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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]

#301

Post by mola »

djleni wrote: post #280
nelox wrote: post #235

“The world is designed for human visual consumption” and “[vision] has all the information you need for driving”. While vision may be sufficient, I would say that other senses, such as hearing, touch and smell augment driving very well. Especially with regard to situational awareness. e.g. The sirens of emergency vehicles are typically the first indication of their presence, which often can be felt as well. The wail…

THANK YOU. Reading this thread was getting to me because so many comments say humans drive eyes only. I use far more than just vision driving: - sound, for emergency vehicles, detecting vehicles outside of my field of view if my windows are down or the vehicle is loud, tire sound (especially in snow and rain), engine sound (more feedback in snow or ice about what my tires are doing) - touch (steering feedback, gives…

We even use Doppler! Our hearing is capable of sensing movement (speed and acceleration) using the Doppler effect. Our hearing also has a remarkable ability to locating sound source incoming direction.

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

#302

Post by cbsmith »

xodjmk wrote: post #232
mbreese wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 drive…

You have to eventually decide to trust one or the other, in real-time. So having multiple failure modes doesn't solve the problem entirely. This is called 'Fusion', meaning you have to fuse information coming from multiple sensors together. There are trade offs because while you gain different views of the environment from different sensors, the fusion becomes more complicated and has to be sorted out in software rel…

> There are trade offs because while you gain different views of the environment from different sensors, the fusion becomes more complicated and has to be sorted out in software reliably in real-time.

If you're against having multiple sensors though, the rational conclusion would be to just have one sensor, but Tesla would be the first to tell you that one of the advantages their cars have over human drivers is they have multiple cameras looking at the scene already.

You already have a sensor fusion problem. Certainly more sensors add some complexity to the problem. However, if you have one sensor that is uncertain about what it is seeing, having multiple other sensors, particularly ones with different modalities that might not have problems in the same circumstance, it sure makes it a lot easier to reliably get to a good answer in real-time. Sure, in unique circumstances, you could have increased confusion, but you're far more likely to have increased clarity.

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

#303

Post by cbsmith »

YZF wrote: post #233
sumedh wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't see how the camera is going to detect an object at pitch dark Lights?

A car typically doesn't have lights shining in all directions. My Tesla doesn't at an rate. At night, backing into my driveway, I can barely see anything on the back-up camera unless the brake lights come on. If it's raining heavily it's much worse. But the ultrasonic sensors are really good at detecting obstacles pretty much all around.

Interesting. I find the rear camera in my Tesla is outright amazing in the dark. I can see objects so much more clearly with it than with the rear view mirror. It feels like I'm cheating... almost driving in the day.

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

#304

Post by ra7 »

threeseed wrote: post #40
ajross wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's over. Look, the LIDAR value proposition was necessarily "Yes, we're outrageously expensive and involve major tradeoffs in physical design of the vehicle, but vision can simply never do what we do". And... vision does. It does, every day. On hundreds of thousands of cars. In point of fact FSD beta vehicles are out there every day in environments where LIDAR has never been deployed, nor likely ever tested. And…

> And we're not seeing clear "it can't do this" failures. Anywhere Do you have evidence of the number of accidents, disengagements etc by region ? Because you're making awfully definitive statements about FSD safety.

Tesla doesn’t release any data. But there are community trackers [1] that puts the disengagement rate in the single digit miles. In comparison, Waymo and Cruise had a rate of roughly 30,000 miles/disengagement according to CA DMV data. That’s how much worse Tesla FSD is.

[1] https://www.teslafsdtracker.com/

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

#305

Post by AlotOfReading »

djleni wrote: post #280
nelox wrote: post #235

“The world is designed for human visual consumption” and “[vision] has all the information you need for driving”. While vision may be sufficient, I would say that other senses, such as hearing, touch and smell augment driving very well. Especially with regard to situational awareness. e.g. The sirens of emergency vehicles are typically the first indication of their presence, which often can be felt as well. The wail…

THANK YOU. Reading this thread was getting to me because so many comments say humans drive eyes only. I use far more than just vision driving: - sound, for emergency vehicles, detecting vehicles outside of my field of view if my windows are down or the vehicle is loud, tire sound (especially in snow and rain), engine sound (more feedback in snow or ice about what my tires are doing) - touch (steering feedback, gives…

It's worth noting that most autonomous vehicle solutions have dedicated microphones for emergency vehicles and sensors that can detect slip. I had a little dashboard measuring wheel slip at . It mainly ended up mapping train tracks and potholes.

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

#307

Post by cbsmith »

Nomentatus wrote: post #52
threeseed wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was an ominous answer. We really should be focusing on what is the best solution and trying to solve price issues through existing techniques e.g. economies of scale, competition, miniaturisation. Instead they are trying to build whatever solution they can that fits in a pre-defined cost window. Except this isn't a new phone or sneakers we are trying to take to market it's something that will directly impact peopl…

You can get to this conclusion if you're sure Andrej is lying, and that the risks cited are smoke; but only then. BTW, I've upgraded my sneakers after a couple falls on a rough beach with tangled driftwood (drift trees, really) proved their cheap too-slick surface had real world consequences. I was lucky not to break a bone. I'm going to bet he isn't lying, but I can understand someone making the opposite bet, market…

I don't think he's lying. I think he's looking at things from a particular perspective, and that perspective is being critiqued, as it should be.

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

#308

Post by Maxion »

aeternum wrote: post #181
davidgay wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They basically remove the concept of exposure entirely and simply pass the sensor photon counts to the neural net. That sentence does not make sense. There's no such thing as a count without a corresponding interval that count occurred over. That interval is the exposure. You can of course do lots of (very) short exposures to avoid sensor saturation. That's "just" a movie at a very high frame rate. And then you can…

Yeah that's fair. A CCD sensor basically converts individual photons to electrical charges. What Tesla has said they've done is thrown away all the traditional image signal processing & post-processing which often includes a lot of exposure-related averaging. You're right though that we don't typically use real-time neural networks that operate based upon spike rate, so an interval needs to be chosen for photon count…

Lol this doesn't make any sense. The dynamic range of a fully sunlit California highway during noon in the summer (I.e. the brightness reading of the darket vs the brightest spot) is wayyyy higher than any existing sensor. You cannot ignore exposure, you have to choose which part of the scene you want within the brightness range that your camera sensor can capture. You will have areas of the scene that clip, in other words areas of the scene that are pure black or white with no data.

You can do bracketed exposures, but that's literally the opposite of ignoring exposure.

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

#309

Post by ra7 »

stillworks wrote: post #291
RC_ITR wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's literally trivial for a car with radar to detect. In principle that is correct… but radars in automotive application are unable (or rather not used) to detect non-moving targets ? Asking this because I know first hand that the adaptive cruise function in my car must have a moving vehicle in front of it for the adaptive aspect to work. It will not detect a vehicle that is already stopped. The resolution of the…

The newer “4D imaging” radars can track stationary objects too. This is what the self driving companies have turned to in recent times.

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

#310

Post by touisteur »

Reason077 wrote: post #253
RC_ITR wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ”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.” That crash occurred on a car which was using radar. Automotive radar generally doesn’t help to detect stationary objects. Further, that crash occurred on a vehicle with the original autopilot version (AP1), which was based on Mobileye…

I find very strange the claim that a moving doppler (pulsed doppler?) radar 'generally doesn't help to detect stationary objects'. I mean if the car is moving, it generates a doppler shift on all objects moving at a different speed, right?

Maybe it's difficult for reasons of false alarm detection (too many stationary objects that are not of interest) but you can get very good results with tracking (curious about these radars' refresh rate), STAP, and classification/identification algorithms, especially if you have a somewhat modern beamformed signal (so, some kind instant spatial information). Active-tracking can also be of help here if you can beamsteer (put more energy, more waveform diversity on the target, increase the refresh rate). Can't these radars do any of those 'state of the art 20 years ago' stuff?

There's something I don't get here and I feel I need some education...

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