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New Video | 30 Minutes Uncut: E2E Autonomous Driving Through Nagoya at Night — From Back-to-Back Expressway Lane Changes to Downtown Nishiki

30 Minutes Uncut: E2E Autonomous Driving Through Nagoya at Night

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/sejbKlDVAbE


We took Turing’s E2E autonomous driving through the streets of Nagoya.

We set off just before 8 p.m. on a route of about 30 minutes: the Nagoya Expressway, with three lane changes in a row right after the toll gate; an exit that loops all the way around; the Key Route Bus lane running down the middle of the road; an intersection with no right-turn arrow; and downtown streets at night, busy with people and taxis.

Turing’s autonomous driving AI has been trained on almost no driving data from Nagoya. So how can it still drive here? Kotaro Tanahashi, who leads our autonomous driving AI development, talks about the “high-quality ingredients” our professional drivers collect, building models that preserve their flavor, and “The Bitter Lesson,” one of Turing’s values.

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0:00 Highlights
1:00 Opening
1:21 Taking on Nagoya at night
2:11 A rough welcome right after setting off: a stopped taxi and pedestrians on a narrow street
5:19 Merging onto the Nagoya Expressway
6:20 Back-to-back lane changes on the expressway
7:39 Driving with almost no training data
8:37 How well our E2E driving model generalizes, and our commitment to data
10:02 One of Turing’s values: “The Bitter Lesson”
10:50 A tough spot: the looping expressway exit
13:08 Bringing out the “flavor of the ingredients”: top-quality data collected by professional drivers
14:16 A colorful team of drivers, and the wide main roads around Nagoya Castle
15:44 ML engineers as “chefs”: designing models that preserve the flavor
16:50 A Nagoya specialty: the Key Route Bus lane in the middle of the road
18:24 The close relationship between engineers and drivers
19:10 Well-judged waiting at an intersection with no arrow signal — into downtown Nishiki, a tough stretch
21:13 A right turn across four lanes at night, reading the pedestrians
21:55 Parked cars and unpredictable passersby
23:10 Taking a big Alphard through downtown at night
24:00 Deftly handling obstacles in the road and cyclists
25:11 How E2E adapts to unpredictable human behavior
26:55 Taxis waiting for fares, and picking a lane when the way is blocked
27:45 Getting through a chaotic intersection, and our “Downtowns Across Japan” series
29:24 Every city has its own road “ecosystem”
30:25 Turing’s car culture: more than 70% of employees own a car
31:58 Back to the start after about 30 minutes of autonomous driving
32:57 That’s a wrap
33:20 Announcement: We’re hiring development drivers!
34:13 Bonus: The car parks itself perfectly at the curb
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Turing is hiring development drivers to teach AI the right way to drive.
The example you set will shape how well autonomous vehicles drive in the future.

▼Apply to be a Development Driver
https://jobs.tur.ing/en/driver-recruitment/
▼Careers
https://jobs.tur.ing/en/
▼Turipo, our company blog (in Japanese)
https://turipo.tur.ing
▼Events (in Japanese)
https://turing.connpass.com/
▼Tech blog (in Japanese)
https://zenn.dev/p/turing_motors

Note: All driving on public roads is done with a safety driver in the driver’s seat who monitors the surroundings at all times and is ready to take over immediately when needed.