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Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

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

#251

Post by simondotau »

salil999 wrote: post #140
CivBase wrote: post #51

> Will vehicles equipped with ultrasonic sensors have their functionality removed? > At this time, we do not plan to remove the functionality of ultrasonic sensors in our existing fleet. I really really do not like the use of the phrase "our existing fleet" here. It heavily implies that Tesla has some level of ownership over the vehicles they sell post-purchase.

They do though! They can easily disable features like Autopilot, Autopark, Summon, etc fleetwide in a snap if they wanted to.

Legally, I'm pretty sure they couldn't.

Technically, this is true for any product which has a pathway for software updates. Arguably this includes nearly all models of car on sale today, which can have their software updated — even if the process is more cumbersome.

The key difference is that a Tesla vehicle can conveniently perform comprehensive whole-of-car updates while it's sitting in your garage, whereas many other cars can only have some systems updated during a service visit.

Regardless, I don't see how software updates being convenient could serve as the defining criteria for a manufacturer having "ownership over the vehicles they sell".

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

#252

Post by vkou »

smileysteve wrote: post #70
itstomkent wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

op is posting about the people who cut him off. If I use adaptive cruise control at 2 or 3 (stopping distance) car lengths, then I'm just cut off every time, even though there is nowhere to go. The end to this unsafe and traffic causing behavior is something I look forward to in more self driving cars. (Fewer drivers racing dangerously for "pride" points to end up at the same traffic light in 500')

> op is posting about the people who cut him off. If I use adaptive cruise control at 2 or 3 (stopping distance) car lengths, then I'm just cut off every time, even though there is nowhere to go.

Then your entire state, or at least, the residents of it that drive on the freeway need be in prison. Or, at least, to have their licenses revoked.

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

#253

Post by ethanbond »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #112
petilon wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are multiple tells that this move, just like the removal of radar, is supply-chain and cost-driven and not actually driven by engineering. Not true. Elon Musk has long maintained that cameras/vision is all that is needed [1]. After all, that's all a human has. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/22/anyone-relying-on-lidar-is...

Your eyes are an incredible set of cameras. They have huge dynamic range, extremely accurate and fast depth sensing capabilities, huge focal distance range, and mounts that move incredibly quickly and precisely to point at details. There are a lot of good reasons why you shouldn't think that today's cameras are equivalent to human eyes. There are a lot of good reasons to believe that cameras will never be equivalent…

Critically, your eyes are connected to a human brain, which is by far the most capable visual-spatial computational system in the known universe. Also critically: even your eyes + brain get things wrong all the time while driving.

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

#254

Post by rbanffy »

STRML wrote: post #22

There are multiple tells that this move, just like the removal of radar, is supply-chain and cost-driven and not actually driven by engineering. If this were a planned move, the software would already be ready to replace it. It is not. Cars without radar still aren't at parity with the car that have it, although they "fixed" this a few weeks back by simply turning off the radar on the older cars. The parking sensors…

> There are multiple tells that this move, just like the removal of radar, is supply-chain and cost-driven and not actually driven by engineering.

I like the idea of coalescing multiple sensors into one, but I can't shake off the idea that relying on vision alone when you can sense depth through US or LIDAR is a terrible idea. You can fake depth data from multiple cameras, but it takes more processing and additional input should be a good thing. Did anyone ever try to fool a Tesla using the Looney Tunes painted tunnel trick?

> Once the hood has occluded the view from the windshield cameras, these obstructions will cease to exist.

Any sensible navigation software should "know" objects don't cease to exist. I hope Tesla's does it.

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

#255

Post by LeifCarrotson »

STRML wrote: post #22

There are multiple tells that this move, just like the removal of radar, is supply-chain and cost-driven and not actually driven by engineering. If this were a planned move, the software would already be ready to replace it. It is not. Cars without radar still aren't at parity with the car that have it, although they "fixed" this a few weeks back by simply turning off the radar on the older cars. The parking sensors…

> Once the hood has occluded the view from the windshield cameras, these obstructions will cease to exist.

I have observed that this is how vision is currently implemented, but does it have to be this way? I can pull up to a concrete wheel stop in my Toyota without vision and without the sonar enabled even though my eyesight is occluded by the hood because I know where it was and how far I have moved. Concrete wheel stops do not flicker out of existence when you stop looking at them, they should be able to monitor the wheel speed sensors and shift the 3D map of the world into your camera blind spots, perhaps showing a "hidden" wireframe on the cameras.

It would be inconvenient if you were unable to pull forward because a tumbleweed or (more likely) plastic bag rolled through, but you could back up and try again or the human could decide to ignore the beeping.

Granted, I'm not a domain expert, but we do this in my field of industrial robotics when building models with 3D vision. The computer can composite multiple profiles into a single higher-resolution image, can return data about that model when the camera on the EOAT has moved such that the field of view is limited, and can provide faults when the model does not match a previous image because something has been added or removed while the camera wasn't watching.

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

#256

Post by gizmo »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #255
STRML wrote: post #22

There are multiple tells that this move, just like the removal of radar, is supply-chain and cost-driven and not actually driven by engineering. If this were a planned move, the software would already be ready to replace it. It is not. Cars without radar still aren't at parity with the car that have it, although they "fixed" this a few weeks back by simply turning off the radar on the older cars. The parking sensors…

> Once the hood has occluded the view from the windshield cameras, these obstructions will cease to exist. I have observed that this is how vision is currently implemented, but does it have to be this way? I can pull up to a concrete wheel stop in my Toyota without vision and without the sonar enabled even though my eyesight is occluded by the hood because I know where it was and how far I have moved. Concrete wheel…

Possible, sure. But not trivial, and there is no pressing need to get rid of these sensors right now. Why the rush, if there is no supply chain issue?

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

#257

Post by bob778 »

techdragon wrote: post #133
MarkMarine wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use the automatic parking, but I find the ultrasonics quite useful in my own parking, maybe I've been more lucky or just more hyper careful, but I've never scratched the front or rims on a curb. The feedback about the shape of the obstruction and the distance it is away from you is great, much better than my 2014 era vehicle. I would like to see some lower sensors, maybe a single pixel lidar to look for curbs…

Having slightly more than average (researched the industry as an outsider) knowledge of industrial robotics. It turns out million dollar industrial robots are kind of like enterprise software. You "buy" an ERP/CRM/etc but it doesn't just work out of the box, theres weeks and months of work-hours needed to try and get it actually integrated into a company, and it still might not work since software has bugs, humans ar…

As an insider of the automated manufacturing space, your ERP analogy is good but missing one detail: every other large company eventually gets an ERP working. Tesla is an outlier in regard to their manufacturing processes and even much lower margin industries tend to design new factories around the automation platform yet Tesla just...doesn't?

I've never worked with Tesla so have no inside info on their situation but their factory designs have always seemed strange to me - like they refuse to follow industry norms.

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

#258

Post by tyfon »

fastball wrote: post #217
bagels wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Model 3 vision only does the same.

How often would you say you get false positives with your Model 3?

I have a model X raven (2019) and model 3 awd (late 2021), both have radar and hw3, and both have the update that has disabled the radar.

Pre-patch there was maybe a phantom brake (hard brake) every six months, but lots of small slowdowns where you could almost sense the car got conflicting input (once pr 100 km maybe).

The latter is gone and I have not had any phantom brakes yet, but I've had a slow down where a bus went into my lane. The cars behaviour in stop and go traffic is also much better now.

The only regression I've found is that it's a bit more confused in a local spot where the road splits in two in a turn to the right. In the past it went into the right lane without much fuzz, but now it is confused for a second or two before it decides on the right lane.

Tbh, as a daily user of these cars I think the no radar update was an improvement.

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

#259

Post by bob1029 »

rob74 wrote: post #243
rrss wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They showed that vision could already outperform radar. important to note that much like there is a wide range from bad cameras (“filmed with a potato”) to high resolution cameras, there is a wide variety of radars with different capabilities. the radar unit in Teslas was pretty limited (basically designed for adaptive cruise control), and they showed that vision could outperform that radar (and have no interest in…

Yeah, (un)fortunately compared with cameras, eyes have really high resolution and (most relevant) a truly excellent dynamic range.

Eyes have other special properties (e.g. saccade) which contribute to their unique capabilities in this space.

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

#260

Post by cameronh90 »

rob74 wrote: post #243
rrss wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They showed that vision could already outperform radar. important to note that much like there is a wide range from bad cameras (“filmed with a potato”) to high resolution cameras, there is a wide variety of radars with different capabilities. the radar unit in Teslas was pretty limited (basically designed for adaptive cruise control), and they showed that vision could outperform that radar (and have no interest in…

Yeah, (un)fortunately compared with cameras, eyes have really high resolution and (most relevant) a truly excellent dynamic range.

Modern sensors combined with computational photography does seem to be changing this though.

For example, I now use my phone camera to see where I'm going at night if it's dark, and to read distant text. This is despite my (corrected) eyesight being better than 20/20 and I have better than usual night vision.

The eyes are fantastic organs, but the thing that makes them exceptional is the brain. Computers seem to be catching up with that.

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