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Tesla Live Stream – Autonomy Day [video]

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Re: Tesla Live Stream – Autonomy Day [video]

#491
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming Level 4 is what Musk means by Full Self Driving. The bar to be passed is then "No driver attention is ever required for safety (...) self-driving is only supported in limited circumstances (e.g. geofencing), and when these circumstances are no longer met the vehicle must be able to safely abort the trip, e.g. park the car, if the driver does not retake control." How would that work if you're out driving…

It isn’t like it all cameras simultaneously go from 0% obstruction to 100% obstruction instantaneously. The car should pull off the highway and park or at least pull to the shoulder and park once it has identified decreased visibility to an extent that might impact safety.

Snowstorms can last for days.

Freeway shoulders are not safe places to stop. You're likely to get hit by a drunk or distracted driver. Ask any police officer or tow truck driver. That's why stopping on the shoulder is only for emergencies.

Re: Tesla Live Stream – Autonomy Day [video]

#492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I found interesting as well is that they (him and Elon) hated the idea of using high definition maps, saying that if you need them you don't do self-driving cars really. For example, when driving condition change (roadblock or anything) you're done.

If this is true, why do Waymo (or any of the top 10 self-driving companies besides Tesla) use Lidar? Two facts: 1. Tesla can't use Lidar because of cost and aesthetics. 2. Elon has a strong incentive to oversell their approach to self-driving.

In most legal jurisdictions, lidar in consumer devices requires special permits from health and safety agencies. It's such a new tech in consumer devices that regulatory approval timelines can be highly unpredictable. And if there's one thing that Elon Musk loathes, it's unpredictable regulatory approval timelines. Plain old videocameras don't require any sort of special licensing in the vast majority of legal jurisdictions.

Re: Tesla Live Stream – Autonomy Day [video]

#493

I really really don't want Tesla to die. I think it's an important company for a sustainable future. Failures in autonomous driving could easily turn into the straw that breaks the camels back. If you call something "autopilot" and promote it as if it will drive for you and then it ends up killing dozens of people ... that's where successful class actions come from. (I obviously don't want people to die either.)

dozens?

How about 2 thus far and Tesla was not at fault.

Re: Tesla Live Stream – Autonomy Day [video]

#494

I'm sorry but I'm finding it really difficult to watch this and match up what the engineer is saying to what Elon Musk is saying. For example, the engineer says the custom ASIC does 144 TOps for 2 chips vs the NVidia drive Xavier - does 21 TOps. Okay, well yeah I expect your custom ASIC does have a nice performance advantage over the equivalent GPU. at 3.5x advantage probably seems reasonable. Cue Elon Musk: "At firs…

> For example, the engineer says the custom ASIC does 144 TOps for 2 chips vs the NVidia drive Xavier - does 21 TOps. Okay, well yeah I expect your custom ASIC does have a nice performance advantage over the equivalent GPU. at 3.5x advantage probably seems reasonable. Cue Elon Musk: Here's my issue with that. The on-chip SRAM is only 32MB, and the RAM is LPDDR4 rated at only 68GB/s. Assuming a dot-product (multiply +…

Nvidia already responded:

""Tesla was inaccurate in comparing its Full Self Driving computer at 144 TOPS of processing with Nvidia Drive Xavier at 21 TOPS," a spokesman said in an email. "The correct comparison would have been against Nvidia's full self-driving computer, Nvidia Drive AGX Pegasus, which delivers 320 TOPS for AI perception, localization and path planning." The statement also contends that "while Xavier delivers 30 TOPS of processing, Tesla erroneously stated that it delivers 21 TOPS. "

Re: Tesla Live Stream – Autonomy Day [video]

#495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I found interesting as well is that they (him and Elon) hated the idea of using high definition maps, saying that if you need them you don't do self-driving cars really. For example, when driving condition change (roadblock or anything) you're done.

If this is true, why do Waymo (or any of the top 10 self-driving companies besides Tesla) use Lidar? Two facts: 1. Tesla can't use Lidar because of cost and aesthetics. 2. Elon has a strong incentive to oversell their approach to self-driving.

A better question is, how come any of the companies using Lidar haven't shipped anything as good as Autopilot given that it's so much better?

Re: Tesla Live Stream – Autonomy Day [video]

#496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been driving for nearly 30 years and have never even seen one person going 140mph, yet alone dozens

The person who wrote that doesn’t realize how fast 140 would seem. That kind of speed differential is not something you can attempt to avoid. Even 100 vs. 70 is rare, and the safest thing to do given that differential is nothing. This is not an area any car company should worry about.

I agree that the safest thing to do is nothing. Which is why if I'm about to change lanes, and I spot this kind of behavior coming up rapidly from behind me, I abort my lane change. Even if I was moving to the Right lane (you never know which way these jerks are going to go.)

It is absolutely something a car company should worry about. Avoiding obstacles from any direction.

If a power line is falling down. If a construction crane is swinging wildly.

It's Defensive Driving.

Also, note, I said "closer to 140 MPH". I actually just saw another one on Sunday. Crotch Rocket motorcycle, in the far right line on a 5 lane freeway. No helmet. Hey, someone's got to be an organ donor, right?

Re: Tesla Live Stream – Autonomy Day [video]

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. I've seen perfectly sober, intelligent humans drive into some extremely stupid "situations".

We aren't trying to build another human. We are trying to build a car that doesn't crash.

No, we're trying to build a car that crashes less than humans.

If you want a car that doesn't crash, never build the car let alone drive it. Then it'll never crash.

The point is both reduction in fatalities and increase in human quality of life. Not an impossible perfection.

Re: Tesla Live Stream – Autonomy Day [video]

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vision is probablistic. You can improve your probabilities with more data and deeper nets, but the probability is never 100%. Inferring depth using triangulation of extracted features using vision is also probabilistic. Lidar gives you very rudimentary depth and positional data, but it is precise, and reliable, and the false positives are low. Lidar is not seeing the world as a series of probabilistic phantasms that…

I believe he claimed that they did have all of the sensors they need with hardware v2, and they had no need for LIDAR. We'll see if that's true. One thing that stood out to me is that he said they only need radar in front because you're only moving fast in that direction. Does that mean the cars will be susceptible to T-bone accidents?

There are vision systems on the side. The car primarily relies on its vision system, like humans. The radar is a check, not the primary.

Re: Tesla Live Stream – Autonomy Day [video]

#499
post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're fooling yourself if you think your eyes can do that. They can't. More to the point, your brain is fooling you , by synthesizing a perception of a reality, the same way it does to make you think the stuff in your peripheral vision is as sharp as the things in the middle. Vertebrate eyes don't have 24 bits of sensitivity, that's just insane. Rod cells are neurons, they either fire or they don't, can fire at most…

You're correct that the brain fills in a lot that isn't there, making you think your vision is a lot better than it is. It doesn't change much, though, mostly it fills in gaps. 10Hz? Simply not true. Fighter pilots can identify aircraft shown on a screen for 1/250th of one second. Regular schmoes can see the difference between 30Hz and 60Hz video easily. I am not arguing about pixel count of a camera vs the center of…

Being able to recognize aircraft on a screen for 1/250th of a second just means the human eye/brain has persistence, not actual useful 250Hz bandwidth.

Re: Tesla Live Stream – Autonomy Day [video]

#500
post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so frustrating to see that people eat Elon's BS. Even after: - the Unsworth lie - the "zero concern and I mean zero about 10k Model 3s per week in Dec 2018" lie - the "funding secured" and "only uncertainty is shareholder approval" lies - the "short burn of the century" lies I mean, they were even wrong about Nvidia's chip today, Nvidia had to issue a statement: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nvidia-says-tesl…

The tech specs of AGX Pegasus say they're 130 TOPS[1]. Or am I misunderstanding something? [1] https://developer.nvidia.com/drive/drive-agx

Where are you getting 130 from that page? I don't see it. On this other page [1], it clearly says 320. "NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Pegasus™ achieves an unprecedented 320 TOPS"

[1] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/self-driving-cars/drive-platfor...

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