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Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

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Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#221

Post by prewett »

tjwds wrote: post #2

This comment from OP (beastpilot) is pretty frightening: > Yep, works for 6 months with zero issues. Then one Friday night you get an update. Everything works that weekend, and on your way to work on Monday. Then, 18 minutes into your commute home, it drives straight at a barrier at 60 MPH. > It's important to remember that it's not like you got the update 5 minutes before this happened. Even worse, you may not know…

After working in large codebases I discovered that there are all sorts of assumptions in the code, and that a small change in one function can break an assumption used a long ways elsewhere. I came to the conclusion that any change basically invalidates all your tests. An update could introduce any possible problem that wasn't there before, so now all your experience with the system as a driver is actually reset to zero.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#222

Post by Tloewald »

lisper wrote: post #122

Here is my armchair diagnosis: right before the car veers towards the barrier it drives through a stretch of road where the only visible lane marker is on the left. Then the right lane marker comes into view at about the point where the lane starts to widen out for the lane split. The lines that will become the right and left lane markers of the split left and right lanes respectively are right next to the van in fro…

> It's not possible to engineer an autonomous system that never fails, but it is possible to engineer one in such a way that it never fails to detect that it has failed

This seems to me to be a clearly incorrect (and self-contradictory) claim. It entirely depends on your definition of failure.

Your analysis seems fine. The big problem is that the "autonomous" driver is using one signal (where are the lines on the edge of the road?) to the near exclusion of all others (is there a large stationary solid object in front of me?)

Maybe Tesla should have hired George Hotz (sp?) if only to write a lightweight sanity-check system that could argue with the main system about whether it was working.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#223

Post by _rpd »

makomk wrote: post #16
tjwds wrote: post #2

This comment from OP (beastpilot) is pretty frightening: > Yep, works for 6 months with zero issues. Then one Friday night you get an update. Everything works that weekend, and on your way to work on Monday. Then, 18 minutes into your commute home, it drives straight at a barrier at 60 MPH. > It's important to remember that it's not like you got the update 5 minutes before this happened. Even worse, you may not know…

Elsewhere from the comments: "Yes the lane width detection and centering was introduced in 10.4. Our X does this now as well and while it's a welcome intoroduction in most cases every one in a while in this instance or when HOV lanes split it is unwelcome." So basically, if I'm understanding this right they introduced a new feature that positions your car a little more consistently in the lane at the small cost of so…

Life and death patch notes. I think I'm going to wait a while before using this feature.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#224

Post by tqkxzugoaupvwqr »

iainmerrick wrote: post #88
davewritescode wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is autopilot actively engages you even less than highway driving. I argue this exacerbates some of the problems that cause humans to checkout. I don't know what the answer is but it feels like GM's super cruise does a more adequate job of acknowledging the realistic limits of the technology and explicitly white lists roads where the technology is available for use. I personally think that without some sor…

Beacons is a great idea -- have some standardized beacon system, and a public map of autopilot-approved roads. Following the beacons safely would be a vastly easier problem than trying to completely replace a human driver in all situations, but it would still give you about 90% of the benefits.

Lines fade away because there is little money for maintenance but beacons that cost multiples are the solution?

The first thing I thought when I read beacons: Hackers are going to have a field day with them. Add malicious beacons to streets and cars will drive off road at high speeds.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#225

Post by lightedman »

lisper wrote: post #149
jacquesm wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with your analysis. What is more worrying is that even following the rest of the traffic would have solved the problem. If you are the only car doing something then there is a good chance you are doing something wrong. Also: the lane markings are confusing but GPS and inertial readings should have clearly indicated that that is not a lane. If two systems give conflicting data some kind of alarm should…

> lane markings are confusing but GPS and inertial readings should have clearly indicated that that is not a lane GPS is not accurate enough to reliably pinpoint your location to a particular lane. Even WAAS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Area_Augmentation_System ) can have up to 25 feet of error. Basic GPS is less accurate than that. In fact, it's possible that GPS error was a contributing factor here but ther…

"GPS is not accurate enough to reliably pinpoint your location to a particular lane."

My phone has GPS accurate to within 1 foot. I use it for mining location all the time. It uses differential GPS plus Inertial sensors.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#226

Post by 411mrc »

makomk wrote: post #16
tjwds wrote: post #2

This comment from OP (beastpilot) is pretty frightening: > Yep, works for 6 months with zero issues. Then one Friday night you get an update. Everything works that weekend, and on your way to work on Monday. Then, 18 minutes into your commute home, it drives straight at a barrier at 60 MPH. > It's important to remember that it's not like you got the update 5 minutes before this happened. Even worse, you may not know…

Elsewhere from the comments: "Yes the lane width detection and centering was introduced in 10.4. Our X does this now as well and while it's a welcome intoroduction in most cases every one in a while in this instance or when HOV lanes split it is unwelcome." So basically, if I'm understanding this right they introduced a new feature that positions your car a little more consistently in the lane at the small cost of so…

It seems like the collective pack of Teslas would feed telemetry back to the mothership as unit tests for any new versions. In other words, any change has to redrive (simulate) a big sample of what has already been driven, especially where the human had to correct.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#227

Post by dragonwriter »

danso wrote: post #203
slivym wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got to take issue with you there. Tesla Engineering knows better than anybody what updates they did and how often they update etc. Tesla PR knows nothing about what updates the engineering team did. At least some people in Tesla PR probably don't even know the cars update their software regularly. It's bad practice for them to speak out of turn, but I can absolutely see the PR team not having a good grasp of wha…

The entire point of a PR department is to gather that information before releasing it. Yes, they wrangle it to put the company in the best light, but that doesn't mean they should be operating in ignorance. They have access to Tesla employees that outside reporters do not (or at least, should not) have.

> The entire point of a PR department is to gather that information before releasing it.

No the entire point of a PR department is to propagandize the public on behalf of the corporation.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#228

Post by walrus01 »

comboy wrote: post #126
swiley wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why if I ever get a self driving car I want: 1) root 2) control over updates 3) everything to be completely open

You do not want root on your self driving car. Or to put it differently, I don't want to be driving on the same road as you with your rooted self driving car. You can be great sysadmin/coder, tesla guys may be too, but both of you changing random stuff without any communication with each other.. I've seen enough servers.

I am trying to imagine the typical arch Linux enthusiasts modifying the lane detection software on their cars and shudder at the thought.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#229

Post by [deleted] »

lisper wrote: post #201
dancek wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not possible to engineer an autonomous system that never fails, but it is possible to engineer one in such a way that it never fails to detect that it has failed. This is a very good point: just like a human driver should slow down if they can't observe the road ahead well enough, an AI should slow down when it's not confident enough of its surroundings. This is probably very difficult to do, and I'm skeptical…

> if a simple explanation exists, I'd love to hear it Basically it's a matter of having multiple redundant sensors and sounding the alarm if they don't all agree on what is going on, and also checking if what they think is going on is in the realm of reasonable possibility based on some a priori model (e.g. if suddenly all of your sensors tell you that you are 100 miles from where you were one second ago, that's prob…

[deleted]

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#230

Post by walrus01 »

iainmerrick wrote: post #91
Naritai wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To directly answer your question: people buy autopilot so they can check their phone while commuting down the freeway to work. I was talking to a group of people about the difficulties of commuting in the Santa Clara Valley, and one guy shrugged and said, "just get a Tesla, move to the left lane, and manage email until you get to work".

Yikes! I really hope that's a joke...

I have seen pictures of iPads strapped to steering wheel in Nissan Altimas, so yes people are really this dumb. Airbag issues entirely aside.
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