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Honda claims it will launch the first Level 3 autonomous production car in March

91 points by evo_9 6y ago

olivermarks 6y ago
I've cynically always assumed when L3A vehicles are genuinely ready for mass production they will first be sold in a 3rd world 'test dummy' location with lax regulation and a loose approach to human life. I find it hard to believe L3AV's will be launched at scale in litigious western cultures- including Japan- until there has been a lot more 'real world' mileage and experiences to iron out the kinks...
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Tesla has already launched a beta of their Level 3 vehicles on American roads and is promising to have it rolled out completely by end of year. The big problem with testing in 3rd world countries is infrastructure is far different from in the US/ EU/ Japan so it's not a great proving ground. When you have cities where you have to deal with chaotic streets packed with people and slow moving cross traffic you need to just kind of push your way through, autonomous vehicles are going to struggle.
  - olivermarks 6y ago
    https://youtu.be/x4fdUx6d4QM https://youtu.be/x4fdUx6d4QM
- qznc 6y ago
  Level 3 tech is expensive. You can only sell it where people are rich enough to buy luxury cars.
randunel 6y ago
> Honda has just claimed that it will launch the world's first Level 3 autonomous production car in March 2021 The title needs to be changed, as nobody's beaten anyone, yet.
- avs733 6y ago
  >Japan's government has awarded a safety certification to Honda's autonomy tech called Traffic Jam Pilot. I don't think that is an entirely fair representation. The claim you are referencing in that sentence appears to be about when they will launch. They seem to clearly be the first to actually achieve a certification. Which is what the title seems to be referring too. We can discuss about the potentially too close relationship between the Japanese government and companies, but the certification is the certification and is a fairly objective measure.
  - gpm 6y ago
    Waymo has had the approval of authorities to drive cars with no driver at all for quite awhile, if we're competing on "whose piece of paper says they can do the most" honda did not win.
    - avs733 6y ago
      Waymo isn't a car manufacturer and isn't selling vehicles to people
avs733 6y ago
Honestly, no one should be surprised by this. If we look t the history of automotive development and manufacturing over the last 40-50 years, every major change has been 'made real' by Japanese automanufacturers. That doesn't mean they are first to market, but it typically means they are first to market with something that works for the main stream. This includes manufacturing techniques, platform engineering, hybrids, navigation and in car computing, etc. They are just quiet about it. In part, this seems to be cultural, in part it seems to be where our major news comes from and the fact that it rarely reports on stories in other languages (and even more rarely reports on them well). There have been many discusisons on HN of the goods and bads of Japanese work culture, but one possible outcome of that hierarchy and control being a longer term strategic focus, and internal commitments to quiet & purposeful innovation.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  The Japanese made some good advancements in manufacturing technology and all the ancillary systems you need to make a low displacement 4-banger palatable to the mass market (ohc and distributorless ignition come to mind) but your comment is just fanboy-ism masquerading as history. The Japaneses didn't really bring electronic systems and fuel injection into the world faster than anyone else. They clung to their vacuum line spaghetti control systems embarrassingly far into the 80s. They also got blind-sided hard by the minivan and the midsize SUV.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    SUVs are an uniquely American-originated thing. Let's be real, 3/4 of SUV owners don't need the benefits of an SUV.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      3/4 of car owners could get by with a moped. Can and "should do so despite being able to afford otherwise" are very different things.
  - avs733 6y ago
blakesterz 6y ago
"The company promises the tech will be on the road early next year. Autonomous driving technology has proven to be a lot more difficult to bring to market than any of the major automakers seemed to have planned for." I honestly don't understand how this has proved to be "a lot more difficult to bring to market than any of the major automakers..." I'm not an expert, by any measure, but this seemed to be a nearly impossible thing to bring to market anytime soon. The technology seems impossibly hard, sure, but more importantly this is something that is new and looks super scary to most people. Every single time one of these things fail it's going to make headlines, and that's going to make it even scarier. I just can't believe Honda (or anyone else) got this right so fast. Even if they're like 95% of the way to having it perfect (or whatever the measure might be), that last 5% seems like it's going to be REALLY hard to get right without some serious trouble and some bad PR.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  Well one issue is that too much of this development has been one sided. What needs to be done is force standardization of road markings and signaling and correct it where it is not compliant. So these systems have had to accept the fact that ideal conditions never exist. The easiest opportunity in the US would have been to dress up the HOV and Express lanes and use them. They have controlled access and are specifically marked already to distinguish them from other lanes. however too many seem bent on doing it all at once for everywhere. The first three tiers are not difficult. This claim by Honda doesn't not provide any more details other than they got a certification. We do not know if anyone else even applied for it or exactly what it entails.
  - lallysingh 6y ago
    How's this different than better maps in the car? Auto update them and you'll be in good shape.
  - voqv 6y ago
    > The first three tiers are not difficult. Why is that? Afaik at least according to European and Japanese [1] laws, L3 is the first level where the larger liability of the OEM comes into play. That is because the driver can remove his hands from the wheel and therefore will need significantly more time to prevent an accident. [1] https://hsfnotes.com/cav/2019/06/06/japan-allows-level-3-automated-vehicles-on-public-roads/ https://hsfnotes.com/cav/2019/06/06/japan-allows-level-3-aut...
davedx 6y ago
If the carmaker was "Tesla" not "Honda" then this would not have as many upvotes by the HN crowd Fact: this is not available yet so nobody has beaten anyone
baggy_trough 6y ago
Given how terrible their lane holding technology is in a 4 year old car, and how their collision detection alert constantly false alarms on white cars coming the other direction on sunny days, I'm not going to be using this any time soon.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  I have a 2021 model year Honda with the Honda Sensing package and it's awful. It can't hold lane position on a straight and level freeway, which is compulsory. There's a specific place on the freeway near my home where the car slams on the brakes every time, if I leave the ACC engaged. In the city (of Berkeley) it freaks out constantly about oncoming cars in their own lanes on curves or parked cars to the right of narrow driving lanes. Sometimes it just slams on the brakes if I'm pulling up behind a car at a walking pace at a red signal. If Honda delivers L3 driving six months from now, it would be a huge leap over what they are selling today.
- eis 6y ago
  I concur. The safety features of my 2019 Accord are pretty worthless. The lane keep assist works in maybe 20% of cases and once even tried to stear me into a barrier, the collision detection like you said has many false positives, the rear parking sensor didn't detect a huge rock wall which made me hit it while reversing because I got used to rely on the beeping sound, the app that lets you track the car's location is so full of bugs it's not even funny, the Android Auto implementation for Maps likes to bug out... ah I could go on and on, the problems with the electronics are endless. And now they are supposed to suddenly have autonomous cars which is several orders of magnitude more difficult to do than all the stuff they couldn't implement properly so far? Sorry but I am extremely sceptical. Not that I expect any other car manufacturer to get it right any time soon either.
josefresco 6y ago
Honda has spent decades building consumer trust based on safety and quality. This has me suspecting that many consumers will trust them, over Tesla or another newly established brand when it comes to autonomous driving. Personally I'll take "works ok but is bulletproof" over "cutting edge but buggy" any day.
- imeron 6y ago
  Bulletproof on Japanese roads where immaculate paint is given or also on rural third world country roads?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - mrtnmcc 6y ago
    That's a key distinction, "the road" is an ambiguity that these car companies love to deploy.
  - josefresco 6y ago
    Personally I trust that before Honda rolls this tech out in the United States, it will be in fact bulletproof. Or at least that's my perception as a US consumer who has owned multiple Honda products. Given what I read about Tesla, they'd most likely blame the roads, the driver or simply lie about the capabilities and push forward because "it's safer than humans!".
  - grecy 6y ago
    > or also on rural third world country roads? I drove 40,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina and 54,000 miles around Africa [1]. From experience, I can tell you the vast majority of vehicles sold in the developed world wouldn't last a couple of months on 'rural third world country roads'. The potholes, corrugations, mud, dust and everything else are intense. For eg, this is how I crossed the Democratic Republic of Congo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV8V3GdOcPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV8V3GdOcPU [1] youtube.com/theroadchoseme
bryanlarsen 6y ago
Tesla full self-driving beta is Level 3, and it's currently driving on the roads in a very small percentage of customer Teslas. https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+fsd+beta https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+fsd+beta That being said, Level 3 has limited utility. If a driver needs to take over at any time, that means they need to be taking over in milliseconds, so it means that they need to be 100% focused on everything. Level 3 is a fancy cruise control. Level 4 & 5 are the ones that will fundamentally change driving.
- legolas2412 6y ago
  From this article (https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2020/11/11/honda-traffic-jam-pilot-offers-standby-self-driving-by-march-2021/?sh=26af78a82fd4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2020/11/11/honda-...): "Most importantly, they allow you to take all attention off the road — you can do e-mail or read a book, and do not have to watch the road. When traffic opens up again, they alert you and you start driving. " It looks like they have level 4 and are calling it level 3?
  - udfalkso 6y ago
    Sounds like it's "level 4" in slow bumper to bumper traffic only. I'd trust Tesla Autopilot similarly in that situation as well.
    - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      People already almost entirely disengage from driving in slow traffic, about 1:20 drivers in traffic queues I walked past (last year, during rush hour) looked at their phones whilst moving. It should be relatively easy a task not to crash as often as people in such situations? Couple of parking radars and a lane follower would probably be close to human levels of contact avoidance in crawling traffic?
      - drilldrive 6y ago
        My mother crashed in bumper-to-bumper slow traffic playing PokeMon Go a couple years ago. I wonder how much a self-driving car would have helped avoid an accident.
eastendguy 6y ago
The keyword here is "...Under certain conditions,...". Probably this means on the high-way only, while driving less than 50km/h... e.g. during a traffic jam. City road Level 3 would require plenty of testing that will not go unnoticed.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  That's still pretty useful - stuck in a jam for an hour: you can read a book or get on with some work.
snakedoctor 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimac_C_Two https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimac_C_Two Rimac claims to have level 4 autonomous driving, and is a production car. Rimac also claims to have a 1.85s 0-60 compared to Tesla's roadster 1.9s 0-60.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mhh__ 6y ago
  The Rimac is a little bit more expensive - to my eye at least it's a very good looking car (Unlike any Tesla I've seen so far)
hourislate 6y ago
Very little information in the article other than the announcement. I suspect that Self Driving Vehicles in Japan would have an advantage over the US. People drive well in Japan, it is no easy task to get one drivers license. In Tokyo, drivers seem to be aware of all their surroundings. Pedestrians also obey the rules and don't walk where ever it suits them. A lot of US drivers are terrible. Even lvl 1/2 is an improvement over most drivers on the roads who are looking at there phones while driving down the center line or against traffic.
maerF0x0 6y ago
> This certification means that you can legally sit behind the wheel without actually looking at the road. Under certain conditions, Level 3 autonomy allows a car to drive itself as long as the human behind the wheel is able to take control at any time Not looking at the road and taking over at a moments notice seem to be contradictory items. Also who/what is auditing the drivers attention?
- fpoling 6y ago
  It could be that the car alerts a driver the moment the driver needs to pay attention to the road. So presumably it could be ok to use phone, but not sleeping.
- mtgx 6y ago
  > Also who/what is auditing the drivers attention? Who cares? The company will put all the legal liability for any and all accidents that might happen while using this system on you. It's all right there in the ToS. You DO read your car's ToS, right?
- jessriedel 6y ago
  "At any time" is not the same as "at a moment's notice". If the system is robust enough such that the human is always given, say, 5 seconds warning before they need to intervene, they can safely read/write (but not sleep), which would be a huge benefit. Elsewhere in this thread, someone gave examples where a human takeover is needed but there is significant warning time: (1) exiting a highway to an unimproved road and (2) coming upon construction work with human-directed traffic control. Driver attention is monitored with cameras in essentially all Level-2-and-above autonomous cars, I believe. The machine vision is good enough to detect sleeping.
Geee 6y ago
Like the name implies, it's only meant for traffic jams. Hardly a level 3 system.
- valine 6y ago
  Right, it sounds like an alternative to Tesla autopilot on the highway without the hand on the wheel requirement. I really doubt this is capable of making turns or stopping for traffic control.
abeppu 6y ago
I guess, to re-hash the same conversations people have been having for years -- if the expectation is that drivers must be alert and prepared to intervene, that places them in the gray area of not knowing whether or when to trust the system. Even if the self-driving system is relatively good, is the human+self-driving system really better? In some sense, the self-driving system gets to be trained with experiences of failure, probably under the expectation that no intervention will occur (i.e. the "policy" cannot include human intervention). But the human driver doesn't get to learn from experience when to not trust the self-driving system (because getting it wrong can be disastrous). Perhaps a missing piece that human drivers _should_ participate in, but almost certainly won't, is training in a simulator. There's a methodological challenge here -- ideally the simulator training should focus on scenarios where the self-driving system is weakest (i.e. where it's plausible that the driver will need to intervene), but those are likely also cases where we're worst at simulating the behavior of other cars/pedestrians/cyclists/loose object.
- EarthLaunch 6y ago
  Great points. If we had enough self-driving crash data (like a black box), where the fault was of the autonomous system, and where human intervention could have prevented the crash; that data could be used in the simulator. So the player would be experiencing simulations of actual crashes.
  - mckirk 6y ago
    On the other hand, every crash we could simulate would be one that the AI should be able to learn to avoid, so it's not very clear if there are scenarios where it makes sense to 'train the driver' instead of the AI directly.
    - drilldrive 6y ago
      I imagine a good chunk of crash scenarios are along the lines of "easy for human intervention, difficult to program an AI to learn" such as broken/misleading road-aids (traffic lights) like the OP comment gave. These would be laid along a user-manual for licensing like a standard drivers' license I imagine once the AI restrictions are more obviously understood.
zetazzed 6y ago
I think people are mis-conceiving L3 as "the car might yell 'grab the wheel at any moment.'" At least for L3 systems I've worked on, the model was - there will be exception cases we don't know how to navigate, but we have a plan to safely transfer control to the driver in them. Examples would include: * a human construction worker or police officer is directing traffic, so safely slow to a halt or near halt and ask the driver to follow directions * the route takes the driver from a supported road (large, well-mapped) to an unsupported road - tell the driver they have to take the exit, and if they don't then you'll miss the exit and stay on the larger, supported road * broken traffic light - tell the user and prepare to treat as red light unless they override These are not sudden dangerous handoffs, but they do mean that a driver can't be drunk or asleep when behind the wheel.
- jessriedel 6y ago
  Is this formally quantified, e.g., in an amount of time the human must be able to take control within? If that amount of time is like 5 seconds or longer, and the system is empirically demonstrated to maintain safety so long as the human is always ready take over in 5 seconds, that would be very compelling.
- ashleyn 6y ago
  What also might go unsaid here is: the practical effect of Level 3's requirements vs. its capabilities is that it probably will not be able to engage often. If the car can't safely do it, it's not going to do it. So you'll invest all this money in a Level 3 car, only to find out that it only engages maybe once or twice a year, when the planets line up and it has all the info and environment it actually needs to work.
  - horsawlarway 6y ago
    I'm not saying you're wrong, but I don't think any major manufacturer would release it if that's the case. I can't imagine the customer response to a self-driving system they can only turn on once a year would be good. Seems like an obvious PR/Marketing nightmare.
falcolas 6y ago
There's an ACM article which always comes to mind whenever I see discussions about self-driving cars. The title is "Automation should be like Iron Man, not Ultron". The idea is "augment the human, don't try and replace the human," since the combination of the human and computer will always be better than either one alone (at least with our current level of programming/AI/hardware capabilities). To apply this to self-driving cars, we need more driver support. Visually identify cars and obstacles which could be an issue to supplant the driver's identification. Help the driver keep in a lane. Help the driver keep a speed relative to traffic around them. Help drivers see in the dark, and past bright headlights. Help drivers see lane lines through snow packed roads. Help the driver see and hear things, but don't override their decisions. Some of these technologies are available today in luxury cars - let's make it available to everyone on the road.
- kiplkipl 6y ago
  Marvel Studios writing it as a baddie is not a very compelling reason to avoid automation. As of today, the vast majority of autonomous devices and robots are factory devices that have minimal input from humans.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    It might be worth reading beyond the title and into the article itself. It's a good article with coherent arguments.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      > It might be worth reading beyond the title and into the article itself. I don't know why authors give their work flippant titles and then are confused when people assume it's a flippant piece of work. 'Don't judge a book by its cover' isn't a reasonable complaint when the author has deliberately given it a silly cover!
      - falcolas 6y ago
        Or, it's a surprisingly relevant comparison (on the topic of the article) using pop culture references? Augmented humanity vs. the best AI they can create. When it comes to titles for articles, this is both memorable and far less click-baity as is normal these days.
rasz 6y ago
Since its Japanese you can be assured it will be all hardcoded decision trees instead of unpredictable Deep machine learning blackbox.
Animats 6y ago
If Honda is doing this, they must have been testing it extensively. If they got a safety certification in Japan, they must have demonstrated something. So, what's known about what they're doing?

91 points by evo_9 6y ago

I've cynically always assumed when L3A vehicles are genuinely ready for mass production they will first be sold in a 3rd world 'test dummy' location with lax regulation and a loose approach to human life. I find it hard to believe L3AV's will be launched at scale in litigious western cultures- including Japan- until there has been a lot more 'real world' mileage and experiences to iron out the kinks...

ogre_codes 6y ago
Tesla has already launched a beta of their Level 3 vehicles on American roads and is promising to have it rolled out completely by end of year. The big problem with testing in 3rd world countries is infrastructure is far different from in the US/ EU/ Japan so it's not a great proving ground. When you have cities where you have to deal with chaotic streets packed with people and slow moving cross traffic you need to just kind of push your way through, autonomous vehicles are going to struggle.
- olivermarks 6y ago
  https://youtu.be/x4fdUx6d4QM https://youtu.be/x4fdUx6d4QM
qznc 6y ago
Level 3 tech is expensive. You can only sell it where people are rich enough to buy luxury cars.

randunel 6y ago

> Honda has just claimed that it will launch the world's first Level 3 autonomous production car in March 2021 The title needs to be changed, as nobody's beaten anyone, yet.

avs733 6y ago
>Japan's government has awarded a safety certification to Honda's autonomy tech called Traffic Jam Pilot. I don't think that is an entirely fair representation. The claim you are referencing in that sentence appears to be about when they will launch. They seem to clearly be the first to actually achieve a certification. Which is what the title seems to be referring too. We can discuss about the potentially too close relationship between the Japanese government and companies, but the certification is the certification and is a fairly objective measure.
- gpm 6y ago
  Waymo has had the approval of authorities to drive cars with no driver at all for quite awhile, if we're competing on "whose piece of paper says they can do the most" honda did not win.
  - avs733 6y ago
    Waymo isn't a car manufacturer and isn't selling vehicles to people

avs733 6y ago

Honestly, no one should be surprised by this. If we look t the history of automotive development and manufacturing over the last 40-50 years, every major change has been 'made real' by Japanese automanufacturers. That doesn't mean they are first to market, but it typically means they are first to market with something that works for the main stream. This includes manufacturing techniques, platform engineering, hybrids, navigation and in car computing, etc. They are just quiet about it. In part, this seems to be cultural, in part it seems to be where our major news comes from and the fact that it rarely reports on stories in other languages (and even more rarely reports on them well). There have been many discusisons on HN of the goods and bads of Japanese work culture, but one possible outcome of that hierarchy and control being a longer term strategic focus, and internal commitments to quiet & purposeful innovation.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
The Japanese made some good advancements in manufacturing technology and all the ancillary systems you need to make a low displacement 4-banger palatable to the mass market (ohc and distributorless ignition come to mind) but your comment is just fanboy-ism masquerading as history. The Japaneses didn't really bring electronic systems and fuel injection into the world faster than anyone else. They clung to their vacuum line spaghetti control systems embarrassingly far into the 80s. They also got blind-sided hard by the minivan and the midsize SUV.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  SUVs are an uniquely American-originated thing. Let's be real, 3/4 of SUV owners don't need the benefits of an SUV.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    3/4 of car owners could get by with a moped. Can and "should do so despite being able to afford otherwise" are very different things.
- avs733 6y ago

blakesterz 6y ago

"The company promises the tech will be on the road early next year. Autonomous driving technology has proven to be a lot more difficult to bring to market than any of the major automakers seemed to have planned for." I honestly don't understand how this has proved to be "a lot more difficult to bring to market than any of the major automakers..." I'm not an expert, by any measure, but this seemed to be a nearly impossible thing to bring to market anytime soon. The technology seems impossibly hard, sure, but more importantly this is something that is new and looks super scary to most people. Every single time one of these things fail it's going to make headlines, and that's going to make it even scarier. I just can't believe Honda (or anyone else) got this right so fast. Even if they're like 95% of the way to having it perfect (or whatever the measure might be), that last 5% seems like it's going to be REALLY hard to get right without some serious trouble and some bad PR.

Shivetya 6y ago
Well one issue is that too much of this development has been one sided. What needs to be done is force standardization of road markings and signaling and correct it where it is not compliant. So these systems have had to accept the fact that ideal conditions never exist. The easiest opportunity in the US would have been to dress up the HOV and Express lanes and use them. They have controlled access and are specifically marked already to distinguish them from other lanes. however too many seem bent on doing it all at once for everywhere. The first three tiers are not difficult. This claim by Honda doesn't not provide any more details other than they got a certification. We do not know if anyone else even applied for it or exactly what it entails.
- lallysingh 6y ago
  How's this different than better maps in the car? Auto update them and you'll be in good shape.
- voqv 6y ago
  > The first three tiers are not difficult. Why is that? Afaik at least according to European and Japanese [1] laws, L3 is the first level where the larger liability of the OEM comes into play. That is because the driver can remove his hands from the wheel and therefore will need significantly more time to prevent an accident. [1] https://hsfnotes.com/cav/2019/06/06/japan-allows-level-3-automated-vehicles-on-public-roads/ https://hsfnotes.com/cav/2019/06/06/japan-allows-level-3-aut...

davedx 6y ago

If the carmaker was "Tesla" not "Honda" then this would not have as many upvotes by the HN crowd Fact: this is not available yet so nobody has beaten anyone

baggy_trough 6y ago

Given how terrible their lane holding technology is in a 4 year old car, and how their collision detection alert constantly false alarms on white cars coming the other direction on sunny days, I'm not going to be using this any time soon.

jeffbee 6y ago
I have a 2021 model year Honda with the Honda Sensing package and it's awful. It can't hold lane position on a straight and level freeway, which is compulsory. There's a specific place on the freeway near my home where the car slams on the brakes every time, if I leave the ACC engaged. In the city (of Berkeley) it freaks out constantly about oncoming cars in their own lanes on curves or parked cars to the right of narrow driving lanes. Sometimes it just slams on the brakes if I'm pulling up behind a car at a walking pace at a red signal. If Honda delivers L3 driving six months from now, it would be a huge leap over what they are selling today.
eis 6y ago
I concur. The safety features of my 2019 Accord are pretty worthless. The lane keep assist works in maybe 20% of cases and once even tried to stear me into a barrier, the collision detection like you said has many false positives, the rear parking sensor didn't detect a huge rock wall which made me hit it while reversing because I got used to rely on the beeping sound, the app that lets you track the car's location is so full of bugs it's not even funny, the Android Auto implementation for Maps likes to bug out... ah I could go on and on, the problems with the electronics are endless. And now they are supposed to suddenly have autonomous cars which is several orders of magnitude more difficult to do than all the stuff they couldn't implement properly so far? Sorry but I am extremely sceptical. Not that I expect any other car manufacturer to get it right any time soon either.

josefresco 6y ago

Honda has spent decades building consumer trust based on safety and quality. This has me suspecting that many consumers will trust them, over Tesla or another newly established brand when it comes to autonomous driving. Personally I'll take "works ok but is bulletproof" over "cutting edge but buggy" any day.

imeron 6y ago
Bulletproof on Japanese roads where immaculate paint is given or also on rural third world country roads?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mrtnmcc 6y ago
  That's a key distinction, "the road" is an ambiguity that these car companies love to deploy.
- josefresco 6y ago
  Personally I trust that before Honda rolls this tech out in the United States, it will be in fact bulletproof. Or at least that's my perception as a US consumer who has owned multiple Honda products. Given what I read about Tesla, they'd most likely blame the roads, the driver or simply lie about the capabilities and push forward because "it's safer than humans!".
- grecy 6y ago
  > or also on rural third world country roads? I drove 40,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina and 54,000 miles around Africa [1]. From experience, I can tell you the vast majority of vehicles sold in the developed world wouldn't last a couple of months on 'rural third world country roads'. The potholes, corrugations, mud, dust and everything else are intense. For eg, this is how I crossed the Democratic Republic of Congo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV8V3GdOcPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV8V3GdOcPU [1] youtube.com/theroadchoseme

bryanlarsen 6y ago

Tesla full self-driving beta is Level 3, and it's currently driving on the roads in a very small percentage of customer Teslas. https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+fsd+beta https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+fsd+beta That being said, Level 3 has limited utility. If a driver needs to take over at any time, that means they need to be taking over in milliseconds, so it means that they need to be 100% focused on everything. Level 3 is a fancy cruise control. Level 4 & 5 are the ones that will fundamentally change driving.

legolas2412 6y ago
From this article (https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2020/11/11/honda-traffic-jam-pilot-offers-standby-self-driving-by-march-2021/?sh=26af78a82fd4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2020/11/11/honda-...): "Most importantly, they allow you to take all attention off the road — you can do e-mail or read a book, and do not have to watch the road. When traffic opens up again, they alert you and you start driving. " It looks like they have level 4 and are calling it level 3?
- udfalkso 6y ago
  Sounds like it's "level 4" in slow bumper to bumper traffic only. I'd trust Tesla Autopilot similarly in that situation as well.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    People already almost entirely disengage from driving in slow traffic, about 1:20 drivers in traffic queues I walked past (last year, during rush hour) looked at their phones whilst moving. It should be relatively easy a task not to crash as often as people in such situations? Couple of parking radars and a lane follower would probably be close to human levels of contact avoidance in crawling traffic?
    - drilldrive 6y ago
      My mother crashed in bumper-to-bumper slow traffic playing PokeMon Go a couple years ago. I wonder how much a self-driving car would have helped avoid an accident.

eastendguy 6y ago

The keyword here is "...Under certain conditions,...". Probably this means on the high-way only, while driving less than 50km/h... e.g. during a traffic jam. City road Level 3 would require plenty of testing that will not go unnoticed.

pbhjpbhj 6y ago
That's still pretty useful - stuck in a jam for an hour: you can read a book or get on with some work.

snakedoctor 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimac_C_Two https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimac_C_Two Rimac claims to have level 4 autonomous driving, and is a production car. Rimac also claims to have a 1.85s 0-60 compared to Tesla's roadster 1.9s 0-60.

deleted 6y ago
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mhh__ 6y ago
The Rimac is a little bit more expensive - to my eye at least it's a very good looking car (Unlike any Tesla I've seen so far)

hourislate 6y ago

Very little information in the article other than the announcement. I suspect that Self Driving Vehicles in Japan would have an advantage over the US. People drive well in Japan, it is no easy task to get one drivers license. In Tokyo, drivers seem to be aware of all their surroundings. Pedestrians also obey the rules and don't walk where ever it suits them. A lot of US drivers are terrible. Even lvl 1/2 is an improvement over most drivers on the roads who are looking at there phones while driving down the center line or against traffic.

maerF0x0 6y ago

> This certification means that you can legally sit behind the wheel without actually looking at the road. Under certain conditions, Level 3 autonomy allows a car to drive itself as long as the human behind the wheel is able to take control at any time Not looking at the road and taking over at a moments notice seem to be contradictory items. Also who/what is auditing the drivers attention?

fpoling 6y ago
It could be that the car alerts a driver the moment the driver needs to pay attention to the road. So presumably it could be ok to use phone, but not sleeping.
mtgx 6y ago
> Also who/what is auditing the drivers attention? Who cares? The company will put all the legal liability for any and all accidents that might happen while using this system on you. It's all right there in the ToS. You DO read your car's ToS, right?
jessriedel 6y ago
"At any time" is not the same as "at a moment's notice". If the system is robust enough such that the human is always given, say, 5 seconds warning before they need to intervene, they can safely read/write (but not sleep), which would be a huge benefit. Elsewhere in this thread, someone gave examples where a human takeover is needed but there is significant warning time: (1) exiting a highway to an unimproved road and (2) coming upon construction work with human-directed traffic control. Driver attention is monitored with cameras in essentially all Level-2-and-above autonomous cars, I believe. The machine vision is good enough to detect sleeping.

Geee 6y ago

Like the name implies, it's only meant for traffic jams. Hardly a level 3 system.

valine 6y ago
Right, it sounds like an alternative to Tesla autopilot on the highway without the hand on the wheel requirement. I really doubt this is capable of making turns or stopping for traffic control.

abeppu 6y ago

I guess, to re-hash the same conversations people have been having for years -- if the expectation is that drivers must be alert and prepared to intervene, that places them in the gray area of not knowing whether or when to trust the system. Even if the self-driving system is relatively good, is the human+self-driving system really better? In some sense, the self-driving system gets to be trained with experiences of failure, probably under the expectation that no intervention will occur (i.e. the "policy" cannot include human intervention). But the human driver doesn't get to learn from experience when to not trust the self-driving system (because getting it wrong can be disastrous). Perhaps a missing piece that human drivers _should_ participate in, but almost certainly won't, is training in a simulator. There's a methodological challenge here -- ideally the simulator training should focus on scenarios where the self-driving system is weakest (i.e. where it's plausible that the driver will need to intervene), but those are likely also cases where we're worst at simulating the behavior of other cars/pedestrians/cyclists/loose object.

EarthLaunch 6y ago
Great points. If we had enough self-driving crash data (like a black box), where the fault was of the autonomous system, and where human intervention could have prevented the crash; that data could be used in the simulator. So the player would be experiencing simulations of actual crashes.
- mckirk 6y ago
  On the other hand, every crash we could simulate would be one that the AI should be able to learn to avoid, so it's not very clear if there are scenarios where it makes sense to 'train the driver' instead of the AI directly.
  - drilldrive 6y ago
    I imagine a good chunk of crash scenarios are along the lines of "easy for human intervention, difficult to program an AI to learn" such as broken/misleading road-aids (traffic lights) like the OP comment gave. These would be laid along a user-manual for licensing like a standard drivers' license I imagine once the AI restrictions are more obviously understood.

zetazzed 6y ago

I think people are mis-conceiving L3 as "the car might yell 'grab the wheel at any moment.'" At least for L3 systems I've worked on, the model was - there will be exception cases we don't know how to navigate, but we have a plan to safely transfer control to the driver in them. Examples would include: * a human construction worker or police officer is directing traffic, so safely slow to a halt or near halt and ask the driver to follow directions * the route takes the driver from a supported road (large, well-mapped) to an unsupported road - tell the driver they have to take the exit, and if they don't then you'll miss the exit and stay on the larger, supported road * broken traffic light - tell the user and prepare to treat as red light unless they override These are not sudden dangerous handoffs, but they do mean that a driver can't be drunk or asleep when behind the wheel.

jessriedel 6y ago
Is this formally quantified, e.g., in an amount of time the human must be able to take control within? If that amount of time is like 5 seconds or longer, and the system is empirically demonstrated to maintain safety so long as the human is always ready take over in 5 seconds, that would be very compelling.
ashleyn 6y ago
What also might go unsaid here is: the practical effect of Level 3's requirements vs. its capabilities is that it probably will not be able to engage often. If the car can't safely do it, it's not going to do it. So you'll invest all this money in a Level 3 car, only to find out that it only engages maybe once or twice a year, when the planets line up and it has all the info and environment it actually needs to work.
- horsawlarway 6y ago
  I'm not saying you're wrong, but I don't think any major manufacturer would release it if that's the case. I can't imagine the customer response to a self-driving system they can only turn on once a year would be good. Seems like an obvious PR/Marketing nightmare.

falcolas 6y ago

There's an ACM article which always comes to mind whenever I see discussions about self-driving cars. The title is "Automation should be like Iron Man, not Ultron". The idea is "augment the human, don't try and replace the human," since the combination of the human and computer will always be better than either one alone (at least with our current level of programming/AI/hardware capabilities). To apply this to self-driving cars, we need more driver support. Visually identify cars and obstacles which could be an issue to supplant the driver's identification. Help the driver keep in a lane. Help the driver keep a speed relative to traffic around them. Help drivers see in the dark, and past bright headlights. Help drivers see lane lines through snow packed roads. Help the driver see and hear things, but don't override their decisions. Some of these technologies are available today in luxury cars - let's make it available to everyone on the road.

kiplkipl 6y ago
Marvel Studios writing it as a baddie is not a very compelling reason to avoid automation. As of today, the vast majority of autonomous devices and robots are factory devices that have minimal input from humans.
- falcolas 6y ago
  It might be worth reading beyond the title and into the article itself. It's a good article with coherent arguments.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > It might be worth reading beyond the title and into the article itself. I don't know why authors give their work flippant titles and then are confused when people assume it's a flippant piece of work. 'Don't judge a book by its cover' isn't a reasonable complaint when the author has deliberately given it a silly cover!
    - falcolas 6y ago
      Or, it's a surprisingly relevant comparison (on the topic of the article) using pop culture references? Augmented humanity vs. the best AI they can create. When it comes to titles for articles, this is both memorable and far less click-baity as is normal these days.

rasz 6y ago

Since its Japanese you can be assured it will be all hardcoded decision trees instead of unpredictable Deep machine learning blackbox.

Animats 6y ago

If Honda is doing this, they must have been testing it extensively. If they got a safety certification in Japan, they must have demonstrated something. So, what's known about what they're doing?