Also relevant, when it rains in Miami during the summer, it pours.
As in, zero visibility for 15-30 minutes, then it's past.
So if it can handle Miami tropical rain, it should be okay with all sorts of normal rain.
Out of curiosity, what's Waymo's current production sensor suite mix? I'd assume lidar and radar would also be very unhappy with the surrounding space suddenly being ~10%(?) liquid water droplets.
Far less than 10%. During a heavy downpour, by volume, about one part in a million is liquid. In a cubic meter of heavily rain, there are only a few tens of raindrops.
Yep, but what matters for radar/lidar is the projection. I mean what percentage of 1 _square_ meter (not cubic meter) is occupied by droplet projections. Or, in radial terms, what percentage of "Solid angle" is occupied by rain droplets.
Rain falls at 9m/s, so in a second you'd almost completely fill that space with 900 liters. For the immediate area around you, imagine an olympic pool of water falling roughly every second.
Not just visibility in the rain, but diminished or fully obstructed visibility due to ponding and full flooding. Then there are the physical navigational problems associated with that. They probably shouldn't be driving though a foot of sea water.
> So if it can handle Miami tropical rain, it should be okay with all sorts of normal rain.
I feel like a lot of "How well does it handle rain?" comes down to how the roads are built and maintained (Huge puddles, proper drainage, etc) rather than about the car itself, as the car you could test by blasting it with water from different directions and amounts.
There’s also the question of how other drivers handle the rain. And I have to imagine it’s nontrivial to, on a test range alone, permute the full range of different surfaces’ handling characteristics under different precipitation conditions.
I wonder whether, like many human drivers, Waymos might be wont to pull over and wait out the short-but-extreme Miami squalls.
I would expect service to be canceled while it is pouring down. Do we have reasons to believe that they have the ability to ride safely during heavy rain? I haven't been keeping up.
Where I come from that might be called a "shower". Heavy rain here is like fog. It's so thick you can only see a few meters, and the windscreen wipers can only give you a brief glimpse of what's ahead.
It happens rarely. When it does, more cautious drivers give up and pull over, even if they are on the freeway. That makes travelling at high speed down on freeway at high speed in those conditions near suicidal.
It only lasts a few minutes. I expect Waymo would handle like any human. Stop, or just creep forward.
Localization is primarily based on visual registration, i.e. matching the current surroundings to the closest data in its map. Lane markings are based on map data and what it's able to see in real-time.
If it's too dangerous for humans to drive (regardless of whether they do anyway, humans do all manner of things which are unacceptably dangerous) then I don't expect Waymo to offer service even if they believe they technically could have the Waymo driver [their software] continue to deliver service.
You moved the goalpost by introducing the "too dangerous for humans to arrive" qualifier. The person you're replying to never said that. They asked if it would refuse to drive in pouring rain. They never asked if it would refuse to drive in scenarios where it's too dangerous for humans to drive.
Interestingly is there a potential moral issue in the making here? What happens if/when self driving dependency is so prevalent that the majority of inhabitants in a city don't know how to drive. In addition add the fact that self driving cars don't have a steering wheel so even people who know how to take over driving can't actually take over.
What happens if there's an event that requires a mass evacuation such as a Category 5 hurricane and the major self driving car companies deem it too risky to drive in the conditions that precede the storm?
As in, zero visibility for 15-30 minutes, then it's past.
So if it can handle Miami tropical rain, it should be okay with all sorts of normal rain.
Out of curiosity, what's Waymo's current production sensor suite mix? I'd assume lidar and radar would also be very unhappy with the surrounding space suddenly being ~10%(?) liquid water droplets.