Mobileye drives innovation in the autonomous driving industry with open RSS

When people talk about autonomous driving, they usually think of perception technology, computer vision and artificial intelligence algorithms, or machine learning and deep networks. These are of course very important for autonomous driving. But more importantly, we must be clear that the autonomous car itself is a machine. How to deal with the impact of this machine on society and how to avoid making this machine a threat to human life and safety are issues that must be solved before autonomous driving cars can be truly implemented.

Intel and Mobileye explain the definition of “paying attention” from three dimensions for the first time

Professor Ammon Shashua, Intel senior vice president, CEO and CTO of Intel subsidiary Mobileye, stressed that in terms of driving safety, the law stipulates that people must fulfill the corresponding "Duty of Care", but for autonomous driving, we must take precautions in advance and clearly define the definition of "keeping attention" through formal means. That is why Intel and Mobileye interpreted the definition of "keeping attention" from three dimensions for the first time in the industry.

First of all, it must be reasonable, that is, it must satisfy people's understanding and judgment of "paying attention", rather than defining it arbitrarily.

The second is effectiveness. A reasonable definition may be completely useless. For example, a definition that sounds good is: when a car changes lanes, vehicles in other lanes are not allowed to change speed and should not be affected by the car's lane change. However, this definition that sounds quite "cautious" is impossible to implement in China or Israel. Because when changing lanes, other vehicles must slow down to allow the lane-changing vehicle to change lanes. So effectiveness is very important.

Finally, verifiability means that the definition can be verified. This means that the definition must be combined with the machine to verify whether it is correct and effective, and to prove that there is no butterfly effect. (The butterfly effect here refers to a small unintentional action at the beginning, which, through the effect of other actions in the system, eventually leads to a car accident.)

Therefore, every definition made must be reasonable, effective and verifiable through mathematical formulas.

RSS helps people develop their driving decisions in the correct mode of "staying attentive"

In 2017, Intel and its subsidiary Mobileye proposed an open, transparent, and verifiable formal model, the Responsibility Sensitive Safety (RSS) model, hoping to enable self-driving cars to determine their own safety status by establishing mathematical formulas. In the view of Professor Ammon Shashua, the launch of RSS is a revolutionary move in the entire industry.

When people talk about safety, it is easy to confuse functional safety with nominal safety. Functional safety refers to whether the entire system is complete? Is there a program failure? Is there a hardware failure? If so, can it be compensated? RSS is nominal safety, which refers to system design. That is, at the beginning of system design, it is necessary to ensure that there will be no potential safety accidents to society, which is different from backup or redundant systems.

Nominal safety has not been discussed yet. In the automotive industry, people are more concerned with data and the more miles accumulated, the better. But the problem with this statistical thinking is that the system can only really work if it can be proven to be orders of magnitude better than humans, but the amount of data that needs to be collected is quite large. In addition, the problem with statistical thinking is that it is neither transparent nor open. If an accident occurs, a black box full of data cannot explain why the accident happened.

RSS, developed based on model thinking, is mathematically verified at every step, and is completely open and transparent, helping people clearly understand why autonomous vehicles make such judgments and decisions. This unique advantage allows regulators to use RSS to reach a consensus on the definition of "duty of care" in autonomous driving. This will help avoid the destruction of the entire autonomous driving industry due to excessive regulation, or the death of the fledgling industry due to a few accidents due to insufficient regulation.

Open RSS promotes integration and innovation in the autonomous driving industry

Professor Ammon Shashua believes that Mobileye is the most open company in the autonomous driving industry because it is the only company in the industry that has publicly released RSS-related definition documents. This is equivalent to laying a cornerstone in the industry and helping to promote innovation and development in the entire industry.

Currently, based on RSS, Intel and Mobileye not only cooperate with OEMs and industry suppliers, but also actively communicate with regulatory agencies in the United States and China. In July this year, Baidu announced that it would deploy the RSS model in its Apollo open source project and Apollo Pilot commercial project. The two parties will also jointly verify the RSS model for the unique driving style and road conditions in the Chinese market, and update and improve the RSS model based on new discoveries in the cooperation.

In October this year, Mobileye and Volkswagen announced the joint launch of the first autonomous ride-hailing service (also known as Mobility as a Service, MaaS) in Israel. The focus of this project is that Israel will launch the world's first government-involved autonomous driving MaaS project. The Israeli government has promised to set up a special committee to begin discussing regulatory barriers and research related matters. This not only achieves technological innovation, but also promotes regulatory and institutional innovation.

Intel and Mobileye hope to embrace regulators with an open RSS, so that they can understand and participate, and work together with industry partners to promote the healthy and sustainable development of autonomous driving. "If a country's regulators do not have an open and innovative mindset, then the country will not be able to do autonomous driving. It will develop towards two regulatory extremes, and both extremes will destroy the autonomous driving industry." Professor Ammon Shashua said.

As Professor Ammon Shashua said, "We designed RSS, and now we hope that it can spread the gospel to mankind. In the near future, we will also announce many RSS alliance partners because they all understand the value of RSS. RSS does not bring advantages to anyone alone, it brings the same benefits to everyone."

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.