[HN Gopher] Toyota halts all self-driving e-Palette vehicles aft...
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Toyota halts all self-driving e-Palette vehicles after Olympic
village accident
Author : georgecmu
Score : 64 points
Date : 2021-08-29 17:04 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| nashashmi wrote:
| The executive is way too polite compared to the nonsense we are
| used to hearing from Elon Musk.
| brianwawok wrote:
| > The vehicle had stopped at a T junction and was about to turn
| under manual control of the operator, who was using the vehicle's
| joystick control, when the vehicle hit the athlete going at
| around 1 or 2 kilometres an hour, Toyoda said
|
| A driver ran over someone while turning. Not sure this has
| anything to do with self driving except for the click bait?
| dicroce wrote:
| If a remote human controlled car accident causes them to end
| development of self driving, then they were looking to do that
| anyway.
| ugjka wrote:
| This is Japan and their culture. If this happened to Tesla,
| Elon would just tweet something
| josefx wrote:
| The headline is click bait. They only stopped use at the
| Olympic village.
| gregoriol wrote:
| Maybe the manual controls have a problem, or the mix of self-
| driving/manual caused a problem? The article doesn't say much,
| but it may have to do with the design of the system (and not
| the self-driving itself)
| krisoft wrote:
| > The article doesn't say much, but it may have to do with
| the design of the system
|
| I'm thinking the same. Obviously I don't know nothing
| factual. Was looking at this video of how the shuttles look
| from the inside: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp9DNV0zGC8
|
| I observed these things:
|
| - it looks like at least on this video the shuttles appear to
| be in manual operation.
|
| - the A pillar is crazy thick. One could hide a whole circus
| with elephants behind it from the driver.
|
| - maybe because of the above, the driver has video screens in
| front of them.
|
| - there appears to be two on-board attendants (a hostess and
| a driver it seems)
| wnkrshm wrote:
| I can image that the joystick-operated mode should still have
| the safety overrides from a self-driven mode and they aren't
| sure why those safety systems didn't prevent the collision.
| 5faulker wrote:
| Reading this while eating.
| rnjesus wrote:
| you can't just stop the story there..
| gjkood wrote:
| "In a YouTube video, Toyota Chief Executive Akio Toyoda
| apologized for the incident and said he offered to meet the
| person but was unable to do so."
|
| Is it just me or does it feel refreshing to hear a CEO accepting
| some responsibility involving one of it's products regardless of
| what the investigation may finally reveal as the root cause.
|
| The buck does indeed stop at his desk.
| oconnor663 wrote:
| > The vehicle had stopped at a T junction and was about to turn
| under manual control of the operator, who was using the vehicle's
| joystick control, when the vehicle hit the athlete going at
| around 1 or 2 kilometres an hour, Toyoda said.
|
| So...this was _not_ a self-driving accident? Seems like a pretty
| important detail to be buried halfway down the article.
| phreeza wrote:
| From the initial reporting it sounded like there was some kind
| of "just go" button that overrode the safeties, in which case I
| would have attributed it to poor self-driving design anyway.
| But "joystick control" sounds like the driver was much more
| actively engaged, which is the right thing to require in
| disengagement situation in my view.
| dmix wrote:
| All of the recent self driving cars have an override method
| so the driver can take over. There's no getting around that.
|
| The only thing you can blame here is the human driver not
| trusting the system which did make the right choice. You
| could blame training but again it's not the software to
| blame.
|
| This is the second article that obscured that fact.
| trhway wrote:
| >self driving cars have an override method so the driver
| can take over. There's no getting around that.
|
| you'd expect that self-driving car would have a driver
| assist like on a regular car which prevents or warns about
| hitting objects/people.
|
| In general, seeing Toyota's self-driving cars around MV,
| they have too few sensors for my taste (compare to Google,
| Apple, and a bunch of other SD cars driving around). It
| seems to me that the hardware companies don't get it, and
| thus only buying the tech like GM Cruise is the possible
| way for them to move forward.
| phreeza wrote:
| I agree that some kind of fallback is unavoidable at the
| current level of technology, but the design is critical.
| Having a "just go" button that disables the safeties and
| let's the self-driving continue against its own better
| judgement is very convenient when it works, but terrible
| design because it trains the safety driver to just always
| hit it. Having some more active engagement like a joystick,
| that forces the safety driver to engage with the situation,
| seems much more reasonable.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| This has been a sadly common clickbait/FUD tactic since
| self driving launched. Another example: https://www.reddit.
| com/r/savedyouaclick/comments/d35vp9/self...
| jsight wrote:
| Yeah, it is an important detail. But it'd be nice if we had
| some more details available, like whether or not it was common
| to have to override the car.
|
| I'd expect that might be common at these crossings, and they
| may have found a significant issue with something like
| warning/override fatigue or with the controller interface.
|
| It makes sense to stop them until they can figure out with
| certainty why the operator may have made this mistake.
| lumost wrote:
| Could be a safety problem with joystick control. If they deemed
| the manual control interface a safety risk it could require
| heavy redesign.
| notahacker wrote:
| It's pretty ambiguous from that wording whether the "self
| driving" was at fault or not (if a vehicle _had_ stopped and
| the manual operative was _about_ to do something it could
| easily imply the vehicle 's computer then behaved unpredictably
| in a way the joystick didn't cancel out). Possibly because
| Toyota themselves haven't analysed the telemetry enough to know
| what caused it yet
| bserge wrote:
| Apparently not, from all the other articles I read.
|
| Putting them on halt... Goddamn, never underestimate the power
| of the media.
|
| If all these fuckers report it as "self driving car hits blind
| man", you're fucked, not them for misrepresenting the facts.
| cge wrote:
| Except it appears that Toyota itself is pushing the anti-
| self-driving line here as well. I'm certainly skeptical of
| some claims about self-driving, can understand that there are
| differences in being apologetic, and can understand the
| choice to suspend operations, but it's an odd jump to have
| your CEO say that this incident "shows that autonomous
| vehicles are not yet realistic for normal roads."
| toiletaccount wrote:
| They aren't exactly leading the pack in self driving tech,
| why not try slowing down the whole race after a good
| stumble?
| bserge wrote:
| I'd chalk it up to the Japanese way of doing things, but
| I'm not sure.
| shawnz wrote:
| Perhaps he is trying to get ahead of any arguments like,
| "the drivers weren't paying attention due to over-reliance
| on the software"
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >Putting them on halt... Goddamn, never underestimate the
| power of the media.
|
| I'd chalk this up more to Toyota. They are an extremely risk
| averse company.
|
| ""It shows that autonomous vehicles are not yet realistic for
| normal roads," (Akio Toyoda) said." What other CEO do you
| know that would straight up admit their technology was at
| fault and is not ready for widespread use?
| vnchr wrote:
| Maybe one who doesn't really want that company effort to be
| successful so that resources can be justifiably redirected
| to efforts he favors?
| marcinzm wrote:
| >What other CEO do you know that would straight up admit
| their technology was at fault and is not ready for
| widespread use?
|
| One whose company is behind in the field and wants to cause
| government and media scrutiny of competitors. Similar to
| how Microsoft keeps bringing up the dangers of AI and ML.
| Valid or not the reason for bringing it up is because it
| hurts competitors more than it hurts them.
| bserge wrote:
| When it comes to Japan, quite a few. They're surprisingly
| eager to take all the blame in hopes of pacifying the media
| and people.
| diskzero wrote:
| As an outsider, I have always respected the Japanese
| tradition of leaders accepting blame and making
| apologies. It seems that this would short-circuit the
| outrage driven media cycles that thrive in America. Is
| this the case in Japan? Do these apologies have a postive
| affect?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Corporate malfeasance manifests itself behind closed
| doors.
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/21/toshiba_effissimo_
| met...
|
| > Toshiba's first big mess was the 2015 accountancy
| scandal in which it admitted to over-stating revenue by
| $1.2 billion. Next came a mess at Toshiba's US-based
| nuclear power plant business, which went so far over
| budget on some projects that the company had to sell its
| NAND flash chip joint venture with Western Digital to
| raise desperately needed cash. Those two messes saw
| Toshiba pledge to improve its corporate governance. Ahead
| of the company's 2020 annual general meeting, activist
| investors sought to accelerate that change by proposing
| the election of new officers untainted by the company's
| troubles. That effort failed, and one of the activist
| investors -- Singaporean fund management company
| Effissimo capital management -- smelled a rat. It sought
| to investigate what it thought were irregularities in the
| way the meeting was conducted.
|
| > Toshiba's report from that investigation was released
| ten days ago, and its findings [PDF] include an explosive
| account of Toshiba and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade
| and Industry conspiring to "beat up" Effissimo by
| threatening to act under Japan's foreign investment laws,
| before suggesting new governance-related appointments
| that suited Toshiba more than Effissimo. The
| investigation also alleges that Japanese Prime Minister
| Yoshihide Suga was aware of the plan to use the Ministry
| to stymie Effissimo.
|
| https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/02/15/business/cor
| por...
|
| > Toshiba Corp. said Friday that a subsidiary booked
| fictitious sales of Y=43.5 billion in 26 transactions
| recorded only on paper... Nine companies including
| Toshiba IT-Services were found to have been involved in
| "round-tripping transactions" that did not involve any
| commercial goods or end users, according to information
| mainly from a report about an in-house survey involving
| lawyers and certified accountants.
| gundmc wrote:
| > "It shows that autonomous vehicles are not yet realistic for
| normal roads," he said.
|
| Yes, clearly this wasn't Toyota's mistake and is instead a
| reflection of the entire industry. Nice spin.
| plutonorm wrote:
| They are losing to Tesla and they know it. They would rather
| trash the whole industry than let someone else win
| curiousgal wrote:
| > Tesla
|
| > Self-driving
|
| Pick one.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| You might not like _how_ Tesla is deploying self-driving,
| but it would be silly to challenge that they are at minimum
| tied for the lead right now.
| mdoms wrote:
| Are you saying that autonomous vehicles are ready for normal
| roads?
| minhazm wrote:
| The point here is that this incident doesn't show anything
| about autonomous cars, good or bad. This car was actually
| under a manual operators control at the time of the accident.
| Also Toyota's tech is not reflective of everyone else's tech,
| there are many different approaches and they're at very
| different stages of development.
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(page generated 2021-08-29 23:01 UTC)