This headline implies this assistance is a new revelation when the only part that might be new is that it's now also being outsourced to the Philippines.
> “They provide guidance. They do not remotely drive the vehicles,” Peña told the Senate committee. “The Waymo vehicle is always in charge of the dynamic driving tasks, so that is just one additional input.”
This indicates a very misleading title. It sounds like they aren’t remote “operators” any more than I “operate” the tv station by deciding what channel to watch.
I was once in a waymo stopped at a red light. Prior to the light turning green I felt a split second where the car's brake had been released, anticipating the change and then accelerating immediately when the light changed.
Since this experience I've just assumed all waymos have some warehoused human drone pilot actually controlling it.
> I was once in a waymo stopped at a red light. Prior to the light turning green I felt a split second where the car's brake had been released, anticipating the change and then accelerating immediately when the light changed.
This seems like it would be fairly straightforward to program, if not for all lights, at least for a lot (e.g. say half) of lights.
Physics. Have you ever played a competitive/reaction based video game with high ping? It is very, very hard. And it’s a game, where there are many tricks to hide latency from you.
Cloud console shows pings between Google data centers in us-west and ones that are in proximity of Philippines around 160-200ms. Then you also have inherent lag of wireless connection itself. Then you have also connectivity from google’s data center to Philippines.
If you want remote driving in uncontrolled environment, you reasonably can expect only the same city/county operators.
I’m obviously uninformed, but I’d expect the remote operators job (from another country) to be like “car is safe to proceed, based on that picture that I see” or, in the worst case scenario, put some waypoints in the ui and let car drive on its own.
There are many other possibilities such as the system having learned the timings or another vehicle in the fleet observing the lights turn red at the other part of the junction.
The least likely possibility is a person controlling the vehicle directly over a variable latency connection that may fail completely at any time.
Behind all the new smart city tech I encountered here in Shenzhen and Shanghai are actually human operators (drones, cars, vending machines). You can find the job ads online.
I’m sure there are, but direct remote control of throttle, brakes etc in vehicles is _hopefully_ not part of that.
I could see certain situations where it could be authorised when a vehicle is stranded and unable to operate autonomously at all due to an error, but it would have to be extremely slow speed with a full-stop failsale on connection drop or high-latency detection.
That said I bet there are some who do not consider the safety implications and “move fast and break people”
For now that's true, because it's early days and very much a hybrid system. In a few years having human brains in the loop will be like adding more and more orangutans around the Operating Room table.
I think everyone knew this and is comforted by it. I’d be concerned if there weren’t humans ready to guide or take over. The company we should all be concerned about is Tesla, and their irresponsible way of falsely advertising full self driving capabilities. Who knows what those robotaxis are capable of.
Which is certainly better than just having a human remote drive.
But it’s still not the impression they’ve been giving. It’s been an impression of full automation (ignoring getting stuck) and if it’s not navigating on its own that’s disingenuous.
People are somewhat surprised about this work being farmed out to the Philippines as opposed to being done by Americans. I'm pretty sure you don't need me to explain this, though.
They effectively are answering questions like "is this road closed", or "is the object in front of me a solid object or a weird shadow".
These are not the sort of questions that US driver's license is really related to, it's not things like "can I legally turn right on red at this intersection".
Do we require a driver's license to solve Google reCapture questions like "what squares have a bike in them"? Because the waymo stuff is closer to image classification than driving.
I think if you took a buddy with you to the drivers license test in America and asked your buddy these questions during the test. You and your buddy are both failing. Unless test was in India over tea and not in a car.
I guess you're saying that because a waymo car can't walk into the DMV and get a license, it shouldn't be on the road? (which of course it can't, you have to have a legal human identity to get a normal driver's license, and we don't let cars have humanity currently)
Driver's licenses are legal constructs. The DMV certifies self-driving cars as able to drive on the road differently, and sure, those two different processes are different.
I really don't get the point you're trying to make here.
If they have a driver’s license from the Philippines, then it should be enough. Just like foreign tourists can rent and drive cars in the US without needing a US state driver’s license.
Yes. Something you should intuit, and is eaisly confirmed with a quick search. It is licensed to drive and the conditions underwhich it may do so are clearly stipulated. If it didnt require a license elon would have his deathtraps littering roadsides with mangled flesh and steel everywhere. Perhaps ask yourself why you asked such a misguided question and consider what you can do different in your cognitive patternd to avoid it in the future.
You've imagined a scenario around remote drivers having access to the internal microphones.
Waymo tells you explicitly that all the microphones inside the car are off unless you press the button to call rider support yourself.
If you'd ever ridden in waymo, perhaps you'd recall them telling you that the first time you rode one.
> if you can't think of more perhaps you should keep your comments out of the discussion, because at present you've contributed nothing but ignorance.
You really shouldn't end your comment with that if you're not going to read up on whether a hypothetical scenario you've imagined up is ignorant or not.
have you read terms and conditions? They can access video under near any circumstance, like wanting to check the general cleanliness of the car etc. audio is a bit different, or so they say, but when it comes to companies like this can we really trust what they say? They have an awful habit of lying an awful lot when it comes to data and privacy. Tesla for example recently got in trouble for not really doing as they should regarding sensors, if you recall. Waymo is several leagues above tesla in terms of general professionalism, however, I don't know if they professional enough to not do things they shouldn't, or under-employ folks in charge of implementing barriers to abuse etc.
Since this experience I've just assumed all waymos have some warehoused human drone pilot actually controlling it.
This seems like it would be fairly straightforward to program, if not for all lights, at least for a lot (e.g. say half) of lights.
Cloud console shows pings between Google data centers in us-west and ones that are in proximity of Philippines around 160-200ms. Then you also have inherent lag of wireless connection itself. Then you have also connectivity from google’s data center to Philippines.
If you want remote driving in uncontrolled environment, you reasonably can expect only the same city/county operators.
I’m obviously uninformed, but I’d expect the remote operators job (from another country) to be like “car is safe to proceed, based on that picture that I see” or, in the worst case scenario, put some waypoints in the ui and let car drive on its own.
The least likely possibility is a person controlling the vehicle directly over a variable latency connection that may fail completely at any time.
I could see certain situations where it could be authorised when a vehicle is stranded and unable to operate autonomously at all due to an error, but it would have to be extremely slow speed with a full-stop failsale on connection drop or high-latency detection.
That said I bet there are some who do not consider the safety implications and “move fast and break people”
* Unless it gets super stuck, then a human drives out and gets into the physical driver seat and takes over
But it’s still not the impression they’ve been giving. It’s been an impression of full automation (ignoring getting stuck) and if it’s not navigating on its own that’s disingenuous.
So when the car's systems prevent it from taking a specific action, they can override it for a single instance.
They effectively are answering questions like "is this road closed", or "is the object in front of me a solid object or a weird shadow".
These are not the sort of questions that US driver's license is really related to, it's not things like "can I legally turn right on red at this intersection".
Do we require a driver's license to solve Google reCapture questions like "what squares have a bike in them"? Because the waymo stuff is closer to image classification than driving.
Driver's licenses are legal constructs. The DMV certifies self-driving cars as able to drive on the road differently, and sure, those two different processes are different.
I really don't get the point you're trying to make here.
Waymo tells you explicitly that all the microphones inside the car are off unless you press the button to call rider support yourself.
If you'd ever ridden in waymo, perhaps you'd recall them telling you that the first time you rode one.
> if you can't think of more perhaps you should keep your comments out of the discussion, because at present you've contributed nothing but ignorance.
You really shouldn't end your comment with that if you're not going to read up on whether a hypothetical scenario you've imagined up is ignorant or not.