Toyota To Spend $50 Million On Self-Driving Car Tech 53
An anonymous reader writes: Toyota is the latest automaker to see which way the wind is blowing; they've committed $50 million over the next five years to build research centers for self-driving car technology. They'll be working with both Stanford and MIT, and their immediate goal is to "eliminate traffic casualties." "Research at MIT will focus on 'advanced architectures' that will let cars perceive, understand, and interpret their surroundings. ... The folks at Stanford will concentrate on computer vision and machine learning. ... It will also work on human behavior analysis, both for pedestrians outside the car and the people 'at the wheel.'" Toyota's efforts will be led by Gill Pratt, who ran DARPA's Robotics Challenge.
Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought they already had this covered with unsecured floor mats or something.
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Exactly what I was going to post.
This is the behavior of a company that doesn't see the technology going forward anytime soon, but wants to fund some research to get control of some patents just in case.
If they were spending ten times that amount, then that would be serious.
Of course, this might just be one part of a larger R&D program. They don't talk about what they're doing in-house; this is just additional spending to fund outside research to make sure they get a share of any patents that are gener
THIS I'm OK with. (Score:4, Insightful)
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..oh, and if 'sticking to your guns' (as my father used to say, meaning 'sticking up for what you believe') is now considered 'being a troll', then I guess I'm guilty as charged. I ain't no sellout, I ain't no hoe; I think what I think, and anyone who doesn't like that can get fucked.
Re:THIS I'm OK with. (Score:4, Insightful)
Technology is supposed to help people, not replace people.
When you make a phone call, do you still call the operator, and ask her to switch the wires on the punchboard?
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Re: THIS I'm OK with. (Score:1)
Replacing fulfilling jobs would be a problem. Replacing farming, factory work, phone operators, garbage collection, street sweeping? Bring it on!
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I can tell you what's going to happen. When cars gain the ability to self-drive, perhaps sixty percent of the people will heave a sigh of relief and enjoy being able to sleep, watch movies or read a book while on the way to work. The other forty percent, nostalgic for the Corvette they dreamed of having one day when they were young, will express various degrees of reservation about going self-drive. As insurance companies push up rates for drivers and reduce rates for auto-drive passengers, most of the rema
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as highway traffic blurs by at a hundred miles an hour.
They become self-driving, they don't become self-paying. It turns out solving the self-driving problem does not do away with the air-drag problem.
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It turns out solving the self-driving problem does not do away with the air-drag problem.
To some degree, it does. SDCs can drive much closer together in "platoons", greatly reducing drag.
Automobile Platooning [wikipedia.org]
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Highway speeds like this are already routine in Germany (I have driven there). Drivers are a more select part of the German population than in the US, because the less skilled have alternative transportation.
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Highway speeds like this are already routine in Germany
No, they're the exception. On the about 1/3 of the Autobahn where it is legal to speed, you'll find only about one in a (few) hundred cars going 180+ (km/h). One in ~50 goes 160+. The vast majority cruises at around 120-130, many even below that.
And guess why? Not because it isn't *fun* to speed, no. Because it is damn expensive [stackexchange.com], the non-linear way (note the v^2). And frankly we already have to pay the equivalent of over $6 per gallon on gas. It really makes you think twice.
(I have driven there).
Really. Once?
Drivers are a more select part of the German population than in the US, because the less skilled have alternative transportation.
What a ridiculou
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A final part may be changing forward-facing seats for rear-facing ones as they are better for crash survivability, although people do like to see where they are going.
I'm quite happy having a rear-facing seat on a train. And the idea that on a plane you can see anything with your forward-facing seat is self evidently absurd (unless you're the pilot).
I don't see that having rear facing seats would be much of an issue in cars as long as you were never going to need any human intervention.
Re:THIS I'm OK with. (Score:4, Insightful)
Technology is supposed to help people, not replace people.
Since when? Our lives have vastly improved since technology has been replacing people, typically by doing things that are repetitive, boring, and/or dangerous (all of which describe driving).
Think carefully about how silly your assertion sounds in a broader context. How'd you like to go back to planting and harvesting fields by hand. Yeah, technology replace a bunch of people there. How about digging tunnels with picks and shovels? Oops, yeah, technology replaced all that sort of backbreaking labor. What about entire offices filled with people mindlessly adding columns of numbers? Technology eliminated that sort of work, didn't it?
Computer algorithms will probably be several orders of magnitude better at driving than humans, and all that time currently spent in traffic can now be used for productivity, relaxation, or socialization. Still, you probably don't have to worry for a while. The first generation of self-driving cars will start adding these features gradually, and we'll use them as safety features or a more advanced cruise control for a while. It's going to be quite a while before humans are *completely* out of the loop when driving.
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I've used it, it works, and has saved me from a collision with a lead car making a false start in a merge, made a 1000 mile road trip a breeze with adaptive cruise that will even bring you to a stop in heavy traffic , and once alerted me about lane departure while nodding off behind the wheel when i was really tired. It has taken awhile to adjust that the car technology is shadowing my decisions and rea
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That's nice but the simple fact is a lot of people simply aren't responsible enough to drive safely and policing the roads is not effective and doesn't remove them at least here in the UK, where you can kill someone and oops sorry, slap on the wrist.
You like driving, fine, do it on a racetrack or private land is my attitude for the future. Self driving cars will likely be 80-90% safer and even more for cyclists, pedestrians and horse riders etc.
Or the compromise could be the car senses when you've lost conc
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Driving is repetitive unless you go the same place every day.
It is debatable whether it's boring, but come on, everybody you talk to prefers to drive themselves? Does nobody ever even carpool ever? How are you *not* bored when stuck in rush-hour traffic? Are you just never stuck in rush-hour traffic? Because I hate to break it to you, people get stuck in rush-hour traffic all the time.
Then you've got weird luddism. There exist today boxes on wheels controlled by computers. TODAY. They exist. Governm
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Re:THIS I'm OK with. (Score:4, Insightful)
It does help people.
It helps disabled people who can't drive.
It helps blind people.
It helps old people.
It helps young people.
It helps people who haven't passed their driving test.
It helps people who are too tired to drive.
It helps people who are too drunk to drive.
It helps people who shouldn't drive because they are on medication.
It helps people who simply don't want to drive and would rather talk on the phone or do work.
It even helps cyclists and pedestrians because the roads will be safer.
I sincerely look forwards to the day when drivers are legally confined to racetracks and private land.
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Technology is supposed to help horses, not replace horses. Technology in your carriage that helps your horse be a better horse is a good thing. I have been, and will remain of the opinion that attempting to replace horses, literally preventing them from actually drawing the carriage, is a bad thing.
I'm sure that Henry guy got lots of comments like this.
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Why is it a bad thing? let's say for sake of argument that the tech works and it's significantly safer than human drivers. Is it still a bad thing? I read that there are on average 40,000 fatalities due to driving in the US each year. I can only imagine the world wide figure. And that doesn't include devastating accidents where someone is crippled for example and other serious injuries. No solution is perfect but lets say the figures drop to 10,000. Are you still against it? And are you only against
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Marketing (Score:2)
Another "autonomous car" press release? Has it been two hours already?
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I turn 58 at the end of this year. Even if I live to be 158 I will not live to see ubiquitous autonomous vehicles.
I, for one, love driving. Hell, my MOS was 3505 during my second stint because of this. I don't even mind idling in traffic - I love driving. I love automobiles and being in control of a system like that is thrilling - even today. I have absolutely zero at-fault accidents on my record, ever. I do have one speeding ticket from when I was very young but I have no other violations including parking
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$50 m is a rounding error (Score:2)
Manufacturer (Score:2)
I'd worry about the car, not the driver... (Score:1)
I'd be worried more about the car itself being a Chinese knockoff and how it managed to get registered and insured for use in the United States.
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I just recently acquired another new BMW. I went with the 640Li, it's the only time I've ever bothered with a 'bespoke' vehicle, and it is fantastic. I've had one speeding ticket, probably from before you were born, and zero at-fault accidents. I've never had a parking ticket nor the cause of an accident for other people.
I realize your attempt at humor is based on a common trope but, really, the assholes buy an Audi or Lexus or drive beat up old vehicles that aren't fit for the road. Not that all BMW driver
And Dr. Evil says–– (Score:1)
Fifty..... Million..... Dollars....
Let me know when they're going to devote Real Money to it.
Liability (Score:2)
but... but... (Score:2)
I thot they already had that. Aren't they known for going and going and going...
Toyota. Going places unexpected, like brick walls! (Score:1)
At least this time, they'll have a lot harder time paying off people when the programming flings the car into an accident.
$50 million?... (Score:2)
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... that's a piss in the ocean for Toyota.
50 millions over 5 years...
They could just go ahead and say they don't believe in the concept yet.
I mean, 10 million a year must be what Toyota spends on toilet cleaning globally.
Already do (Score:1)
The break fiasco showed their cars already have a mind of their own.
Deer in the head lights (Score:1)