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Current Tesla autopilot is sometimes blind to stopped cars

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Re: Current Tesla autopilot is sometimes blind to stopped cars

#31

Post by fabianluque »

rcxdude wrote: post #23
derekp7 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I don't understand. If you have more than 1 camera, you can run an edge detection algorithm on the images from each camera and use simple trig to build up a 3d model of what is in front of the car. This can easily distinguish between a shadow or road kill, vs a large object in the way. Is there a technical reason they don't do this (such as too much processing power required)?

You are trivialising the problem. Getting reliable data from stereo images is still far from solved, especially in realtime. (Also, the best currently available techniques are likely too computationally expensive to run on the compute that Tesla has put in the car).

You can clearly see here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROHW3sm2j0g) that Autopilot is detecting moving, stationary, stopped and oncoming vehicles.

There could be situations where this does not work accurately and that's when problems occur. If you watch closely you can even see it sometimes in this video.

Re: Current Tesla autopilot is sometimes blind to stopped cars

#32

Post by kijin »

superice wrote: post #15
eastendguy wrote: post #4

Can any other Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC) stop in such a case? (Real question, I don't know). My current understanding is that Tesla's TACC is the best on the market. Correct?

I drive a 2018 VW Golf Variant (Station Wagon) and the Adaptive Cruise Control from VW also has this problem. I regularly use it for city driving from traffic light to traffic light which means that I basically only have to steer a little, but if I'm driving towards a stationary car waiting in front of a red light, it will not detect the car until it starts to move.

So it's like the T. Rex from the original Jurassic Park movie? "He can't see you if you don't move."

Re: Current Tesla autopilot is sometimes blind to stopped cars

#33

Post by xnyan »

A LIDAR array is a requirement for automated driving. It can operate in some conditions that radar cannot. lidar, radar and computer vision should all be used in concert for best effect and Tesla knows this, but chooses/chose not to in order to meet a price point. That choice may have been the right one, I don't know.

Hacker news (and me too, to be honest) focuses on Tesla, but there are a lot of other players doing this and doing it better IMO.

Re: Current Tesla autopilot is sometimes blind to stopped cars

#34

Post by VikingCoder »

eastendguy wrote: post #4

Can any other Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC) stop in such a case? (Real question, I don't know). My current understanding is that Tesla's TACC is the best on the market. Correct?

Sounds like TACC is deadly, then. Can Waymo handle this situation or not?

Re: Current Tesla autopilot is sometimes blind to stopped cars

#35

Post by pooya13 »

tntn wrote: post #30
Junk_Collector wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't the specifics of Tesla's radar implementation but what I have seen of the accidents usually seem like a textbook examples of incorrectly implemented clutter filtering. It's not an easy problem to solve in practice (re: cheaply), but known solutions have existed for decades.

The radar module in Teslas uses the same filtering strategy as most adaptive cruise control radar modules, which is "if relative velocity to object is nearly the opposite of the car's velocity, throw it out." It works pretty much as designed.

What are your resources?

Re: Current Tesla autopilot is sometimes blind to stopped cars

#36

Post by nradov »

Symmetry wrote: post #22
jameskilton wrote: post #6

This has been true for a long time. Radar can't differentiate between a wall, a stopped car, or a dead skunk. Heck, it can get confused with a bridge's shadow on a bright day. Thus autopilot has to be configured to deal with these situations: stop or run into them. The vast majority of the situation you don't want the car to stop, as that will lead to a more dangerous situation and increase the chance of a collision.…

Automotive radar is clearly not up to the task of differentiating stopped cars from signs at a range far enough away to brake safely, it's true. In theory if you could fit a narrow beam phased array radar on a car it could do the job but that isn't something at all in the cards. But self driving cars with lidar have enough precision to deal with this problem even if they do cost more. Rather than showing a problem wi…

A better approach would be to focus on making more and more improvements to level 1 autonomy. The driver would be hands-on all the time, but the computer would intervene as necessary to prevent collisions. We already have some of that with forward collision prevention systems, blind spot warning, stability control, etc. Just keeping improving those systems by adding more sensors and authority over more vehicle controls.

Level 4+ autonomy is only going to be viable on a few limited roads for decades to come. The AI and sensor challenges are tremendous. We shouldn't let that long-term goal distract us from real safety improvements that could be realized relatively quickly with minimal technical risk.

Re: Current Tesla autopilot is sometimes blind to stopped cars

#37

Post by VikingCoder »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #9
eastendguy wrote: post #4

Can any other Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC) stop in such a case? (Real question, I don't know). My current understanding is that Tesla's TACC is the best on the market. Correct?

This is a deficiency in several automatic emergency braking systems [1]. Tesla extracts as much signal from front facing radar as they can, but edge cases abound. Marketplace or Planet Money had a piece a few weeks ago that mentioned the hardest problem was consumer education about these safety systems. People are inherently not interested in learning about the life safety systems in their cars. They expect it to “ju…

> Whose failing is it if warnings clearly state that isn’t the case?

Tesla should be responsible and stop marketing it.

Otherwise you're begging legislators to write ham-handed laws, begging courts to set awful precedents.

Either way, they are absolutely poisoning the well.

Re: Current Tesla autopilot is sometimes blind to stopped cars

#38

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

fabianluque wrote: post #31
rcxdude wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are trivialising the problem. Getting reliable data from stereo images is still far from solved, especially in realtime. (Also, the best currently available techniques are likely too computationally expensive to run on the compute that Tesla has put in the car).

You can clearly see here ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROHW3sm2j0g ) that Autopilot is detecting moving, stationary, stopped and oncoming vehicles. There could be situations where this does not work accurately and that's when problems occur. If you watch closely you can even see it sometimes in this video.

Works 95% of the time is not good enough.

Re: Current Tesla autopilot is sometimes blind to stopped cars

#39

Post by nradov »

stevoo wrote: post #7

This not news. This has existed from the first iteration of Tesla Autopilots. That is why there where crashes with stationery vehicles for Tesla. This is shortcoming for using only cameras or any vehicle that has adaptive cruise control. The problem is that the front camera cannot distinguish from the road and a stationery vehicle. For that, they are the same and they ignore stationary obstacles. If they where taken…

The Subaru EyeSight system uses cameras. It appears to do pretty well for adaptive cruise control and front crash prevention.

https://www.iihs.org/iihs/sr/statusreport/article/53/3/2

Re: Current Tesla autopilot is sometimes blind to stopped cars

#40

Post by nradov »

baddox wrote: post #13
eastendguy wrote: post #4

Can any other Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC) stop in such a case? (Real question, I don't know). My current understanding is that Tesla's TACC is the best on the market. Correct?

I don’t think so. My understanding is that this is completely intended (and documented) behavior in Teslas and all other makes with this feature. Correct me if I’m wrong, but no adaptive cruise control systems perform full emergency breaking or emergency swerving when traveling at high speeds. Here’s an an article from last year: https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/

The latest generation of Volvo's driver assistance system will do emergency braking and swerving at high speeds.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15342750/2018-volvo-xc60-...

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