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IBM Technology Creates Smart Wingman For Self-Driving Cars (networkworld.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the quick-thinking dept.

coondoggie quotes a report from Network World: IBM said that it has patented a machine learning technology that defines how to shift control of an autonomous vehicle between a human driver and a vehicle control processor in the event of a potential emergency. Basically the patented IBM system employs onboard sensors and artificial intelligence to determine potential safety concerns and control whether self-driving vehicles are operated autonomously or by surrendering control to a human driver. The idea is that if a self-driving vehicle experiences an operational glitch like a faulty braking system, a burned-out headlight, poor visibility, bad road conditions, it could decide whether the on-board self-driving vehicle control processor or a human driver is in a better position to handle that anomaly. If the comparison determines that the vehicle control processor is better able to handle the anomaly, the vehicle is placed in autonomous mode," IBM stated. "The technology would be a smart wingman for both the human and the self-driving vehicle," said James Kozloski, manager, Computational Neuroscience and Multiscale Brain Modeling, IBM Research and co-inventor on the patent.

27 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. Oh great! by Narcocide · · Score: 1

    So in the event of potentially unsafe driving conditions, something with the intelligence of a 2-year-old and the strength of 1000 gorillas randomly grabs the wheel from you. I can't see anything that could possibly go wrong with this.

    1. Re:Oh great! by Calydor · · Score: 2

      Wrong.

      In the event of an unavoidable crash the control is RELEASED to you so the AI isn't at fault for the crash.

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    2. Re:Oh great! by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Yup. It's not about control, it's about liability.

    3. Re:Oh great! by hey! · · Score: 1

      So in the event of potentially unsafe driving conditions, something with the intelligence of a 2-year-old and the strength of 1000 gorillas randomly grabs the wheel from you. I can't see anything that could possibly go wrong with this.

      Well, can you see anything that could possibly go wrong by letting the human driver always have his way when milliseconds count? That's what you have to consider: the relative probability of catastrophe in the two scenarios: continued human control vs. automated intervention.

      Most people think of themselves as better than average drivers. Most people *are* a better than average driver... on their good days. But it's not their good days they need to be worried about. It's the days when they're harried, distracted and sleep-deprived that the pose a threat to themselves... and others.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    4. Re:Oh great! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      something with the intelligence of a 2-year-old ...

      "Intelligence" has little to do with being a good driver. When was the last time someone with a PhD won a NASCAR race?

      Often the most important factor in avoiding an accident is reaction time. For a human, the time between an event occurring, and the brake being depressed is 1500 ms or more. At 70mph, that is 150ft, before the reaction even starts. For a computer, the reaction time is about 1ms, which at 70mph is a few inches.

    5. Re:Oh great! by vtcodger · · Score: 2

      "In the event of an unavoidable crash the control is RELEASED to you"

      So, your Belchfire 5000 gets itself stuck on railroad tracks with a freight train barreling toward you at 100kph ... and it turns control over to you.

      This will come to be known as the "Hasta la vista, Baby" patent

      --
      You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
    6. Re:Oh great! by Kiuas · · Score: 1

      Often the most important factor in avoiding an accident is reaction time. For a human, the time between an event occurring, and the brake being depressed is 1500 ms or more. At 70mph, that is 150ft, before the reaction even starts. For a computer, the reaction time is about 1ms, which at 70mph is a few inches.

      This, so much this. Most accidents occur because people either fail to observe their surroundings or they react to observations too late.

      Modern cars already have numerous systems that do very similar thing: electronic breakforce distribution, emergency brake assist, electronic stability control, traction control system just to name a few. All of these are pretty standard features of modern vehicles and all of them are designed to let the computer counter the driver's lack of reaction speed and situational awareness. And they work; when I got my license here in Finland the first few winters were snow-heavy (by Finnish standards, which means tens of centimeters of snow) and I'm certain that on several occasions the ESC system kept me on the road/on the lane, because even though we're obviously trained to drive in winter conditions, it's a whole different deal to control the vehicle on an slippery test track or under the supervision of the trainer than it is to try and do so amidst traffic and poor weather/visibility. Reducing speed helps a lot obviously, but black ice and other factors come into play so it's possible to be driving just fine and hit a patch of black ice hidden under a layer of snow for example. Under such circumstances, these kinds of systems actually do their job and they end up saving lives.

      When we're dealing with situations such as: "unless the trajectory of the vehicle is changed or breaks are applied within 0,5 seconds a crash is unavoidable" I want the vehicle to react and not wait for my slow-ass reflexes to kick in and slam me to a wall.

      --
      "It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
  2. Rip control? by markdavis · · Score: 1

    >"If the comparison determines that the vehicle control processor is better able to handle the anomaly, the vehicle is placed in autonomous mode," IBM stated

    So I could be in self-driving mode and the computer rips control from me because it thinks it can do a better job? No thanks! Maybe if it detected I was somehow impaired, but the idea of my control being removed randomly is not attractive. Sounds like it would be OK if it were an OPTIONAL mode/setting (3 modes- computer drive, human drive, or hybrid/auto-switching).

    >"co-inventor on the patent."

    Really? That is worth a patent? Seems like a pretty obvious idea to me. Oh, since I thought of allowing it to be 3 separate modes, could we patent that??

    1. Re:Rip control? by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      There needs to be two things: something like what IBM is developing here, and an 'off' switch that the computer can't override, so the driver can drive normally. I think a sensor in the steering wheel that detects when you've got at least one hand on it would be suffcient for an on-demand 'off' switch, as well as a switch on the dash to put the vehicle in manual drive mode.

  3. Wingman? by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    Will it throw itself onto a Fiat multipla?

    Fact is _I'm_ a reliable wingman. Total darkness is your friend, I'll take that grenade.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    1. Re:Wingman? by rmdingler · · Score: 1

      Damn, I've had some boys worthy of the title of wingman in my day, capable of throwing themselves onto an AMC Pacer but you sir, take the cake!

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

  4. tower this is ghost rider requesting a flyby by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    You! You are still dangerous. But you can be my wingman anytime.

  5. calm female voice... by bugs2squash · · Score: 2

    Imminent death predicted. You have 4 milliseconds to take control. Thank you for choosing IBM. Would you like Watson to choose a casket for you ?

    --
    Nullius in verba
  6. I can see it now by reboot246 · · Score: 2

    Just a couple of seconds before the collision the AI releases control of the vehicle back to the human and wakes up Leroy because he ain't never seen no accident like this one. :)

    Seriously, this looks like the perfect way for the AI to not be held responsible for any accidents. What are they going to think of when there is no option (no steering wheel, pedals, etc.) for a human to take control?

  7. Very clever by russotto · · Score: 1

    So while other companies are actually developing self-driving cars, IBM is looking at what they'll need and throwing patent mines into their path.

  8. Transcript by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

    AI: "WAKE UP! Take control now!"
    Me: "AAAAAHHHHH!!"
    Car: *crash*

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  9. Do not want by easyTree · · Score: 1

    When driving, one's brain is immersed in the steam of visual data - preempting problems.

    To suddenly be asked to context switch between being a passenger and driver is dangerous.

    --
    Requiem for the American Dream
    1. Re: Do not want by easyTree · · Score: 1

      Guess who didn't RTFS :/

      --
      Requiem for the American Dream
    2. Re: Do not want by mjwx · · Score: 1

      Guess who didn't RTFS :/

      That would be you because the RFS didn't address anything that the GP talked about. It doesn't matter if the danger is imminent, you're asking someone with little or no situational awareness to suddenly take control of a potentially deadly piece of equipment.

      And lets face it, with autonomous car technology, most steering wheel attendants (I cant call them drivers) will be on their phone, if their even sober enough to drive. So they will be completely unaware of what the vehicle perceives.

      As others in this thread have commented, this sounds like a method to ensure manufacturers cant be sued.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  10. Give them separate roads. by Neuronwelder · · Score: 1

    Don't mix humans and AI's. Give them their own roads. If they want to build an underground system and overhead network that meshes with existing roads that is well planned. Even someone like me is likely to try it. I might even like it!

  11. what a bad idea by indy_Muad'Dib · · Score: 1

    human driving and is given the choice of swerve into the path of an oncoming car or hit a pedestrian, AI takes over and hits the pedestrian instead of leaving the human to take the 3rd option and put the car in the ditch and avoid the other choices.

    do not trust a computer with choices of this magnitude, leave it to people.

  12. This is the "hand off problem"... by rocket+rancher · · Score: 1

    ...and it is, according to nearly every engineer in the autonomous vehicle business, including the head of Google's autonomous vehicle project, unsolvable. It is at the core of the current regulatory conflict between legislators, who want to keep a human in the loop, and most autonomous vehicle makers, who want humans out of the loop because of the unsolvability of the hand-off problem. Google has already stated they will not produce their autonomous vehicles until the government agrees to remove the human-in-the-loop requirement for operating autonomous vehicles on public roads.

    The major exception to this received wisdom is Elon Musk at Tesla Motors, who pretty much believes that no problem is unsolvable. Yay for him; we need incurable optimists. If we are ever going to think our way out of the crap-sack world we are currently headed for, it will be because of technological optimists like Musk.

    I realize that betting against Elon Musk is probably not a good strategy, but I do think the hand-off problem is not solvable, for any value of "solved" you care to assert. Human task switching is not fast enough at pedestrian velocities, let alone autobahn velocities. Dragging a human from their porn/spreadsheet/email/phonecall/whatever and expecting him/her to correctly grok a traffic problem in a fraction of a second is not realistic.

    Or even several fractions of a second, if IBM's cognitive modelling of human drivers, which is what this expert system is actually doing, successfully expands the window for a driver to react. I am not sure that replacing a human with a robot that is programmed to learn to drive like a human is a win, but we'll have to see what happens. If we don't have a spike in traffic fatalities in BMWs (IBM will be rolling this package out in BMW models first, because they have already announced they are giving Watson to BMW) I will happily revise my estimation of the hand-off problem's solvability. :)

    1. Re:This is the "hand off problem"... by ColdSam · · Score: 1

      I don't think Musk thinks the problem is solvable, meaning the handoff will never fail. He thinks that incrementally improving automated driving will save so many lives that the handful of lives lost when the handoff occurs will be well worth it. So the problem his team is solving is finding the right balance so the driver doesn't get overconfident given the limits of the current technology. In his mind, delaying deployment of the technology simply because it is not perfect would be immoral.

  13. Your input has been terminated... by kimgkimg · · Score: 1

    But what if the human is deemed to BE the anomaly?

  14. easiest way to fix bad patents by liquid_schwartz · · Score: 1

    If a working model of a invention was either required or, more likely, resulted in a form of stronger patent then a lot of these hand waving type patents could be avoided. A patent should only apply to a working model, not an "idea". As anyone who actually does something for a living can tell you the idea is not the hard part.

  15. Yet another bad patent by SoftwareArtist · · Score: 1

    Because it's not like EVERY SINGLE AUTONOMOUS CAR currently being tested already does exactly this, forcing the driver to take over when it encounters a situation it can't handle. Or like the driver assistance features already available in cars do this the other way, such as hitting the breaks for you if you're about to run into something.

    But it's ok, they added "with machine learning", so that makes it new. I guess that's the new version of "on the internet". Take anything that people are already doing, add the words "with machine learning", and now you can patent it.

    --
    "I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
  16. a first step ... by Alan+R+Light · · Score: 1

    I recall learning, oh, something like 30 years ago, that the Space Shuttle had multiple computers, running at least two different operating systems, managing all vital systems on a space shuttle.

    With all the concern about self-driving cars being cracked, or otherwise running into problems, why is no one demanding something similar? The computers themselves are pretty cheap these days - and will be cheaper by the time we start putting this in every car. Just have a minimum of three computers running a minimum of three different operating systems, determining what the car does. One of those computers can have priority for decisions about where to drive and such (with a human override, which could be as simple as changing which computer got priority for these decisions), but the other two computers would monitor every move for safety. If a single computer returned results outside of safety parameters, the car would shut down until the problem could be resolved - and control of safely slowing down and stopping would be according to the majority of the computers.

    Cracking the automobile's control system would still be possible, but it would require that at least two different kinds of systems be cracked, almost simultaneously.