Tesla Whistleblower Says ‘Autopilot’ System Is Not Safe Enough To Be Used On Public Roads::“It affects all of us because we are essentially experiments in public roads.”
Tesla Whistleblower Says ‘Autopilot’ System Is Not Safe Enough To Be Used On Public Roads::“It affects all of us because we are essentially experiments in public roads.”
I lost all trust in their ‘Autopilot’ the day I read Musk said (Paraphrasing) “All we need are cameras, there’s no need for secondary/tertiary LIDAR or other expensive setups”
Like TFYM? No backups?? Or backups to the backups?? On a life fucking critical system?!
As much as I lost trust in his bullshittery a long time ago, his need to mention the cost of critical safety systems is what stuck out to me the most here. That’s how you know the priorities are backwards.
Also, my robot vacuum has LiDAR. It’s not expensive relative to a car.
Hell every iphone has lidar and the pro models have two lidar cameras. The tech is not very expensive, epecially not for a $80,000 car.
My partner’s econobox has lidar for its cruise control, but Tesla can’t seem to figure out how to make it work.
Around the time Elon made the claim Lidar for automotive purposes was quite expensive. That additional cost would make the self driving product a lot less desirable. Up selling cruise control into “self driving” earned them a lot of money.
Funnily enough all other aspects where Tesla has taken the expensive option the
cultretail investors would claim it was brilliant decisions because economy of scale would kick in and make it cheaper in the long run.Lidar was obviously exempt from any such scale and future tech improvements, because reasons.
It could be very expensive for Tesla to start using Lidar, because they’ve sold a lot of cars with the promise that they have the hardware for self driving. Retrofitting a million cars would not only cost a lot in terms of gear and work, but it would put additional stress on an already poor service network.
They have painted themselves into a corner. All because leadership thought self driving was a more or less solved problem almost a decade ago.
Rebrand to Ludicrous Self Drive and add back LIDAR.
Good point. I thought Teslas had radar for awhile though and they took it out?
Was lidar that expensive in a car though? Because Infiniti started adding it in 2014 for the cruise control and those cars usually sell new for $50k if you get it fully loaded.
And they could have added radar and sonar to assist the cameras at least. The radar couldn’t give 3d data, but it could say “yo bro that’s a solid object, not the skyline” at least.
Good point on the promises though. They really fucked themselves with Elon’s claims.
They decided radar was superfluous at one point during the pandemic. By sheer coincidence by the time supply chains were getting fucked. Hitting delivery targets were more important than safety.
They did do that. It can be pretty difficult to make sense of conflicting data like that. Tesla may have decided to not bother to solve such issues and hope less sensor data makes it easier to interpret.
This is what Elon had to say about Tesla’s sophisticated radar data interpretation capabilities in 2016:
I guess the ability to see around cars in front of you got lost in some software update along the line. Otherwise removing radar necessarily meant reducing the safety of the system, or Elon lied in 2016.
It depends on what you want to do with the sensors. Somewhat accurately mapping what’s immediately in front of the car to slightly improve speed matching and false positive/negative rates for emergency breaking comes at a cheaper price than the capability to fully map the surroundings fast and accurately enough for a computer to make correct decisions.
It’s actually gotten cheaper since they figured out how to make it solid state.
The crazier and stupier shit was that part of his justification was that “people drive and they only have eyes. We should be able to do the same.”
Its a stunningly idiotic justification, and yet here we are with millions of these “eyes only” teslas on the road.
Reminds me of Mao not brushing his teeth, because tigers didn’t brush theirs either.
Did he also eat his meat raw and sleep in trees?
Nah that would be silly.
Did deflower a generation of young girls though, who would suffer the agony of his presumed halitosis
Ah, but you see, his reasoning is that what if the camera and lidar disagree, then what? With only a camera based system, there is only one truth with no conflicts!
Like when the camera sees the broad side of a white truck as clear skies and slams right at it, there was never any conflict anywhere, everything went just as it was suppo… Wait, shit.
RIP Joshua Brown:
Lidar would still prevail over stupidity in this situation. It does a better job detecting massive objects cars can’t go through.
The in-car system shouldn’t allow you to watch a movie wtf
Allegedly it was on a portable DVD player
This (sensor fusion) is a valid issue in mobile robotics. Adding more sensors doesn’t necessarily improve stability or reliability.
After a point, yes. However, that point comes when the sensor you are adding is more than the second type in the system. The correct answer is to work into your algorithm a weighting system so the car can decide which sensor it trusts to not kill the driver, i.e. if the LIDAR sees the broadside of a trailer and the camera doesn’t, the car should believe the LIDAR over the camera, as applying the brakes and speeding into the obstacle at 60mph is likely the safer option.
Yes the solution is fairly simple in theory, implementing this is significantly harder, which is why it is not a trivial issue to solve in robotics.
I’m not saying their decision was the right one, just that his argument with multiple sensors creating noise in the decision-making is a completely valid argument.
Doesn’t seem too complicated… if ANY of the sensors see something in the way that the system can’t resolve then it should stop the vehicle/force the driver to take over
Then you have a very unreliable system, stopping without actual reason all the time, causing immense frustration for the user. Is it safe? I guess, cars that don’t move generally are. Is it functional? No, not at all.
I’m not advocating unsafe implementations here, I’m just pointing out that your suggestion doesn’t actually solve the issue, as it leaves a solution that’s not functional.
To be fair, humans have proven all you need are visual receptors to navigate properly.
To be fair, current computers / AI / whatever marketing name you call them aren’t as good as human brains.
No, but they can be improved to the point where all that’s necessary are cameras and the means to control the vehicle.
I take it you are an expert in the field to be saying this?
The experts agree.
No, they don’t and that’s the entire point in all of this. Tesla autopilot sucks and it will suck and kill people. But fanboys like you would rather “look to the future” instead of realistically looking at it.
Visual receptors… And 3-dimensional vision with all the required processing and decision making behind that based on the visual stimuli, lol.
And how many vehicle accidents and deaths are there today? Proven that humans suck at driving maybe
No we don’t, we use sight, sound and touch/feeling to drive at a minimum
Touch? Sure, barely. But you can drive without being able to hear.
I’d also wager you can get a license if you have that rare disease that prevents you from feeling. Since, you know, how little we use touch and hearing to drive.
But hey? Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you can provide a source that says you can’t get licensed if you have that disease or if you’re deaf. That would prove your point. Otherwise, it proves mine.
What brand of car has better autopilot with other sensors?
Uhhhh…
…any level 4 car actually, according to the federal governments and all the agencies who regulate this stuff.
NAVYA, Volvo/Audi, Mercedes, magna, baidu, Waymo.
Tesla isn’t even trying to go past level 3 at this point.
Why the fuck did I get down voted for looking for an ev Tesla alternative… This place makes no sense. Are you all Tesla fan boys or what?
It sounded like sarcasm rather than an honest question. Like “Find me a better autopilot” rather than “What manufacturer would you recommend for autopilot?”
It… sounded?? How does my question not appear genuine? I literally just asked a question. I want to buy an EV with excellent software in the next few years. That’s it. No sarcasm. Would prefer not a Tesla.
I took it as condescending, just poorly written. Also lots of Tesla fanboys on here. Glad your not
So condescending to ask for a better technology option with multiple sensors. /s
Text sucks man, expect people to miss interpret anything, esp when you’re talking Tesla
A 2014 Infiniti can drive itself more safely on the highway than a Tesla. The key here is they didn’t lie about the cars capabilities so they didn’t encourage complacency.
In the city though, yeah you’ll need to look at other level 4 cars.
All of them. The other automakers didn’t fire their engineers during a hissy fit.