If self-driving cars are so smart, why do they still get it wrong?
Blue hair is just one of the bumps in the road for the development of autonomous driving. AFR Magazine asks Toyota Research Institute head Gill Pratt for his view of the future.
Toyota’s latest self-driving prototype, the LQ. Its headlights can project complex figures on the road ahead, communicating information to those inside or outside the vehicle.
A smart human can learn to drive safely in, say, 50 hours. Self-driving cars, in theory, can think and react more quickly than any human, and prototypes have logged millions of hours and tens of millions of kilometres.
So why are they still getting things wrong? Few people have thought as deeply about the subject as Dr Gill Pratt, robotics and AI expert, former MIT professor, and now head of the Toyota Research Institute (TRI).
