Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#91

Post by ccorda » Thu, Aug 24, 2017, 7:35 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #78

Tesla's system doesn't have enough sensors. Musk forced his engineers to try to do this almost entirely with vision processing, and that was a terrible decision. Vision processing isn't that good yet. Everybody else uses LIDAR. I've been saying for years that the right approach was to take the technology from Advanced Scientific Concepts' flash LIDAR and get the cost down. I first saw that demonstrated in 2004 on an…

Interesting research on Continental. FWIW, looks like Tesla started using Continental's radar to replace Bosch just this week: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/posts/2266769/

I suspect that if/when LIDAR is cheap enough, Tesla will use it.

In the meantime they outfit every single car with the best hardware that is realistic from a cost standpoint today, instead of waiting til 2020.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#92

Post by frgtpsswrdlame » Thu, Aug 24, 2017, 7:36 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #65

Roodgorf wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have the numbers on how many miles Tesla's level 2 cars have actually been driven while using the feature? I see this sort of argument a lot in regards to Google's self-driving tests, and while it seems convincing to me, it doesn't seem realistic to me that's there a big enough pool of data to make that claim definitively.

From Wikipedia [1] >According to Tesla there is a fatality every 94 million miles (150 million km) among all type of vehicles in the U.S. >By November 2016, Autopilot had operated actively on hardware version 1 vehicles for 300 million miles (500 million km) and 1.3 billion miles (2 billion km) in shadow mode. Those numbers are 9 months old and only apply to Autopilot v1 and not the Autopilot v2+ introduced late last…

Yes but Autopilot can only be activated in the safest of conditions, the 94 million miles number takes in all types of driving factors. The comparison doesn't work because Autopilot usage self-selects for the miles where a human driver would also be much less likely to crash.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#93

Post by TulliusCicero » Thu, Aug 24, 2017, 7:37 PM UTC

tyrw wrote: post #83

Animats wrote: post #78

Tesla's system doesn't have enough sensors. Musk forced his engineers to try to do this almost entirely with vision processing, and that was a terrible decision. Vision processing isn't that good yet. Everybody else uses LIDAR. I've been saying for years that the right approach was to take the technology from Advanced Scientific Concepts' flash LIDAR and get the cost down. I first saw that demonstrated in 2004 on an…

It depends on what you're optimizing for. Others using LIDAR are optimizing for speed to market, while potentially sacrificing ability to solve the problem as fully. Musk's argument is that we know for certain that the entire road system can be navigated by visual cues, because that's how humans do it. We do not know for certain that this is possible with LIDAR.

Humans also learn how to drive using several orders of magnitude less training data than self-driving car efforts are using. Do you think that means we should strip down the training data sets to human-equivalent levels?

People and machines behave and understand the world differently. Just because it works for people doesn't mean it'll work for computers.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#94

Post by martin_bech » Thu, Aug 24, 2017, 7:38 PM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #8

The level-2 driving that Tesla is pushing seems like a worst case scenario to me. Requiring the driver to be awake and alert while not requiring them to actually do anything for long stretches of time is a recipe for disaster. Neither the driver nor the car manufacturer will have clear responsibility when there is an accident. The driver will blame the system for failing and the manufacturer will blame the driver for…

I have a Tesla with this and i LOVE it.. everyone I know on the teslaforums etc. loves it aswell. Please do yourself a favor, and try it out for a roadtrip duration or similar. Its a gamechanger.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#95

Post by sumeno » Thu, Aug 24, 2017, 7:39 PM UTC

tyrw wrote: post #83

Animats wrote: post #78

Tesla's system doesn't have enough sensors. Musk forced his engineers to try to do this almost entirely with vision processing, and that was a terrible decision. Vision processing isn't that good yet. Everybody else uses LIDAR. I've been saying for years that the right approach was to take the technology from Advanced Scientific Concepts' flash LIDAR and get the cost down. I first saw that demonstrated in 2004 on an…

It depends on what you're optimizing for. Others using LIDAR are optimizing for speed to market, while potentially sacrificing ability to solve the problem as fully. Musk's argument is that we know for certain that the entire road system can be navigated by visual cues, because that's how humans do it. We do not know for certain that this is possible with LIDAR.

Humans are pretty bad at driving though, so I'm not sure that basing self driving technology on us is a good idea.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#96

Post by kdoherty » Thu, Aug 24, 2017, 7:40 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #65

Roodgorf wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have the numbers on how many miles Tesla's level 2 cars have actually been driven while using the feature? I see this sort of argument a lot in regards to Google's self-driving tests, and while it seems convincing to me, it doesn't seem realistic to me that's there a big enough pool of data to make that claim definitively.

From Wikipedia [1] >According to Tesla there is a fatality every 94 million miles (150 million km) among all type of vehicles in the U.S. >By November 2016, Autopilot had operated actively on hardware version 1 vehicles for 300 million miles (500 million km) and 1.3 billion miles (2 billion km) in shadow mode. Those numbers are 9 months old and only apply to Autopilot v1 and not the Autopilot v2+ introduced late last…

It's great seeing that more and more data is being collected about this all the time. I'm a huge proponent of this tech.

What I wonder when I see these statistics, though, is whether all miles are really equal? For example, are Tesla drivers more comfortable using Autopilot in "easy" driving situations? Is there really a one-to-one correspondence in the distribution of the kinds of miles driven with Autopilot on vs. normal cars?

Furthermore, the metric commonly cited is "fatalities ever N miles." Are there fewer fatalities because Autopilot is great, or because Teslas are safer in general? Has there been a comparison between fatalities with/without Autopilot strictly on Teslas? Even then, it seems to me we are subject to this potentially biased notion of "miles" I mentioned previously. The Wikipedia article you mentioned cites a 50% reduction in accidents with Autopilot, but the citation is to an Elon Musk interview. I haven't yet seen anything official to back this up, but if anyone has any information on this, I'd love to see it!

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#97

Post by nilkn » Thu, Aug 24, 2017, 7:41 PM UTC

sumeno wrote: post #95

tyrw wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what you're optimizing for. Others using LIDAR are optimizing for speed to market, while potentially sacrificing ability to solve the problem as fully. Musk's argument is that we know for certain that the entire road system can be navigated by visual cues, because that's how humans do it. We do not know for certain that this is possible with LIDAR.

Humans are pretty bad at driving though, so I'm not sure that basing self driving technology on us is a good idea.

Humans are bad at driving because they can get distracted and can only look in one direction at a time. A computer system based on visual processing shouldn't have either of those issues.

I agree fundamentally though that it's a weak argument to say a certain approach should be taken just because it's how humans do it.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#98

Post by crocal » Thu, Aug 24, 2017, 7:48 PM UTC

tyrw wrote: post #84

crocal wrote: post #81

The only industry to have produced truly driverless public transportation systems is the rail industry. Not aeronautics. Rail systems happens to be my business and what I read here makes me very worried. I don't think the majority understands what safety means in mass transportation. It's not about running miles and miles without accidents and basically saying "see"? It's about demonstrating /by design/ that the /com…

It seems like you're taking your own opinion as a universal truth. There are many people (myself included) who will happily ride in a well-tested autonomous vehicle, particularly if the alternative is a taxi, uber, or bus driver who is just going through the motions. 5x safer is still an improvement in my eyes, even if it's still short of the gold standard for aviation.

No personal opinion here. It's just facts from the only ones around who have done this before. Your argument is flawed. We have also been there. Here is the catch. You are willing to take the risk, but society as a whole will not. As soon as you release /total/ control to a machine, public authorities having authorized this become responsible for your life and those your car may threaten. Requirements for said authorities to accept such things will be staggering.

In other words, it is you that is taking your own opinion for the universal truth. You reason in a model where the driver is the only responsible party for reckless driving.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#99

Post by mph1 » Thu, Aug 24, 2017, 7:50 PM UTC

strange_quark wrote: post #58

jijojv wrote: post #49

Level 2 still does not drive smoothly as many have confirmed on their forums. They do require you to jiggle the wheel every few mins to ensure you're alert. There's also https://www.hbsslaw.com/cases/tesla-autopilot-2-ap2-defect

It's amazing to me that Tesla is able to sell a car in its price range that lacks basic features that come standard on a $17k Corolla like adaptive cruise or automatic emergency breaking, especially since they effectively reduced the capabilities of their cars by rolling out AP2. If any other company tried to pull that, they'd be laughed out of the room, but somehow, Tesla is cheered.

You've clearly never driven a telsa if you think a $17k Corolla has more advanced adaptive cruise control. I've driven my model S over 15,000 miles, with probably over 50% of that on autopilot (mainly interstates), and NEVER had an issue with the adaptive cruise control. Its absolutely flawless. (autopilot has its quirks, although its still an extremely useful feature, and the primary reason I bought a tesla)

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#100

Post by cletus » Thu, Aug 24, 2017, 7:50 PM UTC

mdekkers wrote: post #80

cletus wrote: post #39

What befuddles me is that in all these discussions about self-driving cars seemingly no one refers to the massive body of knowledge in this area that comes from the aviation world. I've posted variants of this same comment several times and I'm starting to feel like a broken record. Look at studies of efforts to make planes safer by removing the human element. While efforts like autopilot have made things safer it re…

Call it the uncanny valley of automation safety. I am not disputing your assessment, but please don't discount liability. Planes can pretty much fly themselves today - there are no significant technology issues with the idea of "taxi away, take off, fly to destination, land, taxi to gate". all of this happens in what is perhaps the most regulated traffic environment on the planet. The issue is with creating the code…

> Planes can pretty much fly themselves today

but

> The issue is with creating the code that deals with "oh shit" scenarios.

So they fly themselves except they don't?

That's kind of my point: what makes anyone think truly driverless cars are going to happen anytime soon when a human is required to deal with these "oh shit" scenarios? What's more, I think the "oh shit" scenarios for cars are FAR more complicated. With planes someone else deals with scheduling for take off and landing. While in flight, the plane simply needs to not fly into other objects and maintain speed, direction and altitude.

As for liability, I agree. It's a nightmare, particularly when the standard will probably be "did the software cause injury or death?" when the standard should be "what is the incidence of injury or death compared to a human driver?"

I mean that'll be little comfort to the family of someone killed in an accident. We humans seem to have a weird tolerance humans negligently killing other humans.