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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”

#361

Post by balls187 »

Swizec wrote: post #345
balls187 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you differentiate: "Alexa, play Taylor Swift on shuffle" vs "Alexa, play Taylor Swift on Spotify" (real command)

Spotify is default. She also knows how to do noun recognition. If she can tell the difference between “play” and “stop”, she can differentiate shuffle and Spotify. I’m also ok sayin “Alexa, shuffle Taylor Swift” if that’s easier for their grammar.

I think "shuffle" is the obvious choice to be used as a verb.

As you mentioned, Alexa already understands shuffle (though I don't think it does for Spotify's integration).

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

#362

Post by kuschku »

Swizec wrote: post #349
Animats wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many automotive "auto-brake" systems, usually controlled by a radar. Those are useful. They're usually programmed to act only when a collision is inevitable. They prevent some slow-speed collisions, and reduce the damage in some faster ones. What they don't do is take over steering. A last-second takeover of steering would make things worse some of the time.

Don’t Volvo and Mercedes do obstacle avoidance? Or is that still in research? I think I remember seeing videos.

Yes they do. They take over steering, automatically drive around obstacles, etc. And this is already deployed in production vehicles today.

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

#363

Post by com2kid »

dboreham wrote: post #353
com2kid wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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). Computer speech recognition now has a gre…

Seriously? >Computer speech recognition now has a greater accuracy than human speech recognition, but the types of use cases for talking to a computer are much less sensitive to error. Short snippets and phrases that are designed to get something done right now. You just said that speech recognition doesn't work in general. In general is exactly where self-driving has to work. If we just needed self-driving trains, w…

> You just said that speech recognition doesn't work in general.

I replied that the accuracy is high. It turns out, in retrospect, that accuracy and usefulness are two different things.

In regards to automated driving, achieving better than human isn't all that hard. Heck backup cameras with little "warning zone" lines on them are better than human for the one particular task of backing up. Cruise control systems that maintain distance are better than humans. We are incrementally getting there. The progress is much different than with voice reco.

The problem with voice reco isn't recognition technology, that works fine, it is with having computers understand what the hell to do with the voice. Contrast that to driving, where the end goal is easy to list - Rule 1: Don't hit anything. Rule 2: Get to the destination. (Rule 1 is the hard part, Rule 2 99.9% solved!)

With Voice Reco, we got the transcription part down, but... now what? In the example I gave up above, knowing how to make a reservation is painful thanks to market fragmentation (not everything is an API), and people generally don't go and tag all of their contacts with their relationship status. I happen to have my wife under "wife" and my mother under "mother", that simple step alone gives me much more natural usage of voice input.

Then when I saw "OK Google, directions to my Mother's house", well, that still doesn't work for a thousand little reasons[1], even though each and every word was correctly transcribed. (I get a nice Google search instead!)

The set of situations that can happen while driving is far smaller than the set of interactions that can happen over voice when users expect a natural interface. Yes driving is really complicated, but it is possible to get a group together and after a day or so, brainstorm everything that could happen on the road out to 2 standard deviations of likelihood.

It might take an hour+ just to list all the ways someone might ask for directions.

[1] Mainly because no one programmed it to understand that particular way of making a request. It is annoying because I can ask it for directions to home, and that works fine, so I just figured directions to "Contact Name's House" would also work. Of course if I lived in NYC I'd expect "Contact Name's Apartment" to work!

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

#364

Post by kuschku »

TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #311
Animats wrote: post #173

Toyota got into autonomous driving late. Then they hired Gil Pratt from MIT. Pratt used to run the MIT Leg Lab, which Raibert ran before Boston Dynamics, but Pratt didn't do much there. It's clear that autonomous driving can be made to work, because Google/Waymo is doing it. It's hard and expensive and it takes a lot of sensors. It also takes extensive testing. Waymo drives 25,000 autonomous miles a week. Volvo has l…

> Toyota got into autonomous driving late. Then they hired Gil Pratt from MIT. Pratt used to run the MIT Leg Lab, which Raibert ran before Boston Dynamics, but Pratt didn't do much there. They've hired other folks, too, who have real-world autonomous vehicle experience. Google/Waymo are definitely leading the pack, but I don't think we'll see Level 5 in a production vehicle for at least five years, probably closer to…

> What do you do in a rotary where you have to cut across multiple lanes of traffic to exit? If the autonomous vehicle waits for another car to give way, it will be there forever.

What do you do in a multi-lane rotary roundabout with trams going through it, and construction happening? (an actual use case from Bremen, Germany).

There’s so many situations they’re not even considering.

Google/Waymo is building a Schönwetterauto, in the metaphorical and literal meaning.

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

#365

Post by throwawayjava »

ars wrote: post #340
throwawayjava wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact same thing that happens now: someone dies, usually selected arbitrarily based upon the driver's selfish desire to minimize harm to themselves. Because that situation doesn't allow enough time to make anything except instinctual choices. The driver is found at fault for that death if they were not driving legally. Otherwise, and very often times regardless, the whole thing is written off as a tragic accident…

Millions??? You are off by two orders of magnitude. It was 35,000 two years ago. Still a lot of people, but not millions. Put in context, it's around one death per 100 million miles driven.

Sorry, I mixed up the global and national numbers.

Thanks.

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

#366

Post by nradov »

Animats wrote: post #347
Swizec wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's the approach we know won't work. That was Tesla's first-round autopilot, the self-crashing car. I think OP was talking about "crash avoidance" systems. Not systems that claim to drive the car but not really. You 're always driving, the car is just silently observing. If the car sees you're about to crash, it steps in and takes over. The opposite of Tesla's approach where you play the role of observer taking…

There are many automotive "auto-brake" systems, usually controlled by a radar. Those are useful. They're usually programmed to act only when a collision is inevitable. They prevent some slow-speed collisions, and reduce the damage in some faster ones. What they don't do is take over steering. A last-second takeover of steering would make things worse some of the time.

The next Volvo model will take over steering for collision avoidance.

http://www.leftlanenews.com/volvo-xc60s-collision-avoidance-...

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

#367

Post by hkmurakami »

gordon_freeman wrote: post #230
Animats wrote: post #173

Toyota got into autonomous driving late. Then they hired Gil Pratt from MIT. Pratt used to run the MIT Leg Lab, which Raibert ran before Boston Dynamics, but Pratt didn't do much there. It's clear that autonomous driving can be made to work, because Google/Waymo is doing it. It's hard and expensive and it takes a lot of sensors. It also takes extensive testing. Waymo drives 25,000 autonomous miles a week. Volvo has l…

I just don't understand Toyota's product strategy here. They are like Apple in car manufacturing (not comparing in design but in reliability and sheer quantity of products). So I'd assume they'd understood the demand for the electric cars for some time now and would have come up with electric cars which have great reliability and are cheap. But all they have done is introduced Mirai which only sells 100 a month and a…

They're in an innovator's dilemma because they (all the established players) have a huge advantage in drivetrain/engine technology (which is very difficult to replicate) vs any newcomer that they would be giving up if/when the market moves to full electric and motors.

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

#368

Post by memnips »

Skunkleton wrote: post #277
Animats wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. That's the approach we know won't work. That was Tesla's first-round autopilot, the self-crashing car. The one that would happily run into obstacles protru…

Perhaps a portion of Tesla's problem was with marketing? Autopilot gives very different cues than something like LKAS (lane keep assist).

And it's also called "Autopilot" which sets an extremely different tone and expectation than other driver-assistance/safety technologies.

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

#369

Post by cmurf »

colordrops wrote: post #348
cmurf wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern airlines are not mostly autonomous. I'll define it this way: remove the pilots from a flight at various stages along its route and see what happens. Multiple outcomes are possible but one is certain, it's not landing at the intended destination. If it were mostly autonomous, it'd land at destination at least some of the time. The chances of this happening today are 0.

That's because human checkpoints are intentionally wired into the workflow of a modern airliner. If those checkpoints were automated, the plane could indeed fly and land on its own. And I suspect the safety margins are not far from what is needed to automate the rest of the flight. The space shuttle's only system that absolutely required human intervention was the landing gears, and that was to ensure that humans wer…

automated != autonomous, the assertion I replied to was that "airliners _are_ mostly autonomous" which is not true.

>If those checkpoints were automated

If there were unicorns...

>the plane could indeed fly and land on its own.

No, and its annoying that you're asserting things you clearly don't understand.

As I mention elsewhere, the only technology we currently have for precision instrument landings in zero weather visibility (the only 100% autoland) is the ILS CAT IIIc approach. The overwhelming majority of airports in the country do not have that infrastructure, nor do most airplanes.

I'm a pilot, you clearly aren't. There are numerous other factors here, but just the fact you can't land wherever you want, at most airports with most aircraft, is enough to prove your assertion false.

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

#370

Post by nihonde »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #255
nihonde wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the companies you mentioned, only Toyota is a top ten automaker, and is indeed number one by many measures. I guess you think experience and a track record of phenomenal success is a disadvantage. I could agree with you in some contexts, but not this one. The autonomous car hype is the emperor’s new clothes, and Toyota is not your average industrial behemoth. Those guys literally wrote the playbook on nimble m…

Change "Toyota" for "1982 IBM" and you'll see the mistake of thinking this is a hardware problem.

And yet the clear winner in the PC market is Apple, an incumbent that always did both hardware and software.
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