Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#11

Post by yupper32 » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 9:22 PM UTC

itstomkent wrote: post #7

JoshGlazebrook wrote: post #3

“In the near future, once these features achieve performance parity to today’s vehicles” Right... like how vision vehicles have parity with autopilot speeds and following distance? Oh wait they don't. Vision-only vehicles are still limited to a max of 85mph and 2 car minimum following distance for autosteer while radar is 90mph and 1 car following distance. Texas has 85mph highways. The two car following distance con…

Dude if you are going 85-90 miles an hour and you aren't leaving AT LEAST 2 cars in between you, please stay off the road. You should be keeping 3 seconds of distance between you and the car in front of you. At 90 miles per hour that's a hell of a lot more than 2 car lengths.

It's possible they didn't mean at the same time. Minimum 1 in all situations, including going 5mph in traffic, where 2 might be a bit conservative.

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#12

Post by sxates » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 9:22 PM UTC

Cars delivered today without USS will not have: "Park Assist: alerts you of surrounding objects when the vehicle is traveling This is the most basic feature that almost every car has had for years - but not your $60k Model Y. Why can't they wait to remove sensors until they've achieved feature parity with the vision only system? This seems crazy.

I don't really understand the push to do everything through the cameras. This has caused other problems too - like their decision to control automatic wipers with just the camera. Which meant in my Model 3, the automatic wipers were erratic and ineffective while in every other car with a normal $5 rain sensor the feature worked great.

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#13

Post by joewadcan » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 9:22 PM UTC

itstomkent wrote: post #7

JoshGlazebrook wrote: post #3

“In the near future, once these features achieve performance parity to today’s vehicles” Right... like how vision vehicles have parity with autopilot speeds and following distance? Oh wait they don't. Vision-only vehicles are still limited to a max of 85mph and 2 car minimum following distance for autosteer while radar is 90mph and 1 car following distance. Texas has 85mph highways. The two car following distance con…

Dude if you are going 85-90 miles an hour and you aren't leaving AT LEAST 2 cars in between you, please stay off the road. You should be keeping 3 seconds of distance between you and the car in front of you. At 90 miles per hour that's a hell of a lot more than 2 car lengths.

Agreed. "Parity" doesn't mean in all cases, it means in the majority of cases and this seems like a edge case (where 2 car lengths isn't good enough).

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#14

Post by joewadcan » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 9:24 PM UTC

sxates wrote: post #12

Cars delivered today without USS will not have: "Park Assist: alerts you of surrounding objects when the vehicle is traveling This is the most basic feature that almost every car has had for years - but not your $60k Model Y. Why can't they wait to remove sensors until they've achieved feature parity with the vision only system? This seems crazy. I don't really understand the push to do everything through the cameras…

Because if the hardware isn't available they can't deliver the car and recognize the revenue. They can wait, but if they're gonna remove it anyway it lets them make more cars with less costs in shorter time. Seems logical if it is indeed parity.

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#15

Post by mlajtos » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 9:24 PM UTC

olliecornelia wrote: post #4

Wow, how fucking stupid. Does that mean that cars that already have ultrasonic sensors (and radar modules) will stop using that sensor data?

The reason why they decided to remove ultrasonics is that combining contradictory signals from cameras and ultrasonic is not straightforward. What should have the higher precedence? So they ultimately decided that cameras can do what ultrasonics can do, but even better.

They won't remove ultrasonics from the delivered cars, but they will probably disable them in coming months.

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#16

Post by drcongo » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 9:25 PM UTC

sxates wrote: post #12

Cars delivered today without USS will not have: "Park Assist: alerts you of surrounding objects when the vehicle is traveling This is the most basic feature that almost every car has had for years - but not your $60k Model Y. Why can't they wait to remove sensors until they've achieved feature parity with the vision only system? This seems crazy. I don't really understand the push to do everything through the cameras…

No post body was provided.

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#17

Post by phire » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 9:25 PM UTC

sxates wrote: post #12

Cars delivered today without USS will not have: "Park Assist: alerts you of surrounding objects when the vehicle is traveling This is the most basic feature that almost every car has had for years - but not your $60k Model Y. Why can't they wait to remove sensors until they've achieved feature parity with the vision only system? This seems crazy. I don't really understand the push to do everything through the cameras…

It's most likely a hardware availablity issue.

They have run out of sensors, and they don't want to pause production until they have produced more.

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#18

Post by avidphantasm » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 9:27 PM UTC

sxates wrote: post #12

Cars delivered today without USS will not have: "Park Assist: alerts you of surrounding objects when the vehicle is traveling This is the most basic feature that almost every car has had for years - but not your $60k Model Y. Why can't they wait to remove sensors until they've achieved feature parity with the vision only system? This seems crazy. I don't really understand the push to do everything through the cameras…

I guess they think their computer vision and AI can catch up to and exceed the visual processing capabilities of vertebrates with their millions of years of evolution. I think they are wrong. Multi-media sensor data fusion is the only sane path for the foreseeable future, in my lay opinion.

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#19

Post by conradev » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 9:28 PM UTC

It is crazy to me that these cars are always recording and streaming the result to Tesla. Sure, that data might be good for training self-driving cars, but also a lotttt of other things.

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#20

Post by gopalv » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 9:28 PM UTC

JoshGlazebrook wrote: post #3

“In the near future, once these features achieve performance parity to today’s vehicles” Right... like how vision vehicles have parity with autopilot speeds and following distance? Oh wait they don't. Vision-only vehicles are still limited to a max of 85mph and 2 car minimum following distance for autosteer while radar is 90mph and 1 car following distance. Texas has 85mph highways. The two car following distance con…

> because the gap is so large

I drive with a six car gap and even that was a close-call when someone had a contact about 3 cars ahead.

The good part is that if the car in front of you flashes the brake lights, that seems to trigger the braking. And some of the newer cars blink hazards automatically when braking hard.

My Subaru is also vision only (Eyesight), which also has the cameras too close together (in my opinion) to detect a car ahead braking, but it did not slow down quickly when facing a stationary car facing the wrong way around (my feet went down before the car did anything).

All of these need more parallax, at least better than a human to do this well. But they do react to visual cues like brake lights and hazards. Though sometimes, it sees a motorcycle nearby as a car in the distance simply due to the lack of parallax.

"more sensors good" is not always a good thing, when the sensors disagree with each other. Sometimes more sensors just mean more corner cases and braking at bridges throwing shadows on the road.

So just removing something feels wrong, when I don't see them improving the thing they're putting more eggs into.

I think this is where Tesla is not credible right now, when they say they're improving something in the car, but it is a thing I cannot see, check, confirm or test.