# Dr. Gill Pratt, Toyota Research Institute CEO, on challenges facing autonomous vehicles



## WeirdBob (Jan 2, 2016)

*2017 Consumer Electronics Show (CES2017) Press Conference - Dr. Gill Pratt*

_http://corporatenews.pressroom.toyota.com/releases/2017-ces-press-conference-pratt.htm_

*Highlights*

"How safe is safe enough? Society tolerates a lot of human error. We are, after all, only human. But we expect machines to be much better."

"What if the machine was twice as safe as a human-driven car and 17.5 thousand lives were lost in the US every year? Would we accept such autonomy? Historically, humans have shown nearly zero-tolerance or injury or death caused by flaws in a machine."

"None of us in the automobile or IT industries are close to achieving true level 5 autonomy."

"It will take many years of machine learning and many more miles than anyone has logged of both simulated &#8230;and real-world testing to achieve the perfection required for Level 5 autonomy."

"Considerable research shows that the longer a driver is disengaged from the task of driving, the longer it takes to re-orient."

"It is possible that level 3 may be as difficult to accomplish as level 4."

"There is evidence that some drivers may deliberately test the (L2) system's limits&#8230;essentially mis-using a device in a way it was not intended to be used."

"Human nature, not surprisingly, remains one our biggest concerns."

"There are indications that many drivers over-trust the (L2) system."

"When someone over-trusts a level 2 system's capabilities they may mentally disconnect their attention from the driving environment and wrongly assume the level 2 system is more capable than it is. We at TRI worry that over-trust may accumulate over many miles of handoff-free driving."

"Paradoxically, the less frequent the handoffs, the worse the tendency to over-trust may become."

"TRI has been taking a two-track approach, simultaneously developing a system we call Guardian, designed to make human driving safer&#8230;while working on L4 and 5 systems that we call Chauffeur. The perception and planning software in Guardian and Chauffeur are basically the same. The difference is that Guardian only engages when needed, while Chauffeur is engaged, all of the time during an autonomous drive."

"In Guardian, the driver is meant to be in control of the car at all times except in those cases where Guardian anticipates or identifies a pending incident and briefly employs a corrective response."


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## RamzFanz (Jan 31, 2015)

WeirdBob said:


> Historically, humans have shown nearly zero-tolerance or injury or death caused by flaws in a machine.


Dude, that's HILARIOUS! Thanks for the post. Thank god we don't fly anymore.


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## WeirdBob (Jan 2, 2016)

RamzFanz said:


> Dude, that's HILARIOUS! Thanks for the post. Thank god we don't fly anymore.


Planes don't crash very often. But when they do, and the cause is mechanical failure, no one is blowing it off.


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## ABC123DEF (Jun 9, 2015)

RamzFanz said:


> Dude, that's HILARIOUS! Thanks for the post. Thank god we don't fly anymore.


The major thing with flying though, I think, is that the space between aircraft after take-off is MUCH easier to deal with. There are no wandering items to run into (road debris, etc) or constantly changing conditions other than weather/turbulence. There aren't any deer to avoid. No people will cross in front of a plane. No planes will run traffic lights. No child will run into a flight path chasing a ball. A plane can avoid lots of weather above the clouds. There's no need for constant stop-and-go flying as flight paths are the wild blue yonder. Are there even as many planes to manage as there are cars???

There simply aren't the same kinds of hazards as one would encounter in a car on the ground and probably why flight tech has advanced so much over the years. Even though computers are highly utilized by the plane as well as air traffic control systems, they also go through stringent pre-trips/safety checks (by humans) prior to each takeoff to make sure they're as airworthy as possible. These reasons are some of several that plane travel remains the safest mode of transportation.


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## Oscar Levant (Aug 15, 2014)

“It will take many years of machine learning and many more miles than anyone has logged of both simulated …and real-world testing to achieve the perfection required for Level 5 autonomy.”


This is the catch -22, in order for DCs to get "there", they need to be tested in the real world, making mistakes, killing people towards that Level 5 goal, which, of course, no politician will ever allow to happen.

The long and short of it folks, there is no way to get there from here without a whole new infrastructure. They can start by building a new city, somewhere, which such an infrastructure, and slowly, like evolution replacing a defective species, with a new one, and a new one, over many years, will it all happen. But, by then, they will discover anti-gravity, and DLCs become a moot point.


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## Jermin8r89 (Mar 10, 2016)

Oscar Levant said:


> "It will take many years of machine learning and many more miles than anyone has logged of both simulated &#8230;and real-world testing to achieve the perfection required for Level 5 autonomy."
> 
> This is the catch -22, in order for DCs to get "there", they need to be tested in the real world, making mistakes, killing people towards that Level 5 goal, which, of course, no politician will ever allow to happen.
> 
> The long and short of it folks, there is no way to get there from here without a whole new infrastructure. They can start by building a new city, somewhere, which such an infrastructure, and slowly, like evolution replacing a defective species, with a new one, and a new one, over many years, will it all happen. But, by then, they will discover anti-gravity, and DLCs become a moot point.


All true. Except we need to go to space as we will need more jobs afterwards.


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