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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”

#221

Post by PeterisP »

nihonde wrote: post #188
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…

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…

Toyota presumably treats reliability differently.

When Toyota talks about "full autonomous driving", they really mean fully autonomous in a safe and predictable manner. When Uber or Tesla says the same, the implication is that a "good enough" level will be good enough - and that level can be achieved much sooner than whatever Toyota is talking about.

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

#222

Post by dingo_bat »

noobermin wrote: post #62

I have to wonder what motivates him to admit this, surely hyping his technology is a formula for attracting funding, right? Why admit your job has such a long-time until return?

Probably because Toyota doesn't need to attract funding.

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

#223

Post by throwawayjava »

btian wrote: post #198
throwawayjava wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Airlines will kill to get another 10% in margin.

So are flight attendants impossible to automate/do without? Or are there perhaps other forces -- beyond technical ones -- keeping humans in the plane?

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

#224

Post by flunhat »

cr0sh wrote: post #184
flunhat wrote: post #111

I've always had a hunch (and mind you, I have no proof of this, I'm just talking here) that the software required for a level 5 self driving car is, on some mathematical level, equivalent to the software needed to pass the Turing Test (w/out hacking the rules). In other words, if we have the capacity to do one of those things, we will have the capacity to do the other (in much the same way that seemingly unrelated pr…

So are you saying Waymo's cars are capable of passing the Turing Test? Because they are arguably at level 5 capability. I highly doubt it, though. The thing is, while I believe they are already at this level, their technology is obviously not perfect. It never will be. Perfection in any space of technology is just not possible, because perfection is not possible in the physical world for anything. Perfection is a mat…

Waymo's self driving tech is definitely not anywhere near level 5 capability (if that were true, they'd rule the world right now and we'd all be using their tech). From Waymo's Wikipedia article:

>As of 28 August 2014, according to Computer World Google's self-driving cars were in fact unable to use about 99% of US roads.[57] As of the same date, the latest prototype had not been tested in heavy rain or snow due to safety concerns.[58] Because the cars rely primarily on pre-programmed route data, they do not obey temporary traffic lights and, in some situations, revert to a slower "extra cautious" mode in complex unmapped intersections. The vehicle has difficulty identifying when objects, such as trash and light debris, are harmless, causing the vehicle to veer unnecessarily. Additionally, the lidar technology cannot spot some potholes or discern when humans, such as a police officer, are signaling the car to stop.[59] Google projects plan on having these issues fixed by 2020.[60]

It's really not better than human drivers, and I don't know where this myth comes from.

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

#225

Post by cr0sh »

RandomedaA wrote: post #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…

While I don't have any example articles, I do know there have been a few written on the reality that millennials and the following generation are much less likely to own their own vehicle or to even drive. This has been attributed to a number of various factors (a large portion being attributed to those generations widespread and intense usage of various social media platforms).

So manufacturers are already feeling the pinch, so to speak.

While (as you put it) "autonomous hire cars" will make the market for new car sales (and car ownership in general) smaller, I don't think it will completely go away, for a couple of reasons.

First off, such form of "public transportation" is still subject to "the drunk person who pukes in the seat" syndrome. You will quickly get vehicles on the road that are virtually rolling trash cans, and when you encounter one, you'll have to make the choice to either use it anyhow, or send it back and wait for another to come (potentially making you late to whatever it is you are doing).

Secondly, a service of "hire out your personal car" might become something; kinda like driving for uber, but not actually driving. Make money with your car when you aren't using it. Of course, you could also find your car trashed in the process (I'm sure AirBnB suffers from a similar problem).

Ford and other companies are just likely hedging their bets, plus whatever tech they do develop can also bring them a tidy sum by licensing it forward, or selling it off.

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

#226

Post by chucky »

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…

Where did you get the information that the current Volvo experiment is at level 3? I tried looking at the project home page, but couldn't find any info about it. For their commercial offering they are apparently going straight to level 4, skipping level 3, so running level 3 tests seems odd: http://auto2xtech.com/volvo-to-skip-level-3-autonomous-mode/

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

#227

Post by PeterisP »

garrybelka wrote: post #146
vamin wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, in this context (pun intended) of speech recognition, the context means external context, i.e., understanding lots of information about the topic of that speech, knowing what would the speaker might plausibly be trying to say, what real world entities might be involved, and how are they called/spelled - all kinds of information that is not included in the original audio data, things that the listener would know based on life experience.

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

#228

Post by sah2ed »

Animats wrote: post #213
sah2ed wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think of Austin Russell's Luminar? https://www.luminartech.com/

Their web site has no useful information. It's hard to say much about that.

There's this FastCo piece [0] that talks about their tech and has some videos.

[0] https://www.fastcompany.com/40406052/this-sensor-technology-...

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

#229

Post by AndrewKemendo »

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 can take off, cruise and land themselves in any survivable weather condition with existing automated controls. However, people would be terrified of flying without a pilot and there are so many legal hurdles that it's not cost effective to do so.

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

#230

Post by gordon_freeman »

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 are costly. Very un-Toyota like! It seems that the management is not at all interested in anything except the Hybrid and gasoline powered models.
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