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Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]

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Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]

#171

Post by mbreese »

galangalalgol wrote: post #151
YZF wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla's cameras often get blocked by rain or blinded by the sun or not see that well in the dark. It's really hard to imagine those cameras replacing the ultrasonic sensors which do a pretty good job at telling you where you are when you're parking etc. I can't see how the camera is going to detect an object at pitch dark and estimate the distance to it better than an ultrasonic sensor. But hey, if people ding their…

One interesting side effect of only using visual sensors is that the failure modes will be more likely to resemble human ones. So people will say "yeah, I would have crashed in that situation too!". With ultrasonic and radar and ladar it may make far fewer mistakes but it is possible they might not be the same ones people make, so people will say "how did it mess that up?"

Sadly, that’s the worst way to actually design the system. I’d rather have two different technologies working together, with different failure modes. Not using radar (especially in cars that are already equipped) might make economic sense to Tesla, but I’d feel safer if visual processing was used WITH radar as opposed to instead of radar.

I also expect an automated system to be better than the poor human in the drivers seat.

Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]

#172

Post by ralfd »

woeirua wrote: post #106

Andrej's argument about more sensors adding entropy strikes me as disingenuous considering that in the next question he then says that Tesla's biggest advantage over everyone else is "the fleet", which clearly introduces orders of magnitude more entropy into the system than anything else. Can you imagine the infrastructure required to gather video from "the fleet" anytime a car sees something unexpected? How about di…

Assuming Karpathy is lying is quite a hot take to disregard his opinion.

No. He makes it clear that he is very convinced about it. There is no relativism, no weasel words or couching in maybes. He could be wrong, of course, but he believes in what he is saying.

Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]

#173

Post by dmix »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #154

It's obviously a stupid decision to remove a direct source of range data (radar and ultrasound) in favor of an indirect one (vision). But on second thought this doesn't bother me that much because Tesla FSD is absolute garbage even with radar (and I don't think Tesla will get away with selling the FSD snake oil for much longer), so if vision-only is good enough for the base-level lane-keeping autopilot functionality…

Even though the risks are high the outcomes will always keep them honest. Whether they like it or not.

This isn't like Facebook continually releasing a product that sucks but people will use anyway.

Tesla is constantly working against the clock and everything they do has real world consequences. There are multiple gov agencies watching over it at all times. Of course there's lots of people with far higher risk tolerance than is being exhibited but if it does turn out badly IRL this will get shut down pretty quickly.

The good news is Tesla has the ability to cripple this feature remotely without a costly/lengthy recall if that does happen.

Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]

#174

Post by CharlesW »

patrec wrote: post #72
CharlesW wrote: post #11

I thought it was telling that Andrej immediately "reframed" the question because Lex asked the "wrong question". This is a classic evasion technique one learns from experience and/or media training. Lex's comment immediately after was a clever and gentle dig at Andrej's response. It seemed like all the "full cost" negatives Andrej mentioned were related to Tesla's ability to execute, and not what would actually produ…

> I thought it was telling that Andrej immediately "reframed" the question because Lex asked the "wrong question". This is a classic evasion technique I agree with this assessment. However: > Telsa can't support additional sensors without incurring a prohibitive amount of additional risk to Tesla. Risk to passengers doesn't appear to be a consideration. This is a stupidifying take. Of course when you work in a line o…

> …you will need to pick a point at which you say further fatality reduction is no longer justified given the economic cost of achieving it.

You're right — the sad truth is that corporations put costs on human lives every day. Where I think we disagree is that you believe they made the decision based primarily on costs. After watching this video, I believe they made the decision because they didn't think they could reliably implement and support a sensor fusion approach.

(BTW, I enjoyed "stupidifying"! I'm sorry I made people stupider.)

Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]

#175

Post by hwillis »

api wrote: post #77
Nomentatus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do "fall off the edge of the world" a lot; but so do human neural networks; I've seen a bad crash as a result of a human simply pulling out of a driveway right in front of a motorcycle, 'cause they're rare. She had tagged the motorcycle as a bike while it was farther away, then boom. Her interpolation (while checking the other side) didn't work, and her averaging over uncertainty didn't work either because motor…

I see surprisingly little discussion of overall statistics on safety of self drive vs humans, and what I do see is often self reported by companies or by equally potentially biased sources in the media. I’ve searched many times and a straightforward stat seems hard to find.

It's certainly not straightforward. You know how 90% of crashes occur within whatever many miles of home? People don't use autopilot while they're cruising around their suburbs or cities.

Companies would have to disclose not just their accidents, but also how much driving is done in different places. Then all those places would have to be compared or at least categorized. Its complex enough that there would definitely not be a straightforward, obviously-correct way to interpret it all.

Since companies do not disclose where self-driving occurs, the whole thing is a complete nonstarter. It's whatever they choose to disclose.

Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]

#176

Post by Nomentatus »

croes wrote: post #167
Nomentatus wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he precisely said that the difference Lidar made was tested, and the delta (difference made) was quite small; not enough to outweigh the downsides. Elon has noted that humans do well, and that's relevant, but that observation was also tested, re lidar.

>and the delta (difference made) was quite small But why. Because LIDAR doesn't help much in general or because the Tesla engineers aren't good at using the sensor data? Same with the manufacturing. Sounds to me like Tesla can't handle complexity. And if they can't handle the complexity of manufacturing, they surely can't handle the complexity of full autonomous driving.

I don't think interpreting the lidar data and integrating it is a super-tough problem, it kinda comes in 3D, unlike stereoscopic vision. So I take it this means that the Lidar data rarely differed and it rarely mattered when it did.

Elon's companies have a long history of handling complexity very well (even, you know, actual rocket science) precisely because they relentlessly simplify everything they can. Raptor one is more complex that Raptor two, but I'll take the latter any day. Nobody else has a full-flow rocket engine. Many previous attempts were swallowed by the complexity of the task. Even Raptor one looks like a rat's nest - but unlike other attempts, it worked.

Tesla's manufacturing margins are far out in front of any other car company (see David Lee On Investing podcast.) Having simpler, larger parts made by much larger pressing machinery is a big part of why. Looks like they are (now) handling the complexity of manufacturing very well.

Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]

#178

Post by rootusrootus »

jandrese wrote: post #129
petilon wrote: post #33

I didn't find his answers particularly convincing. His answer focused on costs mainly, and how "the best part is no part". We have already seen multiple accidents caused by camera's limitations [1] which would not have happened if Tesla used Lidars. Cameras have poor dynamic range and can be easily blinded by bright surfaces. While it is true that humans do fine with only eyes, our eyes are significantly better than…

> While it is true that humans do fine with only eyes We do not. Humans are terrible at driving. Traffic accidents are one of the leading causes of death in the developed world. Billions of dollars of property damage occur every year because humans are not up to the task. A self driving system that is as safe as an average human driver would be an absolute failure.

> Traffic accidents are one of the leading causes of death in the developed world.

Not even close, really. A bit under 1%. You are more likely to die from an overdose, or suicide. And much, much, much more likely to die from cancer or heart disease.

And that is without getting into the trade-offs. Cars at least have a significant utility value, which is not true of suicide, opiate addiction, cancer, or heart disease. We should try to reduce traffic deaths, but we should not lose perspective.

Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]

#179

Post by bumby »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #168
bumby wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right, but that still misses the point. More frequently updated software doesn’t make people intuitively trust it more. For some, it can do the opposite by making them question why it needs to be updated so much to begin with. Humans don’t generally measure risks statistically. They do so emotionally and with lots of cognitive biases. You don’t alleviate that with more and more facts, unfortunately.

Sorry if I was unclear. Software is more unpredictable in my view, both because of fleet updates and it being so fundamentally different than humans. (On the whole, I realize AI and ML could work similar to some human processes.)

My fault, your “also” should have tipped me off to what you meant.

Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]

#180

Post by oldgradstudent »

akira2501 wrote: post #87
petilon wrote: post #33

I didn't find his answers particularly convincing. His answer focused on costs mainly, and how "the best part is no part". We have already seen multiple accidents caused by camera's limitations [1] which would not have happened if Tesla used Lidars. Cameras have poor dynamic range and can be easily blinded by bright surfaces. While it is true that humans do fine with only eyes, our eyes are significantly better than…

> While it is true that humans do fine with only eyes, our eyes are significantly better than cameras. They also have better failure modes and a really sophisticated error management system. They are susceptible to optical illusions, though. > It is not sufficient if, in aggregate, self-driving cars have fewer accidents. This is the incorrect analysis anyways. This was always going to be true because a large portion…

> but my expectation is around 20% of fatal accidents can in some way be prevented by automation.

Assuming, of course, that automation does not introduce its own failure modes.

That's a strong assumption.

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