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All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

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Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#261

Post by MarkMc »

danmaz74 wrote: post #232
agumonkey wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking Google was screaming for more opportunities to acquire and test data. Had to be satisfied with a few cars and a small area shared with other companies. Tesla is making its own jackpot here.

The big difference is that Google's car are actually self-driving themselves. Tesla's cars will collect a lot of data, but about human driving. The actual automated driving software will have to be tested separately.

Actually Tesla has access to two sources of large-volume real-world data:

1. When the driver has full control of the vehicle

2. When the 'autopilot' is engaged and the driver is ready to intervene if necessary

So if the AI passes the safety test on Type 1 data, Tesla can promote it to being tested on Type 2. And if it passes that safety test it can be promoted to full autonomous control.

The 'autopilot' mode effectively does for Tesla what Google's test drivers do, but for free and on a much larger scale. Seems to me Tesla have a very strong hand here.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#262

Post by sangnoir »

rak00n wrote: post #235
agumonkey wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking Google was screaming for more opportunities to acquire and test data. Had to be satisfied with a few cars and a small area shared with other companies. Tesla is making its own jackpot here.

This is getting more interesting. All these new data put Tesla way ahead of Google. On the other hand Google has better AI technologies.

You might be forgetting about Google Maps vans.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#263

Post by CardenB »

frik wrote: post #213
Animats wrote: post #99

More cameras. Better sonars (very short range). Better radar processing, but apparently the same old single radar at bumper height. Still no windshield-height radar. No radar scanning in elevation. No LIDAR. That's a better, but still weak sensor suite. It's probably enough for freeway driving under good conditions. It's far below Google's sensor suite. Or Volvo's. Now they just have to write software smart enough to…

It's staggering that Tesla don't use LIDAR at all. Sure LIDAR is more expensive but the data quality is very stable and good. Cameras won't work that well or at all in night or when the sun rays blend in morning / evening or in bad weather conditions like heavy rain or snow. All other self-driving cars I know of have at least a small LIDAR beside several other types of sensors.

Lidar doesn't make sense for Tesla with the failure rate alone. They're mechanical devices, and they often have defects when produced at scale. They need to be replaced very often. This makes sense when you're doing vehicles as a service, but not as much for Tesla's use case.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#264

Post by inimino »

DasIch wrote: post #245
rtkwe wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really a lot of weather patterns are analogous; for vision heavy rain isn't terribly different from a blizzard, etc. With a large enough span across the US you can get pretty much all weather conditions inside a 6 month window from mid summer to mid winter.

That's only helpful if you have a fairly random distribution across the US. I very much doubt that's the case for Tesla. You'll probably have far more Teslas driving around in California, maybe even the Silicon Valley, than in say Alaska.

It doesn't need to be random as long as it's big enough. (Also, other countries exist besides the US...)

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#265

Post by sangnoir »

djsumdog wrote: post #147
Klathmon wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really fucking shitty thing to do, and is gonna cause some pretty big waves IMO if they follow through with it. The issues with not being able to modify your own stuff is already really shitty, but its not something that the average Joe really can understand easily, and even less care about it. But not being able to USE your car for some things? That just screams easy headlines and it's a reason I might not…

The most interesting thing about self-driving vehicles is that there is a legitimate reason people should never be able to modify the firmware on their vehicles. The risks would be very high. There is also the entire liability and planed obsolescent issues not being dealt with. Will Tesla support these cars forever? Will 10 year old models still get software updates?

> The most interesting thing about self-driving vehicles is that there is a legitimate reason people should never be able to modify the firmware on their vehicles

People can already modify their car hardware in dangerous ways, yet no one is welding the hood shut. You may weld spikes on your car to keep prying eyes away if you wish, but when you inevitably impale someone, Ford will not be liable.

Why should software be treated differently? All Tesla has to do to avoid liability is to say "The vehicle was running firmware with aftermarket firmware installed by the owner". They won't even need to run diagnostics, they can simply look at the logs they collect.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#266

Post by eridius »

sangnoir wrote: post #262
rak00n wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is getting more interesting. All these new data put Tesla way ahead of Google. On the other hand Google has better AI technologies.

You might be forgetting about Google Maps vans.

I would assume that Google Maps vans aren't driven in the same manner as other cars. They've got a large complicated camera system on top, so presumably they're driven very conservatively, and presumably they're also not driven particularly fast (kind of hard to capture good pictures when you're driving really fast).

Which is to say, if Google wants self-driving Google Maps vans, then collecting data using Google Maps vans makes sense. But if they want general-purpose self-driving cars, then collecting data using Google Maps vans will only give them a very narrow set of data.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#267

Post by davidz »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #200

The former head of Google's self-driving car project has said that self-driving cars are decades into the future.* Even if that's too pessimistic, nobody today knows what a self-driving car will look like, what kind of algorithms it will run, and what kind of sensors it will need to get there. I'm afraid this pronouncement is another sign that Mr. Musk is taking his investors for a ride. * http://spectrum.ieee.org/ca…

"How quickly can we get this into people's hands? If you read the papers, you see maybe it's three years, maybe it's thirty years. And I am here to tell you that honestly, it's a bit of both."

This statement is based on what he is aware of at the time. The most pessimistic side of it is purely a data game, and Tesla's ability to have 100k cars collecting data for them will give them a significant advantage to accelerate their progress.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#268

Post by eridius »

lathiat wrote: post #141
luma wrote: post #91

I think what people are missing here is an understanding of how these systems are tested and deployed at scale. While I have no involvement with Tesla I do have first-hand knowledge of similar programs at tier 1 automotive suppliers. The suppliers provide (or are looking to provide) an electronics suite to car manufacturers. The car manufacturers want the system to be safe lest they be sued out of existence. One part…

I have to admit, while on some ways it seems like "Cheating".. I feel like having this real world data is in reality much safer than training artificially. Will include all sorts of varying areas and stupidity of drivers.

Both real-world training and artificial data have their own benefits. For example, you can use artificial data to simulate conditions that are rare in the real world, or would be very hazardous to try and test (for example, how does the car react when it thinks another car is about to t-bone it).

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#269

Post by Dylan16807 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #229
hash-set wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really buy into the software licensing bs--it was forced on us without any choices. It is the worst kind of legal bs there is. "You paid for this but you have no rights to it." Uh, yeah, keep thinking that.

You don't have to buy into a law for it to exist and be enforced. And if you're in the tech industry, that "legal bs" is what allows you to have an income.

I'm pretty sure if first sale doctrine applied to software, almost nothing would change. We're not talking about getting rid of copyright, just the idea that this thing that acts almost exactly like a purchase is not 'really' a purchase.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#270

Post by misja111 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #226
tinalumfoil wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Tesla isn't confident enough in their self-driving service to accept the liability then I doubt it's good enough to be approved for road-use anyway. It sounds like they're trying to set a precedent to kill competition before it starts. Hopefully other self-driving car manufacturers force their hand or kill their business.

Perhaps, but it is not uncommon for example for chip manufacturers to specifically say their parts cannot be used in safety systems without their express written authorization. They are certainly confident their chips work, and they sell them by the bucket full, but if someone dies as a result of using their product that their chips are in, they don't want to be liable. They use those disclaimers to shift liability t…

There is a funny example of such a disclaimer in the Java license agreement, it says:

"You acknowledge that Software is not designed, licensed or intended for use in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility"

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