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

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

#211

Post by crocal »

RoyTyrell wrote: post #149
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…

I'm not saying you're wrong, because I have absolutely no authority in the subject, but apart from knowing some terminology how do we know you have any expertise either? > If you substitute, you have to do much much much better. Nobody will ride a driverless vehicle provided the explanation that it is, you know, "already an improvement when compared to a typical driver". Is it fair? Maybe not, but that's the whole po…

You are correct. I will edit and add some supporting references.

I don't know where Elon gets his numbers from, but according to EN 50126 practioners, human error is in the range of 2E-4 / 1E-3 whereas safety functions are classified at least SIL2 and that means 1E-6. In other word, the system must be x1000 better than a human.

Here is a good reference: http://en50126.blogspot.it/2009/10/safety-integrity-levels-s...

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

#212

Post by cr0sh »

kuschku wrote: post #135
aerovistae wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely do not use it. I am one of the biggest Tesla fans out there. I fucking love the company. But Autopilot in its current form is nothing short of dangerous. I took a test drive in a Model S a couple months ago and enabled Autopilot at the Tesla rep's encouragement while on a straight stretch of route 90 near Boston. We were going 70mph, a safe speed. The car came to a point where the highway curved, and a sli…

It gets worse, if your Tesla is following a car in front of you, and they switch lanes, but you can’t switch lanes because another car is coming from behind in that lane, the Autopilot will switch nonetheless. This almost killed a tester from the German federal motor vehicle approval agency. Their overall report is devastating, and shows the Tesla autopilot is little more than a glorified cruise control, marketed in…

I'm not sure what to say when the code I recently turned in (and passed) for the path planning project of term 3 in Udacity's Self-Driving Car Engineer works better at changing lanes than Tesla's system:

https://github.com/andrew-ayers/udacity-sdc/blob/master/Term...

Then again, it does have a failure mode where occasionally, for some reason, it will direct the car to change lanes into the path of a much faster moving vehicle in the lane being changed to. Most of this is because it only runs the behavior planner every second or so in the simulation, and probably does get everything perfectly correct in the prediction part (I honestly am not sure where the problem lies, though).

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

#213

Post by wooter »

timdorr wrote: post #120
aerovistae wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely do not use it. I am one of the biggest Tesla fans out there. I fucking love the company. But Autopilot in its current form is nothing short of dangerous. I took a test drive in a Model S a couple months ago and enabled Autopilot at the Tesla rep's encouragement while on a straight stretch of route 90 near Boston. We were going 70mph, a safe speed. The car came to a point where the highway curved, and a sli…

That's not true at all. AP (at least HW2 AP in my car) does definitely slow down for curves. This is more apparent on surface roads, which have more extreme curves. My car will slow down ~15MPH on one curve, whereas I would only slow myself ~5MPH. It's definitely a part of the system.

duno why people are just outright lying all over this comment section. disappointing

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

#214

Post by mulmen »

ghaff wrote: post #201
mulmen wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much more the average driver's skill can degrade. We never re-train so isn't there a natural degradation already? Will automation make that worse or will it not be significant?

For the typical (certainly US) driver, the initial training is just to get to a minimally viable set of skills so they can pass their driving test. The vast majority of people aren't taking performance driving courses to get their drivers licenses. I'd pretty much guarantee that almost every driver is more skilled 10 years after they get their license.

I'm not sure that experience implies skill but you make a good point.

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

#215

Post by rhino369 »

akmiller wrote: post #139
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…

But L2 requires the drivers active attention as they have to have their hands on the wheel every 60 seconds (or something like that). As long as Tesla doesn't remove that constraint then there shouldn't be any worries. I don't see how you can get to L5 without L2 and the learning that is going on in these cars today.

>I don't see how you can get to L5 without L2 and the learning that is going on in these cars today.

You can use the automation as a backup safety feature until it's L4. For example, the car has the ability to stop if you try running a red light, but you otherwise are required to drive the vehicle.

Automated cars don't just have to be better than humans, they have to be as good as humans with automated safety features.

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

#217

Post by mikejharrison »

kbenson wrote: post #116
ghaff wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a well-researched area, in addition to being pretty obvious to everyone. Personally, I stopped using cruise control years ago. If I have to pay attention, I'm better off driving. This isn't just a matter for Tesla. The auto industry is rapidly heading for much better assistive driving systems. There's no way that the people heads-down in their cell phones are going to do this less once they realize they don't…

I recently drove an Accord with lane-following and speed adaptive cruise-control recently. It completely failed (but thankfully by refusing to try) in the one instance that I wanted to use it (stop-and-go traffic), but it was nerve wracking when it was on as it kept losing the lane. People naturally alter the throttle and speed when going around corners and up slight inclines. It feels alien when that doesn't happen.

I've got the new Hyundai Ioniq with adaptive cruise control and lane assist. Last weekend I drove 160 miles with both enabled for the first time. I just found it shifted my focus. I was much more aware of what was going on outside the car. Setting the max speed to 75 mph enabled it to follow the car in front very effectively and overcame the incline and corner speed issue. Only problem was having to intervene to prevent under-taking.

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

#218

Post by spullara »

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…

Yeah, really seems terrible. Look at the data rather than theory crafting.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-19/tesla-s-a...

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

#219

Post by ghaff »

kevmo314 wrote: post #202
cletus wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You could argue that in the "oh shit" scenarios for a car, the proper action is to always stop. Most human drivers will instinctively stomp on the brakes if they see anything they're not expecting, and this is pretty much what today's autonomous software does. Recovering from the "oh shit" scenario is the difficult part, but human pilots often can't recover, after all it makes little sense to try and fix an engine on…

>the proper action is to always stop

It's not. But it's a reasonable first reaction which is why we end up doing it. (That or swerving.)

But as soon as we realize the thing that made us twitch is a squirrel or a plastic bag, our forebrain takes the foot off the brake or straightens the wheel.

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

#220

Post by titanomachy »

archagon wrote: post #165
tlb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference: commercial pilots are highly trained, even-tempered, and take their job seriously. Most drivers are lazy, distracted, and apt to do something stupid in an emergency. It's very hard to make something safer than a commercial pilot. It's much easier to make something safer than a typical driver.

> Most drivers are lazy, distracted, and apt to do something stupid in an emergency. Er, citation needed. I think the vast majority of drivers are good drivers — otherwise, vehicular transport would be a disaster.

Yeah, that's true at least where I live. Most times I drive I'll see someone do something stupid or inattentive (or even do something stupid myself!), but I see thousands of people driving normally, i.e. driving well.

Countless times I've seen pedestrians or cyclists throw themselves in front of traffic without warning, and every time the drivers have stopped without incident. A collision is by far the more exceptional case.

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