On self-driving, Waymo is playing chess while Tesla plays checkers
On self-driving, Waymo is playing chess while Tesla plays checkers
We'll know Tesla is serious about robotaxis when it starts hiring remote operators.
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Chess is a very complex rules game, while Checkers is quite simple. Waymo has a complex approach to self driving:
- Expensive suite of sensors
- High resolution maps of operating areas
- Remote operators standing by
While Teslas approach is simple:
- Capture a bazillion miles of camera footage, feed into AI, profit?
- Unpaid volunteers teach the AI safe driving
- Car has only a basic map for routing, the rest is inferred in real time from cameras
Waymo’s successful approach scales linearly. They have to high-res map every city they want to operate in, and they can gradually bring down the cost of the sensors. They will require fewer remote operator interactions over time.
Teslas success is more difficult, but it scales exponentially. They already produce vehicles at scale and full control over all the equipment on board. The existing fleet would be able to participate as well. If they succeed, they may want to offer buy-backs for customers who didnt buy FSD - the cars would be worth more to Tesla than the owner.
In both checkers and chess, the player gains super powers for reaching the other side of the board. Time will tell who reaches the other side of the board first. They are playing different games on the same board. Okay that’s fair.
Tesla will hit walls with rain and snow. Cameras will fail before other sensors in those conditions.
Radar and Lidar also get a lot of noise from heavy rain or snow. Fog can be just as bad. Some conditions just aren’t safe to drive in, regardless of who’s driving. I don’t think either of them are trying to design a system for those conditions.
On a personal note, I have no interest in getting a ride in a self driving car. I do have an interest in an empty car that can drive itself. Drop myself off at the airport, valet parking downtown, easier to share one car per household, river shuttling, through hike shuttling - I would use it a lot. I understand the more profitable goal is taxi services, but I don’t want that. So in my narrow use case, I hope Tesla succeeds since that approach can be used on personal vehicles anywhere while Waymo is strictly city taxis, which I don’t use.
The USS they took out of Teslas were at least a second measurement system.
Wavelengths with decent water transmitability exist.
Sound and light don’t propagate well through changes in media. The reason rainbows exist is because light does not travel in a straight line through drops of water, across the full spectrum. Radar is used to sense how hard it’s raining so it obviously gets returns from rain (and through it). But it will depend on the processing they do from the sensors. But just so we’re clear, cameras also work in the rain and snow. I don’t think one is clearly better than others.