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Toyota Is Uneasy About the Handoff Between Automated Systems and Drivers (caranddriver.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the safety-first dept.

schwit1 shares a report from Car and Driver: Toyota has not yet decided whether it will bring a car to market that is capable of automated driving in some situations yet still requires a human driver behind a wheel who can take control if needed -- but the automaker, characteristically, is more cautious than many about moving forward with the technology. Citing safety concerns regarding the handoff between self-driving technology and human driver, Kiyotaka Ise, Toyota's chief safety technology officer, said the biggest issue with these kinds of systems is that "there is a limbo for several seconds between machine and human" in incidents when a car prompts a human to retake control if it cannot handle operations. These kinds of systems, defined as Level 3 autonomy by SAE, have divided automakers and tech companies in their approaches to developing cars for the self-driving future. As opposed to Level 2 systems, like Tesla Motors' Autopilot, in which a human driver is expected to keep his or her eyes and attention on the road while a system conducts most aspects of the driving, Level 3 is characterized by the system's claiming responsibility for the driving task when it is enabled. Although Toyota assures us that its researchers are hard at work figuring out the challenges of Level 3 autonomy, it seems like the company could eventually join others moving directly from its current Level 2 system to a Level 4 system. Given the self-driving race has been on for a while, this could put Toyota at a competitive disadvantage, but it's clear engineers at the company care more about getting things right than they do about being first.

6 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Toyota is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The summary states, "it's clear engineers at the company care more about getting things right than they do about being first."

    So, basically what you're saying is, Toyota is the anti-Tesla.

    1. Re:Toyota is... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm not convinced that Tesla will get to level 5 with their current hardware. They are already selling level 5 to customers as a future firmware update (â3000 extra last time I looked), saying they will upgrade hardware if necessary for people who already paid.

      Their system is only cameras and ultrasonic sensors, no lidar. They are using neural nets for image processing.

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    2. Re:Toyota is... by mjwx · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The summary states, "it's clear engineers at the company care more about getting things right than they do about being first."

      So, basically what you're saying is, Toyota is the anti-Tesla.

      Basically you're saying Toyota is being Toyota (conservative to the extreme, but good at what they do).

      Toyota is not the only one concerned with this, as a road user I'm concerned what will happen when Dopey Doris' automated car struggles with faded lines on a single lane road (quite common on my 18 mile commute to work). Right now, Dopey Doris can only spend half her attention on her phone, I hate to think what will happen when she puts her full attention into it and because she's so engrossed in FaceCrush or watching the latest episode of Keeping up the Cardasians that she completely tunes out the alarm throwing control back to the driver and the car veers into my lane uncontrolled.

      Autonomous cars need to be 99.999999999999999% reliable before they should be considered ready for public consumption. Right now, they're nowhere near it. Google's success has been due to two factors, 1. it was all done in sunny California (I'd like to see the same car in Berkshire) and; 2. the car has been in the hands of a professional driver the whole time. The current track record for autonomous cars is nil, the record is for car and driver working together. Of course we know in the real world if you gave the Google autonomous car to Dopey Doris commuting from Finchamstead every day, she's going to assume that it will do everything for her, so we need to make sure it can operate without human intervention because it needs to, human intervention cant be counted upon from the average steering wheel attendant with a phone shoved up their nose (we get enough collisions from these types as it is without giving them a reassurance).

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    3. Re:Toyota is... by CastrTroy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is also a big concern of mine. Cars should either be 100% autonomous, or 0% autonomous. I'm all for adaptive cruise control, but as soon as you introduce technology that allows people to take their attention away from the driving and have it still follow the road for a significant period of time, that's where you run into problems.

      If you haven't had to actually touch the steering wheel for a month, how much would you really be paying attention? What happens when the car screws up and you need to take over? Are you going to be too engrossed if your other activities to take over? Also, what is the point of paying for all this technology anyway if you don't get to actually not pay attention anyway. If you're going to have to keep your hands on the wheel, you might as well actually be driving, because other wise it isn't really worth the expense.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  2. Caution is important by GWBasic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm a little skeptical of a sudden mass takeover with autonomous driving. As this post implies, the risk is huge. Where are autonomous devices in low-risk situations? Why haven't they taken over? I think we're better off with things like dryers that can sort and fold laundry, or dishwashers that can put the dishes away. The risk of a dropped dish or torn shirt is much more tolerable than a car crash at highway speeds.

    --
    No, I will not work for your startup
  3. Loong hand-over times by DrTJ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Toyota is not the only one deliberating skipping L3 and go directly to L4. Volvo intends to to the same, as well as some of the German vendors.

    The reason is that studies show that hand-overs do not only take "a few seconds" according to the article, but that there is a tail of up to 40 seconds before the "driver-to-be" comprehends the situation.

    Since 40 seconds is an eternity in traffic, it poses essentially the same challenges as L4 systems. So why bother with L3?