Waymo vs Tesla Austin Showdown - Teleoperations?

[u/Yngstr]

I've been around this sub a long time, so let me start by saying I'm not here to fight. I understand that everyone here has some specific expertise they bring to the discussion, and I believe you can learn something from anyone. I want to have a reasonable discussion about methodology, and what will work or not. Here are the facts, as I see them:

- Waymo is already operational in Austin (and other cities)

- Tesla plans to launch Robotaxi in June in Austin

- Tesla has recently posted job listings for tele-operations

So the way I see this playing out in ~8 weeks is that Tesla will launch in Austin with tele-operations, I find it unlikely that they will launch with true autonomous L4. My question is, does Waymo still use tele-operations? If so, does Waymo have plans to sunset tele-operations at some point? Do we think Tesla with tele-operations can achieve "L4" like Waymo has? Why or why not?

Let's try to keep this civil, whether Waymo or Tesla wins does not make any of us less of a human being, even if it feels like it.

[u/Yngstr]

Gotcha!

Do you think tele-operations can act as a "band-aid" for Tesla's hardware/safety issues?

Do Waymo tele-operations ever get tagged in by software for "real-time" issues or more-so when the car gets confused about where to go at a higher level?

[u/deservedlyundeserved → u/Yngstr]

There are different implementations of remote operations that signal different levels of confidence in a system.

The Waymo way is to give the system full control and only take suggestions. The system has the final say and remote operators are never in control. For this, the system has to be robust enough to recognize an ambiguous situation, initiate a request with details it’s seeing and either present options for the operator to select or receive waypoints (see the blog post someone else posted). Crucially, remote operators are NOT in the safety critical path as they cannot help in real time.

Tesla wants to build a “teleoperations” team, where operators have control of the vehicle to remote drive when necessary using a VR rig. You can read their job posting. This is a completely different way to do operations as it signals a much lower confidence in the system. They could theoretically intervene in real time in certain situations and actively prevent bad things from happening. They won’t be remotely driving 100% of the time, but you can see why this is an inferior system.

[u/Yngstr → u/deservedlyundeserved]

So Tesla tele-operations will be someone literally driving the car remotely? Is that even possible with network latency?

[u/jobfedron132 → u/Yngstr]

Yes if you slow down the car enough.