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Tesla’s CV Approach to Autonomous Driving Built an Unassailable Lead in FSD

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Re: Tesla’s CV Approach to Autonomous Driving Built an Unassailable Lead in FSD

#11

Post by bigtones »

verdverm wrote: post #2

hmm, I think the author missed that Waymo drove in snow 3 years ago [0], obviously outside of Pheonix. They also don't seem to understand it's CV + Lidar, not versus... I'd be surprised at a CV only system that can handle snow like seen in the Waymo example. The rest of the article does not hold up once you realize the author is in an either-or mindset and thinks Waymo is not using CV, which they are, and has vertica…

I agree with this. Humans have a tough time driving in the snow for quite a few reasons, but the ability of our eyes (which are fantastic technology) to differentiate objects covered in white snow is a big part of it, so camera's and CV are going to have a much tougher time that the combination of human brain and eye.

On the other hand, driving in the snow is a very very small portion of most driving commutes, so maybe the solution is for the car to automatically turn off autonomous driving in the snow. The warmer half the world would not care it does not work in the snow.

Re: Tesla’s CV Approach to Autonomous Driving Built an Unassailable Lead in FSD

#12

Post by bpodgursky »

benjohnson wrote: post #3

We will need better-than-vision to drive safely - whiteness all the humans that pile up in multi-car crashes when it gets foggy or snowing. Lidar, or something like it, will have to be part of the equation given that the best visual processing computers of all time (human brains) don’t get enough data from their systems to make good choices in bad weather.

> (human brains) don’t get enough data from their systems to make good choices in bad weather

Why is your bar for deploying self-driving cars "far better than human performance"? We let people drive in bad conditions.

Re: Tesla’s CV Approach to Autonomous Driving Built an Unassailable Lead in FSD

#13

Post by porphyra »

Tesla fanboys seem to frequently forget the following facts:

* People using lidar also use deep learning.

* Lidar and HD maps are totally orthogonal concepts with nothing to do with each other. Lidar helps you avoid running into trucks without HD maps. Camera-based methods can use HD maps too.

* Lidars are less affected by rain and snow than cameras are (thanks to larger optical aperture, multiple returns, and faster "shutter speed" due to nanosecond pulses rather than 1/30 s exposures).

* Tesla's "big data" is not more effective than a concerted active learning data collection campaign with a moderate-sized fleet.

* HD maps are very cheap to create.

* Lidars may in fact be cheaper than the GPU you're going to need to run your monocular depth network, while being more accurate and more robust.

Re: Tesla’s CV Approach to Autonomous Driving Built an Unassailable Lead in FSD

#14

Post by dr_faustus »

What lead? The main advantage of Tesla is that they have the guts to put beta quality software in cars and get away with it (from a regulatory perspective) up to now.

As can be witnessed in loads of videos on YouTube, the current FSD betas still pretty much require full attention (I would say even more attention than driving youself because you have to watch the environment AND the behaviour of Autopilot). And these demos are on American roads which are among the easiest to drive in the world (generally very wide, lots of traffic lights, large intersections, etc.).

Bad weather conditons (which are a thing outside of southern California) are even more problematic. So while the tech might or might not be more advanced than what other car companies have in their labs, reliably its still pretty much an improved cruise control and in that regard not that far ahead of the competition (all premium brands have that in one way or the other).

Re: Tesla’s CV Approach to Autonomous Driving Built an Unassailable Lead in FSD

#15

Post by paulryanrogers »

bpodgursky wrote: post #10

I don't know how this will pan out, but I've seen a lot of criticism of Tesla "only" using vision, as if it's a ridiculous concept that will never work. But humans drive... only using vision. Maybe it's not possible for Tesla to get true FSD using only video data given current technology, but the idea that it's laughable doesn't make any sense to me. People drive in new environments, using only their eyes, all the ti…

Human brains are massively more powerful per watt and trained for years to respond to visual stimuli.

Re: Tesla’s CV Approach to Autonomous Driving Built an Unassailable Lead in FSD

#16

Post by soVeryTired »

Has the author done any serious work in computer vision? Imagenet is one thing, but there are many many problems that need to be solved before a vision-based vehicle can run reliably. I worked at a self-driving company for a while, and they struggled with issues like multiple target tracking and reasoning about occluded vehicles.

And in a sense, vision is the easy part. There are whole areas like prediction and motion planning where the current state of the art isn't really up to scratch.

Re: Tesla’s CV Approach to Autonomous Driving Built an Unassailable Lead in FSD

#17

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

There seems to be gigantic non-sequitur here where good performance of convolutional neural networks for image recognition is seen as evidence that visual sensors suffice for full driving autonomy and that LIDAR-based approaches are heading in the wrong direction.

There doesn't seem any evidence for the proposition that "if only we can train the model with more data it'll suddenly be good enough". There's an extremely long tail of scenarios, operating in different weather conditions, in different environments, at different times of day, and the driving problem is adaptive - the network needs to predict how others will respond to its own behavior.

The authors dismiss the idea that sensor fusion may provide more additive capability than train-with-m0ar-data but don't actually seem to provide any basis for that.

Re: Tesla’s CV Approach to Autonomous Driving Built an Unassailable Lead in FSD

#18

Post by soVeryTired »

bpodgursky wrote: post #10

I don't know how this will pan out, but I've seen a lot of criticism of Tesla "only" using vision, as if it's a ridiculous concept that will never work. But humans drive... only using vision. Maybe it's not possible for Tesla to get true FSD using only video data given current technology, but the idea that it's laughable doesn't make any sense to me. People drive in new environments, using only their eyes, all the ti…

It's laughable given the current state of computer vision. CV has made enormous progress over the past decade, but it's still brittle and probably shouldn't be relied on in a life-or-death situation

Re: Tesla’s CV Approach to Autonomous Driving Built an Unassailable Lead in FSD

#19

Post by josefresco »

"Immediately, the Bolt EUV is, in my experience, the best autonomous driving experience available today."

"But for my money right now, Super Cruise beats Tesla’s Autopilot in real-world usage."

https://electrek.co/2021/03/05/chevy-bolt-super-cruise-autop...

Re: Tesla’s CV Approach to Autonomous Driving Built an Unassailable Lead in FSD

#20

Post by adflux »

Another dumb post by someone who believes Tesla operates in a vacuum... Tesla is a very small player in terms of cars produced. Volkswagen has started outselling Tesla in some European countries. And dont forget about GM and Toyota. No lead is unaissalable in a highly competitive market like car manufacturing. And its not like there's no competition from the tech side either. Microsoft, Apple and Google are all working on making self driving cars. Any combination of said tech companies with a large car manufacturer would be a serious threat.
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