> Running in small areas shows that they can drive in small mapped out areas under specific conditions.
That is fully autonomous driving. It's just classified as Level 4. Geofences and operating conditions can be extended to provide a real, useful taxi service to a lot of people.
They’re operating Taxi services in San Francisco. A city that doesn’t experience any real-world weather, with an area of like 50 square miles where speeds generally never exceed 25MPH. They also have humans watching cameras that take over when the self driving breaks down.
It’s a completely different problem space, like claiming someone built a train and therefore they can easily build self driving cars since they are both “driverless”.
I believe he is talking about an autonomy-enabled region, which is full of autonomous cars. It includes things such as modifying even the road infrastructure.
If they're referring to the typical classification of autonomous vehicles, Level 5 is complete autonomy. Level 3 refers to human intervention required for everything but highway driving in good conditions. Of course, they may be referring to the third generation of vehicles made by Uber, which is a relatively useless term as each manufacturer will require a different number of generations before reaching full autonomy. Not really sure as it's entirely possible this is both third generation and level 3 autonomy.
> On suitable freeway sections and where there is high traffic density, DRIVE PILOT can offer to take over the dynamic driving task, up to the speed of 40 mph.
> Wait, are they actually test driving self-driving cars like the HN title says? The article seems to indicate they are manually driving the cars to get the mapping.
My read is that they're doing both, but the latter will be starting immediately while the former is implied to come after they've amassed a certain amount of both mapping and training data.
Citation needed. So far, they have mostly driven into static obstacles on highways, the only environment where the vendors even allow to use their "self-driving" system because of the overwhelmingly favorable conditions.
The posts says, “ Our vehicles will be manually operated by autonomous specialists at all times, to help us scale and advance our technology in support of our mission to make roads safer.”
So this really is just mapping/training, not testing?
> Here's Steve, who joined us for a special drive on a carefully programmed route to experience being behind the wheel in a whole new way. We organized this test as a technical experiment, but we think it's also a promising look at what autonomous technology may one day deliver if rigorous technology and safety standards can be met.
George is kind of arrogant and brash... but even he says "I don't know anything about level 4". Everyone thinks level 3 and 4 are the same thing, but now that I've heard him dismiss level 4, that actually gives me more confidence in his startup.
Those are two completely different things!!!
Google has been working on self-driving cars since 2009, and the DARPA challenges were around 2005-2007. We're not even at level 3. Level 4 might not come for decades after that.
Wait, are they actually test driving self-driving cars like the HN title says? The article seems to indicate they are manually driving the cars to get the mapping.
Either way, it will be super interesting to see how self-driving cars fare in Manhattan. I would expect that there would need to be tweaks to the aggressiveness of the AI to drive there compared to somewhere like Phoenix.
I'm guessing that's Cruise Automation. They talked about driverless cars in specific neighborhoods, but I haven't anything formally happening on that front. So they're either still using drivers or it's geofenced.
Toyota partnered with Pony.ai and have a fleet of level 4 taxis operating in all major cities(eg: Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen) in China. Honda has level 3 self driving cars on the market in Japan that you can buy today. Kia is working on a level 3 car and also announced level 4 taxi plans. Hyundai also has plans to add level 3 functionality to their cars.
That is fully autonomous driving. It's just classified as Level 4. Geofences and operating conditions can be extended to provide a real, useful taxi service to a lot of people.
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