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Waymo racks up 4 million self-driven miles
Waymo continues to press its lead in terms of actual miles driven on roads, which is potentially the most important metric out there when it comes to building successful autonomous driving technology. The Alphabet-owned company that began life as Google's self-driving car project around a decade ago now has 4 million miles driven autonomously on roads.
That 4 million miles represents the self-driving effort of Waymo's entire test fleet, covering its original autonomous vehicles all the way up to its current driverless Chrysler Pacifica minivans, which are actually now testing on Arizona public roads, right alongside everyday human drivers, with no safety driver behind the wheel at all.
In simulations, Waymo's bots have driven 2.5 billion "virtual miles".
Also at The Verge.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 01 2017, @03:42AM (6 children)
Early on, people were telling us how safe autonomous cars would be - but they had no statistics to back them up. 4 million miles isn't a lot - actually, it isn't even much - but they BEGIN to mean something. Around 20 million miles, we can actually start taking the numbers seriously. How many accidents, how many deaths, how many injuries, how much property damage, etc, etc - just like the insuarance companies measure people's driving. There is sure to be a difference, but what differences, and how significant those differences are remains to be seen.
More importantly, how quickly do the engineers and developers react to new data and mishaps? I remember the story of one of those semi-autonomous cars almost backing over a pedestrian while parking. The explanation that the car didn't have pedestrian sensing features was pretty damned lame. If they advertised the vehicle as self-parking, then you EXPECT the car to be able to park itself, without running over some nitwit standing in the way.
Real life conditions in the real world, with many millions of miles of real life driving is what will sell autonomous cars. Test conditions on sheltered tracks mean almost nothing.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 01 2017, @05:47AM (1 child)
But it begs the question: wouldn't the world be better with fewer nitwits?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday December 01 2017, @08:07PM
Actually, the problem is: will teh car park despite the chair or bucket put there by the person who shoveled the space?
Until that code is reliable, letting your car self-park in winter in many neighborhoods would result in highly unpleasant results...
(Score: 1) by galgon on Friday December 01 2017, @01:32PM (2 children)
I want self driving cars everywhere in a few years. With that kind of goal 1 Million miles in 6 months is too slow. They need to move faster. Waymo has 100 vans driving around Phoenix. Each van should be doing at LEAST 200 miles a day. Which puts you at 1 million miles every 2 months. Waymo is being very conservative in their rollout process. If Uber or Tesla were in the same position we would have 1000s of cars on the road by now.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 01 2017, @02:41PM (1 child)
200 miles per day - in a city? That's a lot of driving. And, probably pointless driving. You do realize that a lot of city dwellers may not drive 200 miles in a month? A hundred miles in city traffic is a much longer drive than someone like me, who can decide that he wants to go to Dallas, or Tulsa, and just run down the interstate, or going north, hop on a primary highway for several miles, then get on the turnpike the rest of the way.
If they're running autonomous vehicles in Phoenix, I certainly HOPE there is some point to the running. Carry people to work, school, doctor's office, shopping, whatever, not just drive around for the sake of racking up miles.
(Score: 1) by galgon on Saturday December 02 2017, @04:12AM
NYC cabs run about 200 miles a day. Phoenix is a larger city and likely more miles per trip on average. If they were using these like an Uber they could easily do 200 miles a day. Unfortunately they are still trialing them with a small group of test families. Hopefully they open it up to the public soon.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Friday December 01 2017, @02:36PM
Miles Per Accident would be a useful statistic to publish.
The sheeple are going to also need some measure of battery capacity that makes more sense than killowat-hours. That "hours" part is going to confusicate people. Just like 'light-year' isn't a unit of time.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by drussell on Friday December 01 2017, @05:42AM (8 children)
I agree with Runaway, in that 4 million miles is nothing...
I've driven close to a million myself and I know people who drive for a living who have gone MUCH, MUCH farther....
I disagree with him, however, about that even approaching a meaningful number of miles. The thing to remember is that the vast majority of those miles that they have travelled so far have been under rather carefully controlled conditions (yes, I know they've tried to qualify them on various levels of tricky situations, etc.) and under test scenarios, areas, etc.
Once you start getting any real fraction of the billions and billions of miles travelled each year in a given area, we'll really begin to see some data. You cannot make any kind of grandiose claims or predictions based on such a tiny fraction of the actual miles travelled in any given area!
I want to see (video-wise, not first hand!! EGADS!) some autonomous cars duelling it out in a Canadian blizzard. That's bound to be absolutely HILARIOUS for at least the first little while. At least the cars should be smart enough to just pull over and give up for a while if they detect total mayhem, but it will be interesting, nonetheless. :)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Friday December 01 2017, @06:13AM (3 children)
It's not like human drivers are that great at navigating snow/sleet conditions. They skid and crash.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by opinionated_science on Friday December 01 2017, @11:03AM (2 children)
this!! An even if you have had training (which I have) the main rule is "don't go out if you don't need to".
The illusion of control is what most humans have, until physics provides a hard stop!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday December 01 2017, @06:37PM (1 child)
Because of snow?
Or because of self driving cars?
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday December 01 2017, @08:25PM
Because of sunlight. None of that shit in the basement.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 01 2017, @07:28AM (2 children)
Why would they be "dueling it out"? And, it is much safer in these type of conditions because roads are actually dry. On the highways, when it's -20C, it's generally much safer than when it is -5 or something like that.
If you want chaos, you go to middle-america when they have a blizzard and roads get wet and frozen. And of course because people, they don't slow down. If there is one thing, it's autonomous vehicles are NOT in not "in the hurry". And the rush, rush attitude of human drivers accounts for large fraction of crashes.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday December 01 2017, @02:40PM
There is that problem. But another problem with autonomous vehicles is that they don't get road rage.
Imagine how bad life would be if all cars drove calmly while passengers could relax and engage in other more useful, productive or merely entertaining activities.
Idea: what we need is a new Road Rage reality tv show!
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 01 2017, @02:48PM
Yup to that ^ with double exclamation marks!! Made a trip from the Yakima valley, to Miami, in an 18-wheeler. It was ice from George, Washington, almost all the way to Memphis. The only places that were scary were Kansas City, and then getting close to Memphis. All the rest of that northern portion were - interesting - and serious - but not entirely nerve wracking. The two cities were most definitely nerve wracking. Finally got into Memphis, and the snow and ice ended, then it was just a tiring drive in the rain the rest of the way to Miami.
Give me serious COLD, any day, over temperatures hovering around freezing. It's much safer to drive on.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday December 01 2017, @08:12PM
Forget blizzards.
I want to see the cars cover a thousand miles in Mumbai, Mexico City, or Kinshasa.
Cruising near the speed limit around Arizona isn't "driving".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 01 2017, @02:48PM
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