In-Depth Learning and Seeing - Asia and Israel

From Japan, China, and somewhere nearby the Mediterranean 

Toshiba has partnered with Denso Corporation to provide artificial intelligence (AI) capability for partial and fully autonomous vehicles. The Deep Neural Network-Intellectual Property (DNN-IP) - or DNN to its friends - that Denso has developed:

is an algorithm modeled after the neural networks of the human brain and is expected to perform recognition processing as accurately, or better, than the human brain. This algorithm will allow the system to identify different road traffic situations and a variety of obstacles and road markings. 

Due to the rapid progress in DNN technology, Denso Corp. and Toshiba Corp. plan to make the technology flexibly extendable to various network configurations, Denso adds. Additionally, the companies will design the technology to have the ability to be implemented on in-vehicle processors that are smaller, consume less power, and feature other optimizations, Denso said.

Please excuse the long quote; honestly, I do not understand the under-the-hood tech speak and I do not want to get it wrong.

A new eye for depth perception

An Israeli start up, Oryx Vision, is developing hardware to replace LIDAR. Oryx Vision recently received a $17 million boost in venture capital funding. Called Oryx, this new technology supposedly has much better depth perception than LIDAR. An Oryx Vision representative described the contrast between LIDAR and Oryx as the difference between a description of a person and live streaming a person's image. Oryx Vision claims that the speed of driverless vehicles will be able to increase because of the much-improved depth perception. The translation for my non-tech mind was that the low 25 mph speed of the Google cars is due to LIDAR's limitations.

[Editor's note: I wonder whatever happened to that optimistic Israeli radio station that declared many times a day: From somewhere in the Mediterranean, this is the voice of peace. The Internet is truly magical because one incredibly quick search turned up the whole story. As Einstein said, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is miracle. The other is as though everything is." End of unrelated note.]

Hello pedestrians! Bring the popcorn!

LeEco has built a demonstration driverless car - sans price tag. Not only would you be able to watch a movie in it, but if you are outside the vehicle it signals to pedestrians whether the car is in autonomous mode. Think Wizard of Oz: the car changes color when it changes modes from driverless to human-operated and back again. The steering wheel also folds in when the driver hands over control and, presumably, rests back to watch a movie. (Read the linked article after all of the stuff about its delay getting to its destination.) LeEco is a Chinese company.

Musk showing attitude

News is coming fast and furious from Tesla, which is now putting self-driving hardware into ALL of its vehicles. No movie screen, but hey, most people only look at their phones anyway. Elon Musk is also charging the media with distorting the excellent safety record of driverless vehicles, thus making people unsafe by displaying a journalistic preference for unsafe, human-operated cars.

Musk is remaining somewhat defiant about Tesla's liability when crashes occur during its partially-driverless mode. Instead of following Volvo's lead in assuming strict - or complete - liability, Musk puts the onus on the driver to prove a design flaw. He compares the liability situation to elevator mishaps. Clearly Musk has not been to PR school. But for all of Musk's defiance, he has stepped back the availability of Tesla's partially-driverless software after several crashes in different countries. [Nice reporting from Bloomberg in that article.]