this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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Waymo cars seem to operate much more sensibly than Cruise ones from what I've watched and read... although IMO that is mainly down to the car calling it quits much sooner and asking for an operator to take control, and driving in a different environment in general.
Cruise on the other hand seems to just carry on anyway, unless its lidar is blocked 😳
Yeah, I mean, some food for thought here is that Waymo started out as a research project and has been doing this since 2009 and they're ultra conservative with their behaviors. Before starting in 2009, the beginnings of the team were recruited from DARPA Grand Challenge participants. And even they have major mishaps.
Cruise, on the other hand, started out trying to sell retrofit hardware right away. Then tried convincing people they could do city driving right away. Now GM has revenue targets for them, like any adult business would, and they have no hope of ever accomplishing them. So, they're back to their old tricks, cutting down the number of miles driven for training models, rushing vehicles into service with no monitoring operators in them, deceiving investors and regulators about remote operations.
One is a slow, methodical money furnace that attempts to solve the larger problem set. The other is a fast moving money furnace that tries to get people to pay them for half measures.
Damn, Waymo has been around for that long? TIL
Waymo's progress is probably a good indicator as to how far along we are with self driving cars IMO. Given that Waymo has their cars pretty thoroughly trained on set routes (well, even us humans need to learn or try various routes before we're fully confident on them sometimes), Cruise cheaping out on the whole training process is only going to accelerate their demise... especially when it's at the expense of pedestrians' safety
If you really want your mind, blown the first autonomous vehicle to drive coast to coast in the US happened in 1989. A vehicle from Carnegie millen University called NavLab. It used lidar, cameras, radar, and ultrasonics. Literally the same stuff we're using today.