Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video] • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by strangescript » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 2:45 AM UTC

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…

You are making a lot of potentially faulty assumptions. 1) The "delta" was wide enough to save/harm people, you have no idea. 2) The extra information provided would always be valuable and/or not be overcome with better AI models using the visual sensors in the future. 3) The amount of technical overhead generated by the extra sensors were not prohibitive long term. When working with AI there are often times where it would seem logical that extra relevant data will always improve a model, but that turns out not to always be the case, or provide so little value that managing another dataset is just not worth it.

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

#202

Post by xodjmk » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 2:47 AM UTC

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…

The majority of comments surrounding stereo-camera/lidar questions have a ridiculously simplified idea of the problem. It's obviously the case that 'more sensor good, less sensor bad'. This is frankenstein's monster level technical analysis. Why don't the majority of large-brained animals have many eyes, and many different antannea appendages processing an array of diverse sensory input? You don't just automatically gain by adding lots of sensors. The signals have to be fused together and reliably cooperate and come to agreement in real time for any decision. Any sensor is only providing raw crude data. The majority of the work involved is done by processing this crude data and inferring a much more sophisticated approximation of the real environment from prior knowledge, hence using neural nets with pre-trained data. It is a good debate whether the approximation can be done better by adding more sensor input and diverting R&D & processing resources towards fusion as opposed to improving the results that can be obtained from stereo image sensor. It's not obvious to anyone. And nature seems to inform us that most large brain animals evolve to rely heavily on two eyes instead of 16 eyes + lasers. This is an interesting discussion, but the issue isn't 'tesla could just bolt a Lidar box to the roof and magic, but they want to scam you out of a few extra bucks'. That is a moronic idea.

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

#203

Post by hello639 » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 2:49 AM UTC

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #195

Retric wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video has a more reasonable answer. The sensors are unreliable and expensive in terms of R&D. Having marginal parts which takes money from a finite R&D budget can easily result in a worse product. “They contribute noise and entropy into everything.” … “you’re investing fully into that [vision] and you can make that extremely good. You only have a finite amount of spend of focus across different facets of the syst…

Didn't they used to talk about how the Tesla radar could actually see the reflections of the car ahead of the one just in front of you? i.e. the radar reflection bouncing underneath the car just in front of you? This is what doesn't add up to me. Either a lot of that previous wonder-talk was actually a lie, or there's something else going on here.

> Either a lot of that previous wonder-talk was actually a lie, or there's something else going on here.

Tesla dropped radar and ultrasonic due to supply shortages. Nothing to do with their AI being smart.

Many first-hand reports on Tesla fanboy forums on how no-radar and no-ultrasonic autopilot is far worse than with the sensors.

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

#204

Post by touch_abs » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 2:53 AM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #142

Gigachad wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have the solution. LiDAR.

If you could use LiDAR well enough then it would solve the problem. Of course, if you could use vision well enough it would solve the problem too.

The big limits of LiDAR are cost, more than anything. There have been dozens of public driving trials where from a functionality level the answer has been positive (apart from traffic lights, the bastards), but nobody wants to buy a solution with a six figure BOM, before integration.

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

#205

Post by masswerk » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 2:55 AM UTC

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…

Having seen their AI Day, I supposed this was all about a unified, pseudo-visual voxel representation – and especially about generating scenarios. Apparently these have become a crucial part of the system and generating a broader variety of sensor data would be a considerable liability.

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

#206

Post by rootusrootus » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 2:57 AM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #199

rootusrootus wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

I was not precise enough in the wording. Leading cause of accidental death. Obviously it is not beating out old age or heart disease. Doesn't change the fact that a self driving system with the record of a typical human would be considered unacceptable.

I agree on that point. For self driving to be accepted, it has to be at least as good as a good driver. Drunks, oldsters, youngsters, and the like all push the average down. Many normal people are actually pretty good drivers statistically, and those are (perhaps not coincidentally) the ones most likely to be in a position to afford a fancy new self-driving car.

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

#207

Post by wonnage » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 3:01 AM UTC

xodjmk wrote: post #202

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…

The majority of comments surrounding stereo-camera/lidar questions have a ridiculously simplified idea of the problem. It's obviously the case that 'more sensor good, less sensor bad'. This is frankenstein's monster level technical analysis. Why don't the majority of large-brained animals have many eyes, and many different antannea appendages processing an array of diverse sensory input? You don't just automatically…

The issue here is trying to infer distance based on complex image processing or just… measuring the damn distances.

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

#208

Post by RC_ITR » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 3:01 AM UTC

stefan_ wrote: post #141

judge2020 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Munro’s cost breakdown is much more informative in just how much it’ll save in terms of parts/labor. https://youtu.be/LS3Vk0NPFDE In general the ‘harm to consumers’ is really just making it more likely they damage the car in a parking lot or their garage, which tells you where their priorities are (sales, Automotive gross profit). Assuming occupancy network works, the only real blind spot left is if something in fron…

This thread is unhelpfully mixing radar and ultrasonic sensors. Ultrasonic sensors, as your video explains, are primarily used as a parking aid; they are tuned for too low a distance to be helpful in just about any kind of driving scenario at speed. Meanwhile, radar is the principal sensor used in systems like automatic emergency braking across the industry. It has no intersection with any of the parking stuff becaus…

The first famous autopilot crash was because a white semi-truck was washed out by the sun and confused for an overhead sign.

That's literally trivial for a car with radar to detect.

Amazing how people talk about stuff they have no idea about when it comes to Tesla.

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

#209

Post by asah » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 3:04 AM UTC

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…

Risk to PEDESTRIANS even less.

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

#210

Post by nicbou » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 3:07 AM UTC

ralfd wrote: post #172

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.

> no weasel words

The video starts with him reframing the question instead of answering it