly there.
 
cwerdna said:
In some parts of China, driving there is nuts. I've been to Beijing and Shanghai.

I have some most vivid memories of being in cars in China while there for work. I was working with several Chinese nationals who worked for my companies local office and traveling quite a bit locally. We'd take a taxi between offices and/or the train station and airport. The taxi driver would often pass slow cars in front of us by crossing the double yellow line into the oncoming lane of traffic. One day we were running late to catch a train and so "Grace" asked the driving to hurry up. He not only crossed the double yellow to pass a slower car, he went over to the 2nd lane of oncoming traffic just to pass someone else who had already cross the double yellow in front of us. I was in the front seat that ride. That scene still plays out in my nightmares.
 
jlv said:
cwerdna said:
In some parts of China, driving there is nuts. I've been to Beijing and Shanghai.

I have some most vivid memories of being in cars in China while there for work. I was working with several Chinese nationals who worked for my companies local office and traveling quite a bit locally. We'd take a taxi between offices and/or the train station and airport. The taxi driver would often pass slow cars in front of us by crossing the double yellow line into the oncoming lane of traffic. One day we were running late to catch a train and so "Grace" asked the driving to hurry up. He not only crossed the double yellow to pass a slower car, he went over to the 2nd lane of oncoming traffic just to pass someone else who had already cross the double yellow in front of us. I was in the front seat that ride. That scene still plays out in my nightmares.

I can imagine how a typical "road warrior" would respond to autonomous vehicles on the road, keeping in mind that such cars will likely be programmed to stay within legal speed limits and make cautious maneuvers. In my experience the more you obey the traffic laws, the more the Type A drivers lose their minds. And knowing that the autonomous vehicle's response to a forceful bump will be to "pull over safely", I'd expect them to end up "cosmetically challenged" at best. Programming the rules of the road is one thing. Winning a game of Chicken is another.
 
GRA said:
ABG:
Uber won't face criminal charges in fatal Arizona self-driving crash
For the backup driver, it might be another matter
https://www.autoblog.com/2019/03/06/uber-wont-face-criminal-charges-in-fatal-arizona-self-driving-c/

Uber Technologies is not criminally liable in a March 2018 crash in Tempe, Arizona, in which one of the company's self-driving cars struck and killed a pedestrian, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

The Yavapai County Attorney said in a letter made public that there was "no basis for criminal liability" for Uber, but that the back-up driver, Rafaela Vasquez, should be referred to the Tempe police for additional investigation. . . .

Vasquez, the Uber back-up driver, could face charges of vehicular manslaughter, according to a police report in June. Vasquez has not previously commented and could not immediately be reached on Tuesday.

Based on a video taken inside the car, records collected from online entertainment streaming service Hulu and other evidence, police said last year that Vasquez was looking down and streaming an episode of the television show "The Voice" on a phone until about the time of the crash. The driver looked up a half-second before hitting Elaine Herzberg, 49, who died from her injuries.

Police called the incident "entirely avoidable."

Yavapai County Attorney's Office, which examined the case at the request of Maricopa County where the accident occurred, did not explain the reasoning for not finding criminal liability against Uber. Yavapai sent the case back to Maricopa, calling for further expert analysis of the video to determine what the driver should have seen that night. . . .
Backup driver in fatal Arizona Uber self-driving car crash charged with negligent homicide
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/15/associated-press-the-backup-driver-in-fatal-arizona-uber-autonomous-crash-charged.html
 
Speeding Tesla driver caught napping behind the wheel on Alberta highway
Driver and passenger were reclined in their seats while car in autopilot, RCMP say
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/tesla-driver-napping-alberta-speeding-1.5727828
 
cwerdna said:
Speeding Tesla driver caught napping behind the wheel on Alberta highway
Driver and passenger were reclined in their seats while car in autopilot, RCMP say
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/tesla-driver-napping-alberta-speeding-1.5727828

They are about there with their full self driving version of software I read today. That Elon is the leader without question.
 
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