They ran out of free information on the internet. They can't steal it just like that anymore because the providers are now aware of the value they could provide and could sue the now trillion dollars companies for stealing the data.
They didn't bother when it was a non-profit sponsored by Elon Musk.
I'm far from neuroscience, but humans don't need to operate at 20Hz to drive a car. And human reaction latency (event to measurable action) is often over 1s (under 1Hz).
The reaction latency you’re referring to for humans includes perception, planning, and actuation, I’d separate that from the concerns of the hardware, which are mostly about actuation frequency.
From what I understand about AV (as a non-expert!), all three of those steps happen at different clock rates, ie you have a planner that’s updating continuously with observations from sensors at one rate, that planner then issues actions that get picked up by the actuators at another rate.
In that sense 20hz should really be compared to human reflexes without perception and planning; in scenarios where one is anticipating an action, response time can be as low as 150ms. in that context, I think 50ms/20hz is plenty reasonable for an automated driver.
In circumstances where one is maintaining grip or muscle tension (e.g. steering a car) I believe human response time can be more like 50ms. Which perhaps unsurprisingly lines up with the 20hz figure pretty close to exactly (we built cars controls so that they're controllable by human reflexes).
Though you can't convert between hz and latency, all 20hz tells us is that it adjusts 20 times a second, not how long it takes from sensor input to be fed into a particular choice of adjustment, there could be (and actually almost certainly are) multiple adjustments in flight simultaneously with the adjustment actually being applied being calculated from old data (both in humans and automated substitutes).
Average human reaction time is about 250 ms, or 4Hz. That's still plenty fast for an attentive driver at reasonable speeds. More important, it's consistent when not distracted. Any LLM with latency would be like a driver constantly checking their phone.
The typical perception-to-reaction latency of an alert driver to a hazard is about 1-2 seconds. 250 ms when you're waiting for an event and know how to respond. For example, like a batter in baseball waiting to swing.
> but humans don't need to operate at 20Hz to drive a ca
This is not a helpful statement unless you can claim what speed human sensors do work at. And it's going to be faster than the latency of $(sensor + server round trip) Hertz, not getting into LLM processing time.
In humans, it's about 200–250 ms for a visual cue where you already know how to respond and you're ready, but you don't know exactly when it'll happen. It can be a fair bit longer if you need to identify what you see and choose how to respond. Typical perception to reaction time estimates for drivers when there's an unexpected hazard on the road are 1-2 seconds.
do you know what it is for non visual cue? like the gust of wind or unexpected jerk of the wheel from a road feature? both of those seem like more of a speed of proprioception which seems faster than visual and have way more to do with general "car control" in normal driving where the path is planned.
I would imagine it’s much less than this with muscle memory. Driving is a very habitual process. The human body is certainly able to “short circuit” its thinking and respond faster.
I mean, consider competitive video games. Humans who play a lot and pay attention respond to stimuli much faster than 250ms.
This is well studied by researchers, and 1-2s is the typical reaction time for real drivers with real muscle memory when reacting to an unexpected hazard on the road.
There are a lot of reasons people could sometimes react faster (for example, if they anticipate the hazard, or if they're just above average in reaction speed), but one to two seconds is the reaction speed we find most of the time.
The fastest human reactions aren't to unexpected road hazards. We have a much faster reaction speed in tests where you just have to click the mouse each time the screen flashes. Our reactions are fastest when you know in advance the event is about to happen. But this isn't relevant for road safety.
Humans have multiple layers of processing such inputs and your subconscious reacts a lot faster than your conscious train of thought in case something happens (and then you have to 'catch up'). For the same reason that you don't consciously think about what you do when you are walking or how to stop yourself from falling when you stumble. That's all out of the top level and pushed further down to stack, sometimes even multiple levels.
reaction latency doesn't cover everything. the round trip from trigger to action is a few hundred ms at best, yes, but to enable that we are processing inputs at ~30hz minimum and integrating at ~5hz. you would total your car pretty quickly if you couldn't constantly adjust
actually, human latency is quite slow and distracted drivers often have 1sec+ latency.
it works because 99% of the time you don't need fast latency because you can accurately predict things.
that's why a standard recommendation is to drive 2+ seconds (time not distance) behind the car in front of you. also why experienced drivers instinctively move their hands/feet into position during tricky moments when they need to cut the latency.
fun exercise, try taking your foot off the gas and hitting the break - slower than you think!!
In (European) Portuguese some people (I've seen this more in older people) use feminine for hamburgers (like in Spanish, afaik), but most people use masculine. I guess it would make sense to be feminine because it's a sandwich, and sandwich is feminine.
In Russian it's quite common too. Car can be feminine (машина), masculine (авто/автомобиль), and neuter (транспортное средство).
And different car brands usually have their own gender too: for example Mercedes is usually masculine even though named after founder's daughter, and Honda is isually feminine.
The brand gender is really interesting. We will usually use the gender of the type of vehicle. So for saying "My Honda" we will use masculine if it's a car (O meu [carro] Honda), but feminine if it's a van (A minha [carrinha] Honda).
Same! I decided to reinstall Windows and MBR to GPT conversion (surprisingly!) wiped the whole disk. 10 years of family photos gone. Good thing we had all important ones printed.
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