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

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

#311

Post by saurik » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

yupper32 wrote: post #11

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.

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.

Yeah: driving with a 2-car gap in stop-and-go traffic is NOT normal.

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

#312

Post by sangnoir » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 4:47 PM UTC

aeternum wrote: post #42

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…

With the removal of radar, they showed some pretty convincing data that the radar was too noisy to be useful, especially with discriminating things like highway overpasses vs. stopped cars. They showed that vision could already outperform radar. With these parking sensors it's different. They have no current alternative and it will cause a pretty significant loss of functionality. Disappointing move.

> They showed that vision could already outperform radar.

Except on emergency vehicles parked in a lane at an oblique angle, which Teslas did not recognize, and plowed into at speed. I wonder what unknown secondary effects this change will bring.

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

#313

Post by MarkMarine » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 4:50 PM UTC

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…

Thanks for this info about industrial robots, I suppose I can understand this difficulty. I have heard a rumor that when they were having trouble getting the line robots to work properly, Elon personally came and sat next to the people who knew how to program and run the robot, grew frustrated with them, and fired them one by one until no one on staff could program the robot… so the difficulty might have been magnified at Tesla. Who knows if that’s true, but I can definitely see that fitting his personality.

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

#314

Post by mrguyorama » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 5:26 PM UTC

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.

In fact, there are many many many more signals that your eyes give your brain than just a 2d grid of pixels, which is why cheap off the shelf cameras slapped all over a car CANNOT do what two eyes can.

Your eyes also give coarse distance info by having to adjust focus, slight parallax (which depends on a HUGELY POWERFUL and pretty good edge detection and object classification system), an ability to perceive distance by the slight difference in orientation your eyes have to look at something in 3D space, some information about YOUR OWN head's orientation and movement, and a brain with a rough approximation of a simulation of the world around you to constantly check/verify any info against.

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

#315

Post by vishnugupta » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #148

vl wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany car marked is skewed towards Germany carmakers. Apart from obvious reasons, car leases through employers are only for German cars.

I've yet to be in a country were sales are not skewed toward local cars. Sweden lots more Volvos than anything else (and definitely Teslas), France, lots more Citroen and Peugeot than anywhere else, Australia: Holden and Ford, US: lots of cars that drive nowhere else (GM, Chevy...). Regarding outselling most other car manufacturers: this seems to be the Tesla realitity distortion, it is likely true for electric cars…

> VW delivered ~5 M cars in 2021 vs Teslas 900k

Maybe shifting of goal posts, but this is an impressive achievement for a manufacturer who ramped up production only couple of years ago.

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

#316

Post by ethanbond » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 5:45 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #304

ethanbond wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that people had already paid for a specific configuration and while they were waiting for delivery of that particular car/configuration, it got changed out from under them? This understanding of how this affects existing orders could very well be completely wrong... but if it's roughly correct, then it's more analogous to not finding the desired config at the dealer, then special ordering it, then…

> I think people would justifiably throw a hissy fit about that. FWIW, that would be a better argument if the people throwing the hissy fit were the ones who actually ordered cars . Are you waiting on a Tesla, for example? Instead it's the peanut gallery of folks who just want to flog a point about the manufacturer out of some kind of emotional response. Like I said, it's exhausting.

Elon attracts the attention he does, both positive and negative, because he's regarded as a pioneer. IMO the general public does have an interest in trying to ensure 1) unsafe cars don't proliferate across public roads and 2) irresponsible business practices aren't celebrated.

Do you think the only people who had a right to be pissed off about Lehman Brothers' collapse were actual Lehman Brothers customers? This is all well within the public interest.

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

#317

Post by mrguyorama » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 5:53 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…

My 2018 VW GTI locked that functionality behind a several thousand dollar interior package or a few hundred dollar dealer software update :( . I literally have the sensors and software, it's just turned off because I don't like leather seats.

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

#318

Post by mrguyorama » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 5:56 PM UTC

Shank wrote: post #204

NikolaNovak wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that may be irrelevant - my 2019 honda odyssey will stop me no matter what. All lane departure / following, cruise control, etc can be off - but automatic emergency braking / anti colission will work. I would not have it otherwise - I do not have any automated stuff in my old wrx, but I wanted all the safety always in the car with my family. (it is crazy to me how many brands only have the good safety stuff as…

For the record, I just took delivery of a Model 3 and seemingly all of these safety features can be toggled off in settings. Because of how complex these systems are, it wouldn't surprise me if someone turned off or configured automatic emergency braking because they thought it would make autopilot better or something.

I CAN turn off AEB in my car, but I would NEVER do that, because it's only shown itself to be very reliable. It's radar based. I never get false warnings from stationary objects and I've only had a single warning that I would consider phantom.

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

#319

Post by mrguyorama » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

mukundmr wrote: post #2

My rear view camera regularly gets covered with dirt and grime after a highway run during the monsoons. The car has both camera and radar so that I can have reliable assistance while reversing. With this experience in mind I fail to see how Tesla’s camera-only move is reliable for the use cases that they have mentioned.

My VW hides the rear view camera under the emblem, so it isn't exposed to the elements and only flips out when in use. It's brilliant, at least as long as the motor that flips the emblem holds up.

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

#320

Post by mrguyorama » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 6:16 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #280

015a wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk has said similar things in the past; that cars should be able to do everything human drivers can do with only vision, because that's all human drivers have (discounting the far more minor sensory inputs like sound and touch). I find that take fascinating. Its, in effect, saying "well, computer hardware and the human brain are similar enough; the human brain just got an evolutionary headstart on its software, so…

It would be interesting if the thing wrong with the "eyes are just cameras" logic was the subtle differences. Like how retinas are not flat, but concave or the way our eyes continuously reposition to fill in gaps in our vision. Such differences seem incidental or compensatory, but it's not impossible that our brain is able to make better distance/position judgements because of them. The other missing piece is just ho…

Your eyes 100% do several other things to give depth cues to your brain. That's why you can cover one eye and still judge depth pretty well. In fact, maybe two eyeballs really are all you need to do safe driving, but 2 CCD image sensors are NOT an adequate replacement for all the other things eyeballs give you.

Your eyes know the distance of something because they know how they had to move to bring the object into focus. Your eyes also have to be at slightly different angles to look at a distant object, which also is a depth cue, as well as all the temporal depth info you get simply as a byproduct of having an insanely powerful and robust object classification and world simulation engine in your skull.