[HN Gopher] Mitsubishi plans to include scene-aware interaction ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Mitsubishi plans to include scene-aware interaction in cars
        
       Author : pseudolus
       Score  : 75 points
       Date   : 2022-02-26 13:36 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
        
       | bob1029 wrote:
       | > can explain itself
       | 
       | I was hoping for some new take on the AI/ML blackbox approach
       | that could allow for us to trace a vehicle decision back to
       | deterministic rules. Ya know, something like SQL.
       | 
       | This is still interesting on the UX side of the house though. A
       | lot of people navigate better this way. It might actually reduce
       | cognitive load and accidents by providing information in a more
       | digestible format.
        
       | black_13 wrote:
        
       | uKVZe85V wrote:
       | > A conventional navigation system would tell the driver to turn
       | right in 100 meters this is not very informative since drivers
       | may not have an accurate sense of distance.
       | 
       | So, this is for the subpopulation of car drivers that have no
       | accurate sense of distance? Mmh, okay.
       | 
       | > - follow the silver car to turn left
       | 
       | > - I can't see it
       | 
       | Not surprising. Colors are somewhat ambiguous, cultural and
       | subjective. Greyish ("silver") is a very common color for a car.
       | At this moment there were several car matching that description.
       | 
       | So, using color, at least in this case, is not accurate.
       | 
       | At least, with a distance, the information is somewhat well-
       | defined.
       | 
       | > - okay follow the silver car in the leftmost lane
       | 
       | That's _another_ silver car.
       | 
       | Wait, what's the benefit of mentioning that car, compared to
       | saying "join the leftmost lane and follow it to turn left"? Or
       | simply, "turn left".
       | 
       | Do they mean it is for drivers that can follow another car but
       | not painted lanes?
       | 
       | What happens in low traffic when there's no other car to follow?
       | 
       | > turn left at the building with a billboard
       | 
       | There are several buildings with a billboard. One at around 100
       | meters, one at around 300 meters.
       | 
       | So, mentioning "a building with a billboard", at least in this
       | case, is not accurate.
       | 
       | At least, with a distance, the information is somewhat well-
       | defined.
       | 
       | > recent breakthroughs in object detection and recognition
       | semantic segmentation motion analysis of dynamic objects and
       | natural language processing technologies our system also makes
       | use of high precision maps
       | 
       | "recent buzzword in buzzword and buzzword buzzword buzzword
       | buzzword of buzzword and buzzword buzzword our system also makes
       | use of buzzword".
       | 
       | > surveillance systems that understand complex scenes and
       | interpret them for humans
       | 
       | Ah, this may be the real deal. No, thanks.
        
         | projektfu wrote:
         | I guess I must be an idiot. I frequently can't tell what turn
         | the navigation system expects me to take and I am never sure if
         | it's really 100ft or more-or-less 100ft, maybe 60, maybe 140.
         | When the navigator tells me I can be in the leftmost 3 lanes
         | for the turn, I usually can't see whether I should be ready to
         | turn left or right. If I can't see the turn, because there is a
         | truck in my way, I will often miss it. But I must be in a
         | subpopulation that doesn't need any support because we're so
         | rare.
        
           | uKVZe85V wrote:
           | You seem irritated. Sorry if you think I caused this.
           | 
           | I also happen to sometimes miss guidance directions (happened
           | a few days ago). Still, I doubt ambiguously referring to
           | environmental features is an actual progress.
           | 
           | My feeling is that in both current and projected systems, the
           | driver will need some experience to figure out the ambiguity.
           | 
           | I also anticipate cases where the AI will mislabel an object
           | and ask to turn left at the X while there's clearly no X, or
           | maybe actually an X but further away, causing misguidance.
        
             | pessimizer wrote:
             | > You seem irritated. Sorry if you think I caused this.
             | 
             | Not that I think you need to apologize, but if-pologies are
             | worse than nothing. They irritate people more.
        
       | ajross wrote:
       | There doesn't seem to be any autonomy technology described. This
       | is an article submitted by Mitsubishi about their work with AI-
       | driven driver direction annunciation. Which sounds cool, but it's
       | not "self-driving" at all. Which makes me question how much of
       | this is actually showing off something interesting and how much
       | is just marketing.
        
         | efitz wrote:
         | I noticed that as well- "where's the bit about self-driving"?
        
       | scoot wrote:
       | The title says "self driving", but the article is about a sat-nav
        
         | dang wrote:
         | We've replaced the article's baity title with representative
         | language from the article.
        
       | p1esk wrote:
       | Here's a video that demonstrates what they built:
       | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t0izXoT_Aoc
        
       | efitz wrote:
       | So the gist of the article is that instead of saying "in five
       | hundred feet, turn right", they've built a nav system that can
       | say things like "follow the black car that is turning right at
       | the tree".
       | 
       | Sounds better than what we have now, which is dumb systems that
       | often repeat stuff unnecessarily and annoyingly: "In a quarter
       | mile, turn right" "In 500 feet, turn right" "Turn right"
       | 
       | I want it to pick one and shut up unless I'm about to miss the
       | turn: "Turn right at the next light" "Are you going to turn or
       | what?"
       | 
       | This would be less annoying and also reduce the amount of
       | assistance my wife feels compelled to provide.
       | 
       | Ed: s/nab/nav/g
        
         | newman8r wrote:
         | > dumb systems that often repeat stuff unnecessarily and
         | annoyingly
         | 
         | yes. the apple navigation app can stop saying "proceed to the
         | route" after 40 or 50 consecutive utterances - 100 is just
         | excessive. It can get annoying during a road trip when you want
         | to randomly pull off to take a look at something.
        
         | dataflow wrote:
         | > dumb systems that often repeat stuff unnecessarily and
         | annoyingly: "In a quarter mile, turn right" "In 500 feet, turn
         | right" "Turn right"
         | 
         | I actually find these super helpful. They're redundant in some
         | cases, but if you ever fail to hear what they say the first
         | time for whatever reason, or if there are multiple streets
         | close to each other, the redundancy is incredibly helpful.
        
         | raylad wrote:
         | Apple's Maps navigation already does something like this. I
         | much prefer it to any other that I've tried.
         | 
         | No more "500 feet". Instead it says things like:
         | 
         | "Go through this light, and at the next one, turn right."
         | 
         | Not sure if its routes are always the best but I tend to pick
         | it anyway because of the more intelligible instructions.
        
           | throwawayboise wrote:
           | My problem with Apple Maps is in the visual presentation.
           | It's like it changes scale and animation speed as I get
           | closer to the turn, which throws off my mental calibration of
           | map speed and distance to actual, and I end up missing a lot
           | of turns because I am closer than I judged based on what's
           | showing on the map. I don't seem to have this problem with
           | Google Maps, for whatever reason, but maybe it's just because
           | I mostly use Google and that's what I'm used to.
        
         | Tagbert wrote:
         | On a related note, I would like to be able to tell the nav
         | systems to shut up about directions until I get close to the
         | destination. I don't need to know how to get out of my
         | driveway, I only need to know which exit to take on the freeway
         | and what building it is on that street.
         | 
         | Maybe if there were just a voice command: "Hey, Widget, mute
         | nav for 15 minutes."
        
           | alistairSH wrote:
           | Or just save a "known roads zone" setting - drag a circle out
           | from your house/office/etc and that's it.
        
         | code_duck wrote:
         | I pretty much hate the robot voice telling me what to do. Some
         | people I know don't seem to be able to navigate without it. I
         | grew up with paper maps, and the biggest advantage of GPS maps
         | for me is being able to find out where I am, and then figure
         | out where I need to turn to get where I need to go. Back in the
         | day, it used to be finding streets in the index and then
         | looking them up on the map grid. My own navigation works like
         | "OK, continue down the street, I'm going to cross this one
         | street, and then take a right at the next major intersection,
         | which is named [whatever]".
        
         | KennyBlanken wrote:
         | > Sounds better than what we have now, which is dumb systems
         | that often repeat stuff unnecessarily and annoyingly: "In a
         | quarter mile, turn right" "In 500 feet, turn right" "Turn
         | right"
         | 
         | Apple maps says things like "at the next traffic light, turn
         | right onto Crankyoldman Street." It's been a while since I used
         | Google Maps.
         | 
         | You can just turn off prompts entirely. Between CarPlay /
         | Android Auto or just having your phone in a cradle relatively
         | high-up on your dash, voice prompts aren't necessary if they're
         | annoying you that much.
        
         | Tempest1981 wrote:
         | I always wanted a countdown timer/graphic when approaching a
         | turn, indicating seconds: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, turn!
         | 
         | It's harder to reason about 0.2 mi, 700 ft, 400 ft, 250 ft, esp
         | when streets are close together, or at different approach
         | speeds.
        
           | KennyBlanken wrote:
           | You speed can change dramatically. A timer makes less sense
           | than showing distance.
        
         | hammock wrote:
         | >I want it to pick one and shut up unless I'm about to miss the
         | turn: "Turn right at the next light" "Are you going to turn or
         | what?"
         | 
         | Easy solution here would be to have some feedback mechanism for
         | the nav. Surprised it doesn't exist already. I miss what the
         | nav says about half the time, because I'm paying attention to
         | other things. But if i could say "ok, got it" or press a button
         | that says "ok, got it" the first time she gives a new
         | direction, that would shut up her reminders, that seems ideal.
        
           | xahrepap wrote:
           | Also, I want to be able to specify areas I'm familiar with
           | somehow. So instead of it telling me turn by turn how to
           | leave my neighborhood, for example, it just says "leave the
           | neighborhood going east". Then it could say "you want to be
           | going north on I-whatever, you'll end up North of CITY." And
           | then it shuts up until I've gone past CITY on I-whatever.
        
             | efitz wrote:
             | This is an awesome idea.
        
             | robszumski wrote:
             | This seems like such an easy win to me. Oh this person has
             | driven the beginning of this route 500 times, just tell
             | them to get on the interstate heading downtown.
             | 
             | Plus just turn the "turn in 200ft" to "turn in two blocks".
             | None of this needs fancy sensors.
        
             | agentwiggles wrote:
             | I always want this when I'm close to home. I know where I
             | am once I'm within a mile or so of my house, shut the hell
             | up and let me drive. (Usually, I just stop navigation once
             | I'm on a familiar highway, but it would be nice if I didn't
             | have to manage it.)
             | 
             | Similarly, I'd like to be able to say something like "get
             | me to I-71 North" or similar and have it take me to the
             | nearest exit for that direction.
        
           | nerdponx wrote:
           | Apple Maps does actually provide directions like "go through
           | this traffic light" and "at the stop sign, turn left". It's
           | significantly better than Google.
        
             | hammock wrote:
             | Google Maps does this too, using landmarks that are already
             | on the map. They say "turn left at the Exxon" and "turn
             | right after the pet store."
        
               | sneak wrote:
               | I always assume those are just paid placement (ads), not
               | any more useful to me as a driver than "turn right at the
               | next light".
               | 
               | It's the main reason I won't use Google Maps any longer.
        
           | mrfusion wrote:
           | That's an amazing idea and simple! I miss directions all the
           | time too.
        
       | sjg007 wrote:
       | Great, just what I want, a back seat driver.
        
       | anxrn wrote:
       | This article is written by Mitsubishi engineers but in the style
       | of a news report with a sensationalized headline ("At last" ...).
       | I'm noticing more of these - seems like a new (?) marketing
       | trend. Nothing wrong with that objective, but does throw me off -
       | I typically expect hard tech from the Spectrum.
        
         | lowwave wrote:
         | >I typically expect hard tech from the Spectrum Maybe this one
         | is bit more to your interest:
         | 
         | https://yewtu.be/watch?v=JamDa-qNjPI
        
         | rexpop wrote:
         | > "Suits make a corporate comeback," says the New York Times.
         | Why does this sound familiar? Maybe because the suit was also
         | back in February, September 2004, June 2004, March 2004,
         | September 2003, November 2002, April 2002, and February 2002.
         | 
         | > Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back?
         | Because PR firms tell them to.
         | 
         | http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
        
       | beebeepka wrote:
       | Interesting. A combination of HUD and voice help might work
       | better than what we have now. Of course, a good HUD would likely
       | be ultimately better but much harder to implement
        
       | EarthIsHome wrote:
       | From the video:
       | 
       | > Communication between humans and machines is hindered by a lack
       | of shared awareness.
       | 
       | Yeah... by the fact that humans aren't aware that AI is just a
       | bunch of 1s and 0s and not _actually_ aware. There 's no
       | intelligence here.
       | 
       | > Scene understanding
       | 
       | ... it cannot understand. It can only match. It does not
       | understand in the way humans understand.
        
         | adamisom wrote:
         | Beware selective reductionism! If you want to be reductionist,
         | you can do that about anything. Humans are ultimately quarks,
         | there's no free will, and we have imperatives and rules
         | governing our behavior on every scale. There's more nuanced
         | discussion to be had but I think it should start with 'and why
         | doesn't that reductionism also apply to humans (with a slight
         | twist)?'
        
         | judge2020 wrote:
         | > It does not understand in the way humans understand.
         | 
         | And?
         | 
         | If it can match to a point where it knows exactly what
         | everything is, and presumably is capable of (or eventually will
         | be able to) making decisions based on that information well
         | enough to obey the rules of the road, then it doesn't really
         | matter if it's using trillions of simple logic gates or a human
         | brain.
        
           | dbspin wrote:
           | That's not @earthishome's point.
           | 
           | Human understanding enables inference. Say your full self
           | driving car is driving down the freeway and an enormous
           | explosion / forest fire / volcano erupts in the distance,
           | it'll blissfully drive towards the disaster - because it has
           | no comprehension of what the orange sky, shaking ground,
           | fleeing people imply.
           | 
           | This is a extreme example but the more we learn about driving
           | the more we realise our ability to do it is based on
           | inference not only about the world, but about the intentions
           | of other drivers.
           | 
           | There's no 'decision' being made by a self driving car - it's
           | matching its predefined set of visual inputs to a set of
           | behaviours. It can never scale to adapt to the unknown - even
           | in principle.
        
             | judge2020 wrote:
             | Eventually the cars will indeed be good about determining
             | the intentions of other drivers, not by any sort of body
             | language we might be able to instinctively infer, but by
             | learning what people often do and playing out those
             | scenarios, ensuring it can handle either outcome. We aren't
             | looking for 'perfect', even in the advent of human lives
             | being at risk when going 80 mph on the freeway, it just
             | needs to handle events with an outcome of an order of
             | magnitude fewer incidents/deaths than the current paradigm
             | of human drivers.
             | 
             | > It can never scale to adapt to the unknown - even in
             | principle.
             | 
             | But the human will be able to fill in for the inference
             | cars don't have. Even if we get to level 5 where there's no
             | steering wheel, the human can still control the car's
             | destination and what sort of operation modes the car is in;
             | if there is some event and full-scale panic ensues, the AI
             | driver isn't going to hit people in the street - either the
             | human can instruct it to turn around, or they can get out
             | of the car, since even now it's not really safe try to
             | weave between humans in the street to reach your
             | destination.
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | chrisseaton wrote:
         | > AI is just a bunch of 1s and 0s and not actually aware.
         | There's no intelligence here.
         | 
         | And the human brain is just a bundle of electrical signals.
         | Why's that any different?
        
           | bangkoksbest wrote:
           | More is different. Reductionism does not actually explain
           | qualitative behavior.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | hprotagonist wrote:
           | > And the human brain is just a bundle of electrical signals.
           | 
           | the more we look the more we find that this is not the case.
           | and i don't have to invoke any philosophy here, just remind
           | you that neurotransmitter modulation and glial cells exist.
        
             | kylevedder wrote:
             | Are you saying neurotransmitter modulation and glial cells
             | cannot be represented by electrical signals?
             | 
             | Honestly, the root of all this is whether you were trying
             | to claim that the brain is doing super-Turing computation
             | or not. Either
             | 
             | 1) it's not, then you can't tell me Turing machines cannot
             | do the same computation (and by extension neural nets can
             | approximate it)
             | 
             | 2) it is, then prove it and congratulations you have made a
             | extraordinarily important and fundamental step forward in
             | computer science.
             | 
             | My money is on 1.
        
               | hprotagonist wrote:
               | > Are you saying neurotransmitter modulation and glial
               | cells cannot be represented by electrical signals?
               | 
               | Certainly neither of them are action potentials, which
               | are usually the (exclusive and therefore imo incomplete)
               | basis for the mental model of people who claim things
               | like "the brain is just electrical signals." No. It's
               | not. It's a vastly more complicated system of organ(s)
               | than that even if you're willing to draw a line in the
               | sand between brain and environment -- and that's no easy
               | feat itself!
        
               | kylevedder wrote:
               | At the end of the day, saying "it's just electrical
               | signals" is a crude way of saying "it's using a model of
               | computation that we understand and can replicate". The
               | first claim may not be strictly true, but it seems you're
               | implying second one is.
               | 
               | This is relevant because the universal function
               | approximaters we are training everyday are capable of
               | representing this computational model, undermining the
               | argument that there is somehow a difference between the
               | model of computation done in the brain and the
               | computation done by neural networks.
        
               | hprotagonist wrote:
               | > At the end of the day, saying "it's just electrical
               | signals" is a crude way of saying "it's using a model of
               | computation that we understand and can replicate".
               | 
               | oh. well, that's just a naive embrace of the andy grove
               | fallacy.
               | 
               | as of this moment, the brain's computational model (and
               | if there is one, and if so how many) is neither well
               | understood nor replicable.
               | 
               | it's almost a category error to describe the process as
               | "reverse engineering", but even if that's an appropriate
               | mental model, it turns out that reverse engineering an
               | evolved system that's taken 4.5 billion years and has had
               | no human design additions at all has very little in
               | common with any similar approach you could take in, say,
               | inspecting the trained weights of a neural network to
               | back out what's going on.
        
               | Dylan16807 wrote:
               | > oh. well, that's just a naive embrace of the andy grove
               | fallacy.
               | 
               | No it's not. That's about feasibility, and the comment
               | was not about feasibility. It was about turing vs. super-
               | turing.
               | 
               | Go ahead and assume the reverse engineers get 4.5
               | trillion years or something. That wasn't the point of the
               | " _actually_ aware " rebuttal.
        
           | lkschubert8 wrote:
           | This is the core of the materialism vs dualism debate.
        
           | anonymousab wrote:
           | > Why's that any different?
           | 
           | Consciousness, sentience and sapience. Which is to say, that
           | is indeed the multitrillion dollar question.
        
             | chrisseaton wrote:
             | But what makes you think binary vs analog is the key
             | difference?
        
               | Cerium wrote:
               | To date, all systems composed of ones and zeros are not
               | generally intelligent.
        
               | chrisseaton wrote:
               | Is that why they're not intelligent? Or an entirely
               | unrelated factor? Would anything change if you
               | implemented exactly the same algorithms on a decimal
               | computer instead? I don't think it would.
        
               | Cerium wrote:
               | No, the ones and zeros are irrelevant, but like "leaves
               | of three, let it be" you won't accidentally identify
               | something as intelligent, just like you won't
               | accidentally identify a plant as safe to touch. In both
               | cases, the intelligence or the urushiol allergy are
               | coincidal with the rule of thumb.
        
             | kylevedder wrote:
             | >Consciousness
             | 
             | What makes something conscious?
             | 
             | Follow up: is that answer well-defined (it's not using
             | other nebulous concepts to avoid having to rigorously
             | define it), and does it accept all of the things you think
             | should be called "conscious" and reject all of the things
             | you think should not be?
        
       | netsharc wrote:
       | Now I want a parking sensor with the cockpit voice that reads out
       | numbers as you land "One hundred. Fifty. Forty. Thirty. Twenty.
       | Retard, retard!"
        
         | fouc wrote:
         | I think you've nailed the best possible UX
        
       | daverol wrote:
       | I had a chatty passenger like this in my car once - never again!
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-02-26 23:01 UTC)