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Andrej Karpathy (Tesla): CVPR 2021 Workshop on Autonomous Vehicles [video]

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Re: Andrej Karpathy (Tesla): CVPR 2021 Workshop on Autonomous Vehicles [video]

#61

Post by liuliu »

bluepanda928752 wrote: post #54
liuliu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get sparse point cloud from LIDAR sensors, not accurate 3D maps. This is the main reason why some people think LIDAR may not work well (mostly, only comma.ai and Tesla folks). Vision can also get you 3D maps, either in active manner (IR floodlight or structured lighting) or not. I will reserve my judgement until see more from either side.

LIDAR is valuable as a safety feature, i.e. it can (unlike radars or cameras) reliably see (at least in clear weather) if there's anything in the car's path warranting evasion/braking maneuvers. In particular it's important that the LIDAR is dumb, i.e. its failure mores are predictable

LIDAR operates by timing how a photon reflects from a surface, it doesn't guarantee see everything. As you stated already, it cannot see in snow or rain.

I am actually on sensor-fusion side, but I don't think we should jump to the conclusion LIDAR is the best 3D mapping method.

For one example, a truck has a breaking distance of 600ft, either Velodyne or OS1 LIDAR has range less than that.

Re: Andrej Karpathy (Tesla): CVPR 2021 Workshop on Autonomous Vehicles [video]

#62

Post by darknavi »

bobsomers wrote: post #59
liuliu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get sparse point cloud from LIDAR sensors, not accurate 3D maps. This is the main reason why some people think LIDAR may not work well (mostly, only comma.ai and Tesla folks). Vision can also get you 3D maps, either in active manner (IR floodlight or structured lighting) or not. I will reserve my judgement until see more from either side.

This framing is a common error in the debate. It's not cameras or lidar, it's cameras or cameras + lidar + radar. Nobody is driving on lidar alone. Many others actually have more cameras and are doing substantially more vision than Tesla is, they're just fusing lidar and radar perception with their vision pipeline. It gives you a more robust view of the world than using a single sensor modality.

One of the arguments made in this talk is which sensor to trust when there is a disagreement. I'd love to see the scenarios where this happens with three types of sensors and the logic they use to choose the "right" one.

Re: Andrej Karpathy (Tesla): CVPR 2021 Workshop on Autonomous Vehicles [video]

#63

Post by cs702 »

bluepanda928752 wrote: post #34

Tesla's decision not to use the LIDAR as a safety feature (i.e. having reliable high-resolution data about things the car can collide with) is so incredibly indefensible, since solving the last 1% of this using only vision likely requires a general artificial intelligence Prediction: Tesla will be the last of all major auto manufacturers to get to L5 autonomy. Time interval between when Tesla L5 FSD is finally availa…

I strongly disagree. By all measures I've seen (including a couple of slides in the OP's video), Tesla's self-driving is far safer than human driving: the number of accidents and deaths per mile driven are something like an order of magnitude lower (i.e., around 10x safer). I mean, the machine never gets distracted, tired, sleepy, emotional, drunk, etc., so it is a LOT LESS likely to crash on boring, monotonous road segments than most people -- who do get distracted, tired, sleepy, etc. Not only that, but people make really scary mistakes in routine circumstances. The video shows several examples of human drivers hitting the accelerator when they actually meant to hit the brake!

The criticism of autopilot is really about it getting tripped-up in response to statistically rare, unusual circumstances, i.e., edge cases. Karpathy et al are working on getting better at those, bringing the rate of situations that surprise autopilot closer and closer to 0%, even if it can never be achieved -- there will be always be surprises. Personally, I would rather take a tiny risk of crash on rare, once-in-a-million-miles events with autopilot driving than a ~1% risk of crash per 1000 to 2000 miles with everyday human driving.

Prediction: Tesla will be the first of all major automakers to get to level 4 and 5 autonomy.

Re: Andrej Karpathy (Tesla): CVPR 2021 Workshop on Autonomous Vehicles [video]

#64

Post by liuliu »

bobsomers wrote: post #59
liuliu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get sparse point cloud from LIDAR sensors, not accurate 3D maps. This is the main reason why some people think LIDAR may not work well (mostly, only comma.ai and Tesla folks). Vision can also get you 3D maps, either in active manner (IR floodlight or structured lighting) or not. I will reserve my judgement until see more from either side.

This framing is a common error in the debate. It's not cameras or lidar, it's cameras or cameras + lidar + radar. Nobody is driving on lidar alone. Many others actually have more cameras and are doing substantially more vision than Tesla is, they're just fusing lidar and radar perception with their vision pipeline. It gives you a more robust view of the world than using a single sensor modality.

Sensor fusion is hard, especially with data at various qualities (different generations of LIDAR, radar, probably images are more portable actually).

I am actually on sensor-fusion side, and think a transformer can merge everything and generate a coherent world-view. But this is a hard problem and people side-step them after the evaluation shouldn't be dismissed blatantly.

For one:

> It gives you a more robust view of the world than using a single sensor modality.

How can we evaluate that correctly?

Re: Andrej Karpathy (Tesla): CVPR 2021 Workshop on Autonomous Vehicles [video]

#65

Post by darknavi »

karpathy wrote: post #26
ketamine__ wrote: post #11

I've read claims that they are desperately trying to hire. https://mobile.twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/140705191831739...

For the record these are some blatant & false FUD attempts.

Good to hear it from the source! Great talk by the way. As someone in the CS field but with no knowledge of CV/NN I still find these presentations very insightful.

Re: Andrej Karpathy (Tesla): CVPR 2021 Workshop on Autonomous Vehicles [video]

#66

Post by donio »

bluepanda928752 wrote: post #39
SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re betting that they can use a massive feedback loop to train a set of neural networks to the point where they are as accurate as LiDAR without actually firing any lasers. Even if you believe this goal is possible to achieve at some point in the future, I think the argument falls apart when you consider that it will take years, probably decades, for a pure vision approach to catch up to where Waymo is today in t…

I understand why they made the "no-LIDAR" bet early when the LIDARs were completely unpractical for a production consumer car However, nowadays it starts to look that 100% reliable depth estimation from cameras might actually require a human-level AI to work and also solid-state LIDAR technology is becoming cheap enough and integrateable into normal cars, but Tesla can't really change their stance on this without adm…

> FSD options they already sold would not actually become FSD within the lifetimes of these vehicles

That's pretty much a given at this point but they will not admit it until a class-action lawsuit forces them to.

Re: Andrej Karpathy (Tesla): CVPR 2021 Workshop on Autonomous Vehicles [video]

#67

Post by jowday »

liuliu wrote: post #44
bluepanda928752 wrote: post #34

Tesla's decision not to use the LIDAR as a safety feature (i.e. having reliable high-resolution data about things the car can collide with) is so incredibly indefensible, since solving the last 1% of this using only vision likely requires a general artificial intelligence Prediction: Tesla will be the last of all major auto manufacturers to get to L5 autonomy. Time interval between when Tesla L5 FSD is finally availa…

You get sparse point cloud from LIDAR sensors, not accurate 3D maps. This is the main reason why some people think LIDAR may not work well (mostly, only comma.ai and Tesla folks). Vision can also get you 3D maps, either in active manner (IR floodlight or structured lighting) or not. I will reserve my judgement until see more from either side.

Point clouds from the next generation of LIDAR are looking less and less sparse.

https://youtu.be/COgEQuqTAug?t=11601

Re: Andrej Karpathy (Tesla): CVPR 2021 Workshop on Autonomous Vehicles [video]

#68

Post by notJim »

ketamine__ wrote: post #11

I've read claims that they are desperately trying to hire. https://mobile.twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/140705191831739...

This appears to be the source given[1] for the claims https://www.snowbullcapital.com/tracking-tesla-job-postings. No idea what to make of this methodology, which appears to be based on tracking re-use of req ids. Someone must be scraping LinkedIn data, which would surely be more reliable.

[1]: https://mobile.twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/140709356765125...

Re: Andrej Karpathy (Tesla): CVPR 2021 Workshop on Autonomous Vehicles [video]

#69

Post by darknavi »

kaba0 wrote: post #28
darknavi wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> humans also have this thing called brain, and reasoning, and instincts, and being able to tell if the object in front of them is e.g. a roof of an overturned truck vs. empty space, etc, etc. Assuming the car is reasonably good at this, it has the advantage that it can see in every direction at once. I don't think self-driving cars will ever be perfect, but I think they will quickly become less-lethal than the avera…

For the average case, perhaps. But we are not doing too badly for the average case either. Let’s see how well does a Tesla react to exceptional cases where actual decision making is required, few data sample is available, etc. Statistics can be misleading with rare events.

I'd hope they have a "panic" mode that at least "safes" the car.

It's also worth pointing out that humans are notoriously bad at "exceptional cases" sometimes. People full-stop on the freeway for small animals to cross sometimes or panic when adjusting their eyes out of tunnels.

I do think it would be interesting to compare the two (computers vs humans) and look at the venn diagram of crash cases.

Re: Andrej Karpathy (Tesla): CVPR 2021 Workshop on Autonomous Vehicles [video]

#70

Post by AndrewKemendo »

cs702 wrote: post #63
bluepanda928752 wrote: post #34

Tesla's decision not to use the LIDAR as a safety feature (i.e. having reliable high-resolution data about things the car can collide with) is so incredibly indefensible, since solving the last 1% of this using only vision likely requires a general artificial intelligence Prediction: Tesla will be the last of all major auto manufacturers to get to L5 autonomy. Time interval between when Tesla L5 FSD is finally availa…

I strongly disagree. By all measures I've seen (including a couple of slides in the OP's video), Tesla's self-driving is far safer than human driving: the number of accidents and deaths per mile driven are something like an order of magnitude lower (i.e., around 10x safer). I mean, the machine never gets distracted, tired, sleepy, emotional, drunk, etc., so it is a LOT LESS likely to crash on boring, monotonous road…

>Tesla's self-driving is far safer than human driving: the number of accidents and deaths per mile driven are something like an order of magnitude lower

Still not close to good enough for people to accept:

"Participants from both countries required Self Driving Vehicles to be 4-5 times as safe as Human Driven Vehicles" [0]

0: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32202821/

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