EETimes: Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang CES keynote was largely devoted to the company automotive platform for ADAS and autonomous driving. Most of the Nvidia's Auto-Pilot and Co-Pilot features are vision based:
Nvidia also announces its new parntners on car computing platform: Bosch, ZF, and Audi.
EETimes: In contrast, Gil Pratt, head of Toyota Research Institute, expressed skepticism about the speed of progress in this area: "Acknowledging that every carmaker is shooting for Level 5, Pratt said, “None of us is close. Not even close.” He added, “It's going to take many years of machine learning and many, many more miles" of tested." Pratt's talk starts at 14:40 in Toyota CES keynote video.
Leading car makers like Toyota do not have any incentive or motivation to change the status quo. Actually, most of the advanced countries that are involved in the passenger car industry must worry about the impact of the autonomous driving on the economy. Once matured, self-driving cars make individual ownership of cars meaningless and cars will become more like mundane public transportation machines. Total number of cars should be reduced significantly, too. It might be a good thing for everybody ultimately. But, I am very suspicious if this great but shaky idea will survive the harsh money and power game with powerful stake holders in the current world. They are not taxi drivers that Uber and others are quite easily annihilating.
ReplyDelete