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Tesla auto-pilot keeps confusing moon with traffic light then slowing down

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Re: Tesla auto-pilot keeps confusing moon with traffic light then slowing down

#81
post #16

I can't understand why instead of using all the possible senses: vision, auditory, radar, lidar they want to only use vision as if there's some sense of "purity" in doing that.

Three reasons:

1) They have hundreds of millions of cars sold already with cameras that they can up-sell this to. That means more revenue. But more importantly, more training data. Massive amounts of it. Training data is the real value here. Radar/lidar/etc. might be able to detect better what is obvious to a human just looking at a thing. But given enough training data, a machine learning can probably replicate that capability so you don't actually need the fancy sensors. Adding new sensors to the mix would set them back quite a while on that front.

2) Simplicity. More sensors means more complexity integrating all the signals and gathering the right training data. More failure modes, etc. It probably also means more compute power needed to process all that data. More complex testing, etc. Scaling by keeping the sensor platform simple is a good move here.

3) The hard part of autonomous driving is actually interpreting visual signals in complex or unusual/rare situations. Roads are designed for humans with eyes. Lidar sees a blob, radar detects a pole, a camera sees a traffic sign, road markings that mean something, etc. It's a much richer signal. All the important stuff on roads is clearly visible. So, cameras are far more important for this than lidar/radar. Those are really great for avoiding crashing into things. Not so much for interpreting and classifying those things. And Tesla seems to be doing pretty OK with not crashing into things. Mostly, the amusing edge cases have to do with misinterpreting visual signals for which radar and lidar are probably not that relevant.

It's an interesting approach that they clearly believe that they can make work. It does not actually stop them from later adding more hardware to enhance things if they decide those things are needed. But it's quite interesting how far they are getting with just cameras.

Re: Tesla auto-pilot keeps confusing moon with traffic light then slowing down

#82
post #16

I can't understand why instead of using all the possible senses: vision, auditory, radar, lidar they want to only use vision as if there's some sense of "purity" in doing that.

Three reasons: 1) They have hundreds of millions of cars sold already with cameras that they can up-sell this to. That means more revenue. But more importantly, more training data. Massive amounts of it. Training data is the real value here. Radar/lidar/etc. might be able to detect better what is obvious to a human just looking at a thing. But given enough training data, a machine learning can probably replicate that…

For #1: wouldn't more sensors be even better for training? If vision does not pick up an object like a human, but lidar detects a human sized object, the vision portion of the model can 'learn' from it's mistakes.

The other two sound like good reasons though

Re: Tesla auto-pilot keeps confusing moon with traffic light then slowing down

#83
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure cost cutting at expense of safety certainly.

So they could put PS5-level gaming rigs in their cars? How logical https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/1/22462660/amd-tesla-model-x...

Oh you’re right, I didn’t realize they are investing in safety features like putting gaming consoles in car dashboards. That will save millions of lives.

All Hail Elon.

Re: Tesla auto-pilot keeps confusing moon with traffic light then slowing down

#84
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans do fine with only 2 cameras

In addition to the sibling comments, humans are also terrible drivers. They almost universally confuse confidence with ability.

Hm, almost like tech CEOs.

Re: Tesla auto-pilot keeps confusing moon with traffic light then slowing down

#86
post #66
post #16

I can't understand why instead of using all the possible senses: vision, auditory, radar, lidar they want to only use vision as if there's some sense of "purity" in doing that.

I think one of the main reasons for Tesla to use only vision is that then the mistakes the system makes will be more understandable and thus acceptable to humans. The way radar and lidar systems fail and cause wrecks will seem strange to humans, like running into stationary objects. Even if using these sensors would make system better overall, they might not be worth including if one is shooting for human acceptance…

I find the mistakes it makes to be less understandable because I can see with my eyes that the light in the sky is the moon, and not a traffic light. Why can’t the car?

Re: Tesla auto-pilot keeps confusing moon with traffic light then slowing down

#87
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> knowing where the moon is happens to be an extremely solved problem. It's true... but I don't think that's how Tesla would solve it. Their goal is to create a neural network "driver" which can drive in any place even if it has never seen it before. They'd rather teach their neural network that the moon and stoplights are not to be confused visually. Thought I suppose in searching for training examples they could us…

>which can drive in any place even if it has never seen it before Isn't that impossible considering these networks need training and therefore have seen everything before?

What I mean specifically is that competitors self driving systems use "HD maps" meaning they store the entire world in 3D and then they localize themselves to that world (at least, this is what Karpathy says competitors do). So those systems cannot navigate any stretch of road they haven't seen.

But with the Tesla, it is learning to drive in general. It does not need an HD map of a fork in the road to understand how to navigate it. Just as a person who learned to drive in California will have little trouble driving in Florida, a neural network that has learned to drive on a million intersections will be pretty good at navigating most intersections. Especially because the corner cases will stand out and become integrated in to training. So it may see many intersections, but it will generally know what to do with one even if it has never seen it before.

Though I would suspect that the competitors are perhaps using HD maps to jumpstart a system that long term would behave more like the Tesla one. Mapping every road is a lot to ask.

Re: Tesla auto-pilot keeps confusing moon with traffic light then slowing down

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lidar cannot identify the state of a traffic light but it can confirm and understand its physical position.

Lidar can't tell a streetlight from a traffic light, so this has to be resolved by vision anyway.

Yeah. But that's not what the OG comment is suggesting. The use of Lidar here would rule out a light resembling a traffic signal by virtue of there being no laser reflection of that object: lidar would complement vision to rule out false positives.

Re: Tesla auto-pilot keeps confusing moon with traffic light then slowing down

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla’s vision/ml systems are amazing More importantly, they're the only ones accessible to the average consumer. Waymo/Zoox/Daimler all have equally if not more impressive systems. A real issue with tesla is that they want to be vision-only, which is going to make getting to level 5 first almost impossible. BTW - knowing where the moon is happens to be an extremely solved problem.

> knowing where the moon is happens to be an extremely solved problem. It's true... but I don't think that's how Tesla would solve it. Their goal is to create a neural network "driver" which can drive in any place even if it has never seen it before. They'd rather teach their neural network that the moon and stoplights are not to be confused visually. Thought I suppose in searching for training examples they could us…

I would have looked at that as a stretch goal, and very stretching at it. Because I won't need very soon an autopilot to take me through the woods, especially if it's that trustworthy as it feels to be. I'd be happy to have one to drive reliably highway and wake me up when we're in close range from destination.

Re: Tesla auto-pilot keeps confusing moon with traffic light then slowing down

#90
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> knowing where the moon is happens to be an extremely solved problem. It's true... but I don't think that's how Tesla would solve it. Their goal is to create a neural network "driver" which can drive in any place even if it has never seen it before. They'd rather teach their neural network that the moon and stoplights are not to be confused visually. Thought I suppose in searching for training examples they could us…

>which can drive in any place even if it has never seen it before Isn't that impossible considering these networks need training and therefore have seen everything before?

Complicated - they should be able to piece together a route with reasonably up to date "street view but like for self driving" imagery, up to date maps, and reasonable weather conditions.

One actually really important feature of these systems is how they handle failure. If the car gets confused, how does it handle it?

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