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

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

#71
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…

Not fully intelligent. More like animal intelligence, and a subset of that. No off-roading (which animals have no problem with).

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

#72
post #12

It speaks to the trends of the day that an article which says something patently obvious to people in the tech field is considered news. This reality seems like it may pose a problem though, as some people's business models and valuations depend on this article being wrong. The thing is, we don't need full level 5 to get useful stuff out of this line of tech development. But in terms of the futurist vision of driverl…

>in terms of the futurist vision of driverless cars everywhere, fleets of cars replacing private ownership, etc -- hard to see that happening.

Please tell this to city governors who are so keen at throwing money to stupid start-ups peddling this nonsense at the expensive of other things, like proven public transport, for example.

Stuff like this being "patently obvious" to you should be an impetus to get the word out, because those for whom is isn't are the ones making dangerously imprudent policy decisions.

Again, not to invalidate the use of level 4 automation and such, but ya'll need to crush this fantasy of level 5 in 2 years, for all our sakes.

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

#73

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…

Subway trains in my city (Vancouver) are autonomous

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

#75

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 r…

You've hit the nail on the head - audio recognition is quite poor after (a lot of) concerted effort over decades. Driving a car safely is significantly more difficult (and dangerous).

That being said, Toyota's (and Subaru's) approach is the smart way forward - add sensors and capabilities that augment the human, but leave the human always responsible and in control. In order for a crash to happen, the human AND the machine BOTH have to miss it.

Once the machine is good enough (and we figure out what "good enough" means), then it can take over driving. But not before.

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

#76
SDC's could be very disruptive to the the traditional automotive business model of selling a personal car to each adult who needs transport. Autonomous hire cars mean cheaper transport for users and and potentially a much smaller market for new cars. While we have traditional manufacturers on both sides of the fence, I'm more inclined to believe companies like Ford who are running towards an autonomous future despite the effect it will have on the way they do business.

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

#77
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…

As others have said, the scope of 'Anything that can happen on a road', while large, is a lot smaller than 'Anything that can happen or be imagined to happen'. Moreover, if a pilot AI finds itself in a situation it can't deal with, the failsafe of "hazards on, slow the car and pull over" is nearly always available. There's not really an equivalent for a general AI.

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

#78
post #45

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…

If we had autonomous planes it wouldn't significantly reduce cost or increase usage. But there is a lot of investment in autonomous drones. Planes also have a very high safety bar to begin with, which cars do not. Same thing about trains, there's very little value in doing so, and resistance in the form of unions in some locations. Some trains are fully automated though, here's an article with some more info: https:/…

It's important to point out that the WayMo project in Phoenix is only barely getting started, only serves limited areas, at limited times, and presumably in limited weather conditions; and most importantly that there's still a human driver in the vehicle at all times. A full-scale metro-wide service would need to operate at all hours, in most any weather, and without a human driver. That's not happening within four years.

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

#79
post #45

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…

If we had autonomous planes it wouldn't significantly reduce cost or increase usage. But there is a lot of investment in autonomous drones. Planes also have a very high safety bar to begin with, which cars do not. Same thing about trains, there's very little value in doing so, and resistance in the form of unions in some locations. Some trains are fully automated though, here's an article with some more info: https:/…

With software, it's always easy to make something appear to work. All the corner cases make something take 10-100x longer than the functional prototype.

This became painfully obvious with the article floating around where a car misread a stop sign with a small amount of marking as a 45MPH speed limit sign. It's pretty clear that if a car is mistaking a red sign for a white sign, we have a very long time to go before the car can safely drive itself without a human observer to intervene when needed.

When it comes to automated driving, we need to keep our optimism in check and know that it can take decades before we have safe robotic taxis. They may become legal in countries with lower bars for safety before they are legal in the US.

The big problem, I think, will be when the drunks get into accidents because they will turn on autonomous driving, and don't get pulled over. Instead, they won't be sober enough to observe and intervene when the car screws up.

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

#80

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…

One point would be that both planes and trains are professionally operated already. That means three of the biggest incentives to automate are missing.

First, they have few human-error crashes; they're both significantly safer than automobiles, so unless automation can do better-than-human disaster recovery (not likely yet) there's minimal safety advantage. You have to outperform well-trained humans instead of random people to save lives.

Second, they don't take much time per traveller to operate. Both often have 100+ passengers per operator, making it relatively cheap to employ skilled human labor. Cars average around 2:1, so there's a lot more time being wasted per passenger-hour.

Third, cars have highly flexible usage. Planes and trains are generally moving people or cargo to approximate destinations, and travel to places design to store them. Cars spend lots of time arriving in storage-free areas - what if your car dropped you off at work and drove to a garage outside the city? And they do lots of last-mile transit - what if your car could go pick up your groceries or dry-cleaning without you?

Broadly, I think there's way more safety and financial incentive for 100% driverless operation of cars than any other mode of travel.

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