Self-Driving Waymo Cab Smashes Into Delivery Robot
Self-Driving Waymo Cab Smashes Into Delivery Robot
A video appears to show the future of transportation: a Waymo robotaxi smashing into a Serve Robotics delivery robot.
The laws of robotics:
- A robot shall never harm a human, or through inaction allow a human to come to harm.
- Fuck other robots though. Fuck them right up.
As it turns out, the impact wasn't too severe. The Waymo cab, to its credit, hit the brakes immediately and avoided knocking the poor little thing over. And moments later, while the robotaxi is still in a daze, the Serve robot drives away like nothing happened.
Smash seems to be overselling it.
It appears the video may have been sped up in the part just before the impact. I would like to see the unedited clip, I bet it was way less severe than it looked.
Sounds like a good time to use the word "bump"
Maybe even "boop".
The word "slam" has been reserved for headlines of someone giving minor criticism, can't use that unfortunately.
Notice the bias they even throw in to try to humanize the delivery robot. "Still in a daze" personifying it. No mention of who manufactured the robot who crossed a road with a do not walk sign, and then stopped in the road at the end for no reason
There should be an open communication standard that all robots use to communicate with each other.
And it will only be used for good and nothing nefarious.
There should be an open communication standard that all robots use to communicate with each other.
Yes!
And it will only be used for good and nothing nefarious.
Oh no
Aside from the obvious I, Robot movie allusion, this idea doesn't really work in the real world because robots have to be able to detect the presence and anticipate the actions of non-robots anyway. Unless you're willing to ban all the actual people from the street, which is unreasonable, robot-to-robot communication doesn't actually help you.
Robots can look different to people, if they know where each other are then they csn prioritise a collision with a robot over a human etc.
Little robot crossed against the signal, and couldn't navigate the curb, big robot cali rolled the right turn and didn't yield to the pedestrian walk way. What a shit show. Glad it wasn't someone in a wheel chair.
So what we're saying is, this is it, folks. We've finally reached robot parity with exactly how humans would behave in the same situation.
and didn't yield to the pedestrian walk way.
The Waymo is guilty.
The scene was clearly visible and it hit the brake much too late at that speed.
video of it on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hazFkED40KI if you don't want to go to reddit through the linked page
Hey, it actually stopped without plowing on very far at all. That's better than what I expected to happen.
You call that a smash? Stop sensationalising, come now.
A car gently tapped a thing during a turn and came to a stop.
Begun, the robot wars have.
The future is now!
I see nobody talking about this, but aren't the Waymo(s) trained on data which most likely did not include these robots yet?
It seems like this is just something that'll probably happen a lot whenever something new is introduced on the roads.
I don't know about the equipment of Waymo cars, but I would be surprised if they didn't have LIDARs or some other form of distance based environment detection.
And that should be sufficient to implement basic obstacle detection. You don't need to use machine learning if you can use sensors telling you that "something is too close".
The article title is misleading as usual.
The car collided after hitting the brakes, seems there wasn't any real damage. It seems the system is designed to only lessen the impact when it detects the obstacle as non-human. If it would have recognized the robot as human, it would have probably acted differently.
Better to hit the object and lessen the impact than to fully brake/avoid and risk worse.
Well, they should try to avoid any object in the road to be honest. Imagine a new toy comes out that a child is on. Sorry we killed that child l, we didn't train it on that new toy.
Its just an unacceptable answer to be honest.
That is also very true.
It's not a Tesla so I'm sure they are investigating the cause.
The Waymo did exactly what it was supposed to do. The robot ran a red light (really a don't walk through crosswalk) and unexpectedly stopped around a corner before exiting the road as it would normally do. The Waymo spotted it and breaked and got down to about 4 mph. Then the robot drove away and nothing was really damaged so no one is talking about it. All of that information was in the article, but the the titile is ragebait to point anger at self driving cars, it's easy to tell because we don't even know the name of the delivery robot or what company it was working for...
"Delivery robot causes car accident." would be a more accurate title.
But to your point, if a child is playing in the road on a cross walk around a corner when it is saying don't cross, yes it would be a problem. (But in the U.S. the insurance company of the human driver would claim no fault in killing that child and the parent would be charged for damages and possibly worse for letting their kid play in traffic) <- not what I like, but that's what happens
Expect reCaptcha to ask you to identify food delivery robots soon.
Wouldn't be surprised tbh.
but aren't the Waymo(s) trained on data which most likely did not include these robots yet?
You can say that about nearly 100% of humans as well.
So I'm finding it hard to find a release date for humans, but I'm fairly sure they predated the invention of self-driving cars.
For example I seem to remember being alive in the 1990s
Inattentional blindness is a bitch.
We'll win the robot wars by pitting them against each other.
I hate seeing this kind of bot on bot crime
Where were you during the robot wars of 2025?
This new season of Robot Wars / Battle Bots is starting strong
The shadow wars
That was personal, there's definitely some beef between them.
Every robot should have some kind of electronic blinker to let others know they're robots. That way, we can avoid a bunch of bumps and crashes.
Nice try, skynet..
We could always consider reaching out to Harrison Ford for a classic bot chase.
We can discuss now who had the right of way.
But can we?
Do robots suddenly have rights?
