Comment by belter
Comment by belter 4 hours ago
Waymo is not solving driving, it is closer to a sophisticated Disney Parkland ride. It is running inside a tightly constrained Operational Design Domain:
- Geofenced areas
- HD pre-mapped roads
- Curated infrastructure
- Remote ops fallback
This is not general autonomy, it is highend automation inside a controlled distribution. The system degrades exactly where humans do not: construction, unmapped lane shifts, police manually directing traffic, chaotic mixed behavior.
A cop overriding a light is not an “edge case”, it is a semantic and social reasoning problem that current perception stacks still do not robustly solve. It works because the world is pre modeled, not because the car understands driving.
Scaling that beyond a few mapped US suburbs into Europe is a totally different problem. Dont get fooled by Wall Street stock pumping.
Roads are not solving transportation, they are closer to a sophisticated trace track. Roads are a constrained Operational Design Domain:
- Geofenced areas
- pre-build structures
- Curated infrastructure
- fallback to gravel in times of the inevitable event of maintenance.
This is not general transportation, it is a highend infrastructure inside a controlled environment. The system degrades exactly where humans/horses do not: River crossings, Creeks, steep hillsides, marshes, beaches.
A river flooding a road is not and "edge case", it a usual occurrence, and a problem that roads do robustly solve. It works due to extensive maintenance, not because the asphalt can actually deal with water.
Scaling that beyond a few mapped US suburbs into Europe is a totally different problem. Dont get fooled by Wall Street stock pumping.