Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#531

Post by keenmaster » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:30 AM UTC

m463 wrote: post #495

virtualritz wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The camera is bird's eye on the google presentation. And it is a recording. So jitter/flicker can be cleaned up/smoothed out and the data can be massaged in ways that a real time system may not be able to do. This is a presentation. I'd be /very/ surprised if this animation was from RAW data as-is. Also there seems to be Lidar data (point clouds) which Tesla doesn't have. So while this means bounding boxes may have l…

It diminishes the comparison when just the lidar for a waymo car costs more than the entire tesla vehicle. So, not only can you afford a tesla vehicle, you can go out and buy one today.

LIDAR will get cheaper and smaller though. I think Tesla’s argument that cameras+ML+tons of data>LIDAR is more compelling.

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#532

Post by mannykannot » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:36 AM UTC

microcolonel wrote: post #456

modeless wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that they "fixed" the dancing cars problem by applying a low pass filter to the data before sending it to the visualization, just so people would stop complaining about it. I think there's still a lot of jitter in the underlying data.

Seems like it would make more sense to model the inertia. Cars don't randomly accelerate at 100,000m/s/s in some direction they aren't pointed. Though they should have a model for detecting obstacles in the view regardless of inertia, because sometimes something really does appear in front of you in a thirteenth of a second. You could probably model inertia with n prior frames of probability fields.

Would you not be implicitly assuming that the prior position was more accurate than the current one? If you have a sequence of consistent prior positions, then perhaps something like a Kalman filter would be appropriate, but I would guess that with something suddenly being revealed by a change in either party's position or that of a third party, you don't always have that.

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#533

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:43 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #501

mike_d wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that is true you should call in to question the integrity of a company that would run life-critical software on a non-RTOS.

Realtime has nothing to do with absolute performance. It's about meeting your deadlines. And, of course, often real-time systems have much worse throughput performance than a non-real-time system on the same hardware. After all, latency guarantees are not free.

Yeah, until we're above 500Hz I'd rather have a significantly faster non-realtime main system, with a small realtime watchdog/backup.

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#534

Post by brokenmachine » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:46 AM UTC

bitL wrote: post #406

brokenmachine wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that all these so-called "self-driving" systems expect you to be alert and ready because at any moment they might decide that the human needs to be in control again. So you can't do other things while in the car.

That's right now and that's why companies have to provide level 5 autonomy or there won't be any customers. Yet for days with good weather in urban environments level 5 might come within a decade; it's still better to be able to drive only half of the time instead of all the time. The long tail of problems that is supposedly plaguing self-driving systems exists with humans as well - how would you react if a bridge/bu…

I'd hit the brakes.

But then again, I am actually able to discern what is a bridge and what isn't, and thus don't have the need to suddenly cover my eyes and scream, "I'm confused and I don't want to drive anymore!"

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#535

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:49 AM UTC

axguscbklp wrote: post #508

xkjkls wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much difference does 4++ vs 5 make for the predicted consequences of self-driving cars though? That's the important thing.

I would say that I would feel comfortable falling asleep in a 5 while it is driving nontrivial distance and/or road conditions, but I would not feel comfortable doing so in a 4++.

Why? Plain old 4 is supposed to be the "safe to sleep" level.

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#536

Post by CydeWeys » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:52 AM UTC

jjallen wrote: post #526

adrr wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo is at least 5 years ahead of Tesla. They are running driverless self driving cars already on city streets. My Model 3 can’t even navigate a parking a lot half the time I use the summon feature.

Ancedote: this evening in Mountain View, the driver of one of Waymo's test vans had to take over (I watched her grab the wheel). The van had come to a complete stop with room to pass a USPS truck (it appeared safe to me from 25 feet away), and didn't begin moving again for a few seconds. She then took control.

It's hard to extrapolate anything from this, as they may have intentionally been testing some new variation on an algorithm that made it more reticent. Besides, it doesn't sound like the car was unsafe, just timid. A crash would be way worse.

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#537

Post by brokenmachine » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:53 AM UTC

rahulnair23 wrote: post #211

krm01 wrote: post #140

It still strikes me why so many people are still against a future with self driving cars. Sure, people throughout history are scared of change & new tech. But if you look at this video and compare the amount of stuff the camera catches AND processes, with the things you are seeing & processing, it's really hard for me to see me being better at it than a computer. The reality of driving (as a human) is that most of it…

I'd suggest reading the NTSB report on the pedestrian killed by Uber's "self-driving" vehicle [0]. The vehicle misclassified Elaine Herzberg so many times in the seconds leading up to taking her out at 40 mph - its clear to me that none of this is ready for public use. We are so normalised to vehicular violence. This would never be allowed in any other sector, say healthcare for instance. [0] https://www.ntsb.gov/new…

Which document describes where it "misclassified Elaine Herzberg so many times"?

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#538

Post by YooLi » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:53 AM UTC

Does anyone know where to find more details about the sensor and hardware stacks the different self-driving companies are using?

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#539

Post by mcot2 » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:55 AM UTC

keenmaster wrote: post #531

m463 wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It diminishes the comparison when just the lidar for a waymo car costs more than the entire tesla vehicle. So, not only can you afford a tesla vehicle, you can go out and buy one today.

LIDAR will get cheaper and smaller though. I think Tesla’s argument that cameras+ML+tons of data>LIDAR is more compelling.

It will still be power hungry and mess up aerodynamics even if it is smaller. Tesla is looking at the entire picture of autonomous + EV which IMO is a better strategy.

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#540

Post by jaxn » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:55 AM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #514

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Until you can meet my use case, a common one for an Uber driver, self driving cars are empty hype. For you . The semi-autonomy we have now- not "this vehicle will get me from point A to point B without need for intervention- but "this vehicle can take out some amount of the area between points A and B" is incredibly useful. I don't know how hard it is for you to keep going straight while fumbling about with a hambu…

Nice for you until the “self driving” car gets into an accident and kills the other driver. You don’t get 50% attention with driving. It’s either 100% or 0%. Anything other than that will put everybody else on the road at risk. If you are driving around in your Tesla using its adaptive cruise control and not paying attention to your driving... I can only hope the accident you will eventually cause hurts nobody but yo…

I have easily driven 12,000 miles under autopilot and regularly do the kind of tasks the parent described.

Maybe I will have an accident and comments like this one will age poorly. Or maybe we will find that the scary technology wasn't as scary as first thought.