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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”

#401

Post by linkregister »

munin wrote: post #220
Eridrus wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To engage with the substance of his argument a bit more, his argument is that perfection is a long way away: > “Historically human beings have shown zero tolerance for injury or death caused by flaws in a machine,” Pratt said. “As wonderful as AI is, AI systems are inevitably flawed… We’re not even close to Level 5. It’ll take many years and many more miles, in simulated and real world testing, to achieve the perfect…

Lots of people make this argument. I have a counter-argument: when a technology is convenient or appealing enough, people will overlook even very obvious safety/health problems. Consider texting while driving, drinking, smoking/vaping, even driving itself. Cognitively, we know that there are a bunch of things we do that are dangerous, but we do them anyway out of habit or convenience. The argument that assumes we dem…

For a real-life example, just look up "Tesla autopilot almost crash" on YouTube. There are plenty of people who let Autopilot drive when they really shouldn't.

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

#402

Post by chrismealy »

stevenwoo wrote: post #398
chrismealy wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada has 40% fewer road deaths by population. I don't think they're that much richer or smarter than Americans. Complacency is killing people.

Good point. Probably no single simple correlation will do - higher fuel prices points to the one thing that Western Europe and Canada share off the top of my head compared to the USA. (That and nationalized healthcare. :) )

If raising gas taxes would save 12,000 lives per year then America should definitely do it. It's a social problem that doesn't require technological solutions.

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

#403

Post by nihonde »

linkregister wrote: post #399
nihonde wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is that clear? For desktops, Apple's sales barely register. Servers? Nope. Laptops? Sure. But Chromebooks have outsold them. The only realm that Apple dominates is smartphones. They're great. I enjoy my iPhone. It also happens that iPhone sales are enough to be the biggest publicly-traded company in the world.

In my mind, “PC market” means personal computing devices of all form factors. Any other definition is splitting hairs to serve your desired outcome.

Anyway, when is the last time software alone got someone from point A to point B? It’s a hell of a lot easier to license software from a provider than it is to outsource the building and shipping of reliable vehicles.

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

#404

Post by kaftoy »

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] don't make battery electric cars. (They're fixing that, but won't be shipping until 2022.)

2022 is a good year if they come up with good tech. At the moment the market for EV's is small, tech is new and only Tesla really shows of something (they have to, because EV's are their only business). All big car makers are researching, from new diesels (double injector SCR's) to EV's & autonomus driving. And if they don't (or go too slow for some), then 1st tier suppliers like Bosch & Continental are doing it.

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

#405

Post by [deleted] »

Someone wrote: post #308
dperfect wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little more context on the speech recognition part: I remember going to a trade show (many years ago) where a representative from one of the major speech recognition companies was showing off the technology. He wasn't just dictating text, but was also using the software to control the computer. I was floored by it. I was 100% convinced we had arrived at that dream of intelligent voice-computer interaction. I've fel…

"I was floored by it. I was 100% convinced we had arrived at that dream of intelligent voice-computer interaction." I remember talking to Apple's Kim Silverman, ¿head? of speech recognition, somewhere in the end of the '90s. He said you had to spend a few hundreds of hours training the recognizer to get at a good level. That's not a lot more than one would spend learning to touch type at speed, but a large fraction o…

[deleted]

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

#406

Post by Joeri »

eof wrote: post #385
strebler wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla took the opposite approach of what I described (the Subaru approach). Tesla took the approach that the machine is in control and the human has to detect and take over when the machine makes a mistake. That is known to be a very problematic strategy, it's easy for the human to get distracted. What Subaru has done is to leave the human in control, the machine only steps in when it sees a problem. It's totally dif…

Yes they are different. They are also WILDLY different value propositions. Crash prevention is nice, just getting safer and safer is nice--though I personally wouldn't stop driving ~$5k cars for even "really good" crash protection. But a car that can drive me while I sleep and become a Taxi while I work is something I would go into debt for.

But a car that can drive me while I sleep and become a Taxi while I work is something I would go into debt for.

I don't think most regular people will actually own fully autonomous cars to rent them out. Big players will do the capital expenditure to buy a fleet, and rent out transportation service. Renting in uber style will be basically the price of owning, but without the up-front capital expenditure, and it will provide the convenience of choosing the type of car for the specific transport needs of the moment. The margins of these rent-a-fleet services will be low, so you won't have a hope as individual car owner of actually buying a car and renting it out without turning it into a loss compared to just renting.

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

#407

Post by _5ysi »

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 can't speak to their autonomous technology, but Toyota has always been a leader in electric vehicles, from the early hybrids, to partnering with Tesla, to impressive long term improvements in fuel cells even after the U.S. Gov. Moved on to batteries. Arguably Toyota has more electric vehicle prowess than any other company. It is relatively small potatoes to change the source to batteries manufactured by Japanese companies.

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

#408

Post by vertex-four »

Retric wrote: post #346
vertex-four wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The response was not to make cars safer by say physically limiting them to 10 MPH Umm, reasonably sure that implementing a legal speed limit was an initial response, in the UK at least. It took a number of years (and likely a lot of propaganda, though I haven't looked that closely into it and history is, of course, written by the victors) to allow motorcars to use roads at anything close to a reasonable speed. Chec…

I am referring to a governor which would prevent cars from being capable of 10MPH even on empty roads. Actual in town speed limits would presumably be lower. Now, with our infrastructure that seems like a huge issue, but cites used to be built for walking and even small towns simply had vastly higher density. Watch this and suddenly those mentioned speed limits are completely reasonable. https://www.youtube.com/watch…

Indeed, the speed limits are completely reasonable if you don't want to remove people from the streets - but your suggestion seemed to be that people were near-immediately removed from the streets instead of limiting what cars can do at first. There were 30 years when cars were lawfully limited to 4mph in rural areas, so your "even on empty roads" point is moot.

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

#409

Post by _5ysi »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #318
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, for one, think the hydrogen instead of EV gamble will pay off big time. Especially in Japan where they just can't produce enough electricity to go full EV, what with shutting down most of their nuclear plants. H2 is a much more realistic zero emission energy carrier for them. Also, as electricity demand and price goes up, and gas demand and price goes down, oil companies will quickly pivot to producing H2 by steam…

Agreed fuel cells remain very exciting and maybe patience will be rewarded

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

#410

Post by _5ysi »

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 has been making some bad business decisions lately. They don't make battery electric cars. (They're fixing that, but won't be shipping until 2022.[1]) Instead, they've been pushing cars that run on hydrogen. Toyota sells the Mirai in California, and has a few hydrogen stations so it can be refueled. They sell about a hundred cars a month.

I can't speak to their autonomous technology, but Toyota has always been a leader in electric vehicles, from the early hybrids, to partnering with Tesla, to impressive long term improvements in fuel cells even after the U.S. Gov. Moved on to batteries. Arguably Toyota has more electric vehicle prowess than any other company. It is relatively small potatoes to change the source from open system cells to closed cells, especially when many of battery manufactures are also Japanese.

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