Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 443 posts

Re: Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”

#51

Post by jcims »

gboudrias wrote: post #4

I'm sure he's right, but then why is everyone joining the race now? Wouldn't it be way less expensive to wait until at least some of the problems are solved? Also, it sure seems like level 5 autonomous driving is just a few steps short of general AI, which is still lightyears away.

It seems like you could have a hybrid where the vehicle operates at level 5 with augmented infrastructure and lower levels for everything else. Add a 10-20% upcharge to every resurfacing/construction contract to embed sensors and whatnot and over the course of the next 20 years you get coverage for 90% of the miles that people travel on a daily basis.

Re: Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”

#53

Post by l5870uoo9y »

limeblack wrote: post #5

One thing I would love someone to explain is how can people assume cars are going to be automated soon when both planes and trains haven't been automated for various reasons. They are different issues I have gathered but essentially shouldn't trains be dead simple but to this day at least the trains(not metras though) often have someone to stop the train in case of emergencies. Planes are more complex but have lower…

The Copenhagen Metro[1] have been running driverless for a decade. It was the first metro in Copenhagen. Had there been a legacy system to replace I doubt it would have been made driverless. It is properly due to the general "conservatism" (vested interests, old ways of doing it) in established systems. It takes a certain power to disrupt this.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Metro

Re: Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”

#54

Post by SEJeff »

limeblack wrote: post #5

One thing I would love someone to explain is how can people assume cars are going to be automated soon when both planes and trains haven't been automated for various reasons. They are different issues I have gathered but essentially shouldn't trains be dead simple but to this day at least the trains(not metras though) often have someone to stop the train in case of emergencies. Planes are more complex but have lower…

Planes are mostly automated. The pilots are involved for takeoff and landing or emergencies, but little else. All modern Airbus or Boeing planes are mostly flown with autopilot. The human component is still involved primarily for the "what if it breaks" case where the software isn't there today. A computer would likely have never considered putting a plane into the Hudson river, but that pilot saved a lot of people by doing it.

Actual aircraft can be fully automated for landing at least. In the US Army, I flew the Shadow 200 TUAV and it had a thing called the T.A.L.S. (Tactical Automated Landing System)[1] which does exactly what you'd assume it does by the acronymn. It is a monopulse radar tracking system on the ground with a transponder on the plane. You fly the UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) into a small area at one end of the runway and click the "Land AV" button (A.V. == Aerial Vehicle) and the landing is 100% hands off. You have the option to cancel the landing if wind or the parameters are off down to 10ft, but below that it is land or crash trying!

For trains, the safest ones are automated, but Unions (in the US at least) prevent most of the autonomous technology from being deployed. Where I live, in Chicago, we had a train conductor fall asleep and the train went up the escalator and crashed into the turnstiles at terminal 2 of Ohare[2]. A computer would have prevented this from happening as a computer would neither have been speeding or sleeping. In that incident, the automated breaking systems had never been tested and in fact were configured / setup wrong, so they both failed. This has been rectified since and additional barriers have been constructed. That being said, there are lots of fully automated trains[3], you just might be unaware of them.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAI_RQ-7_Shadow#Design

    [2] http://www.chicagotribune.com/g00/news/ct-ohare-blue-line-crash-ntsb-report-met-20150326-story.html?i10c.referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

    [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems#Grade_of_Automation_4_Systems

Re: Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”

#55

Post by trekky1700 »

limeblack wrote: post #5

One thing I would love someone to explain is how can people assume cars are going to be automated soon when both planes and trains haven't been automated for various reasons. They are different issues I have gathered but essentially shouldn't trains be dead simple but to this day at least the trains(not metras though) often have someone to stop the train in case of emergencies. Planes are more complex but have lower…

From what a pilot told me, I believe the A320 he flies can take off, fly, and land totally on its own. I'm sure the same is true for other planes.

Also, if I recall correctly, he said in certain conditions it's against regulations for a pilot to be manually controlling the aircraft, such as landings in high winds.

Re: Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”

#57

Post by dperfect »

I've been saying this for a while. The problem is that people are mostly familiar with the rate of overcoming traditional technical challenges (e.g., making your current computer/phone more compact, improving graphics quality, making cameras and screens with more pixels, etc.). What people don't realize is that full autonomous driving will require more than just faster/smaller/cheaper technical innovation - it will require the refinement of innovations that probably haven't even been invented/researched yet.

I can't help but think about speech recognition 20 years ago. Many of the hot software packages claimed something like 96% accuracy, and that sounded great on paper. People thought intelligent voice-computer interfaces were just around the corner, yet here we are in 2017, and Siri/Alexa/Cortana are barely becoming usable (but still frustratingly lacking in many situations).

Re: Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”

#58

Post by SEJeff »

adrianN wrote: post #13
limeblack wrote: post #5

One thing I would love someone to explain is how can people assume cars are going to be automated soon when both planes and trains haven't been automated for various reasons. They are different issues I have gathered but essentially shouldn't trains be dead simple but to this day at least the trains(not metras though) often have someone to stop the train in case of emergencies. Planes are more complex but have lower…

There are no good technical reasons why trains are not automated more often. The technology is there, many trains do in fact run autonomously. It's just unpopular for long distance trains because current systems don't do obstacle detection and its hard to secure long distance tracks against obstacles. But for high speed trains at least there is no point in trying to visually recognize obstacles: if you see an obstacl…

Level 4 automation trains do in fact do obstacle detection and are capable of unattended operation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_...

Re: Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”

#59

Post by brianwawok »

_m8fo wrote: post #14

Maybe I'm ignorant (very likely) but I've never understood the difference between full autonomous driving and a fully intelligent AI. If a car can drive in any environment and react to any circumstances surely said AI could also do anything else, no? EDIT: Thanks for the responses everyone. Though, to clarify, when I think of "full autonomous" driving, I'm thinking of a car that can go from A to B regardless of the c…

Can you imagine writing a computer program than can drive a car in a video game, but not provide relationship advice to two freshly married people, or think of a fair and just and enforceable law to reduce discrimination at the workplace?

Driving is quite a bit short of "same intelligence as humans"

Re: Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”

#60

Post by FieryTransition »

limeblack wrote: post #5

One thing I would love someone to explain is how can people assume cars are going to be automated soon when both planes and trains haven't been automated for various reasons. They are different issues I have gathered but essentially shouldn't trains be dead simple but to this day at least the trains(not metras though) often have someone to stop the train in case of emergencies. Planes are more complex but have lower…

We have automated trains in Denmark in Copenhagen which are widely used everyday by the public, so it's not like it doesn't exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Metro
Post reply on HN