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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”

#141

Post by frahs »

mikeash wrote: post #114
gwbas1c wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 other day, I came within two feet of a crash because the other driver completely disregarded a red light. It's pretty clear that if a human can't even pay attention to a light directly pointed at them, we have a very long time to go before humans can safely drive cars without a computer to intervene when needed.

One thing worth mentioning (even though I agree with the gist of your point) is that machines make the same mistakes consistently. This is pretty rare for a human. Imagine 10% of the cars on the road are autonomous and they all make this same mistake.

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

#142

Post by BurningFrog »

throwawayjava wrote: post #133
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 economics couldn't be more different. Driver salary is 26% of the cost of trucking. Driver salary is 52% of the cost of a taxi. Those numbers are in the single digits for aircraft and trains. We could replace pilots and train operators, technologically speaking. But the incentives are not (yet) large enough to overcome the regulatory and cultural barriers. We'd rather have that extra order of magnitude of safety,…

> Driver salary is 52% of the cost of a taxi.

On top of that, the space and interfaces for the driver is a substantial part of the cost and weight of the vehicle itself.

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

#143

Post by ceejayoz »

sannee wrote: post #29
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 price of a plane/train is astronomical compared to what you have to pay for a pilot. I mean, you could literally buy a pilot for a millenia for the price of a jetliner (100M$ for jetliner / 100k$/year for pilot). There just isn't a very large economical incentive to automate that job out.

It's not one pilot, though. It's two pilots, times two shifts a day, plus some extras to cover vacation, sickness, etc.

There was enough pressure to engineer away flight engineers, navigators, and radio operators in cockpits. I wouldn't expect them to pass on potential savings in the low-margin world of airlines.

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

#144

Post by diggernet »

w0utert wrote: post #68
wnevets wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>when both planes and trains haven't been automated for various reasons. I thought both were already highly automated?

Automated: yes. Autonomous: no. There's a fundamental difference between the two. Airplane autopilots are basically scripted, and operate fully within the parameters set by the pilot. There is almost no intelligence, and very little adaptivity there. The pilot needs to reprogram the autopilot manually when the flight plan changes, for example. Flight conditions can change in many ways that require the autopilot to be…

Thanks for this. I wish there was more awareness of the distinction. Too many comments here are describing automated things as autonomous.

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

#145

Post by [deleted] »

jason_pomerleau wrote: post #137
strebler wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Once the machines are better than humans at a macro level, insurance companies will notice, and I think this will cause widespread adoption pretty quickly.

[deleted]

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

#146

Post by garrybelka »

vamin wrote: post #127
dperfect wrote: post #57

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…

I disagree with the analogy to speech recognition. What makes speech recognition difficult is that it's highly dependent on context (sounds the same, but means something different depending on surrounding words, what the conversation is about, or even who you're speaking with). With driving, you should be able to make a good decision with just the instantaneous state, given enough information about that state (object…

By context you mean a timeline of events while speech recognition is actually dependent on that timeline. Same applies to situational state recognition in driving. E.g., to derive speed, acceleration and direction of objects.

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

#147

Post by Piskvorrr »

trekky1700 wrote: post #55
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.

Fairly sure it still needs the pilot to tell it "now we're taking off", "now we're cruising", "now we're landing" (and under what parameters). Doing that switch automatically seems unsafe.

The other part sounds improbable - quite the opposite, a pilot always needs to be able to take over in case the automatic systems fail.

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

#148

Post by throwawayjava »

ceejayoz wrote: post #143
sannee wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price of a plane/train is astronomical compared to what you have to pay for a pilot. I mean, you could literally buy a pilot for a millenia for the price of a jetliner (100M$ for jetliner / 100k$/year for pilot). There just isn't a very large economical incentive to automate that job out.

It's not one pilot, though. It's two pilots, times two shifts a day, plus some extras to cover vacation, sickness, etc. There was enough pressure to engineer away flight engineers, navigators, and radio operators in cockpits. I wouldn't expect them to pass on potential savings in the low-margin world of airlines.

And still, the pilot portion of the cost of operation for planes is in the single digits. You barely scrape into the double digits (maybe 20% MAX, closer to 10 I think) if you count all labor.

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

#149

Post by ghaff »

throwawayjava wrote: post #133
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 economics couldn't be more different. Driver salary is 26% of the cost of trucking. Driver salary is 52% of the cost of a taxi. Those numbers are in the single digits for aircraft and trains. We could replace pilots and train operators, technologically speaking. But the incentives are not (yet) large enough to overcome the regulatory and cultural barriers. We'd rather have that extra order of magnitude of safety,…

>Driver salary is 52% of the cost of a taxi.

If you drop the utilization, the cost of the driver as a percentage probably goes up a bit. But here's the thing about those numbers.

Yes, driver salary is a big chunk of taxi cost but flip things around. It's only about half the cost. In other words, there's this widespread assumption that autonomy totally changes the nature of automobiles and automobile ownership even though it only cuts the cost in half.

Ask yourself. If you own a car today, would getting a 50% discount on taxi rides completely change your behavior. Maybe it would for some at the margins but only at the margins.

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

#150

Post by throwawayjava »

nradov wrote: post #134
SEJeff wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

Military UAVs have a high crash rate. There's no autopilot which could have successfully landed an Airbus A320 in the Hudson River.

And no autopilot would intentionally ram a plane into the side of a mountain.

These edge-cases are uninteresting IMO.

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