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Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

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

#131

Post by ehnto »

nicbou wrote: post #126
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…

Pardon me for being out of touch, but cars park themselves now? That's pretty neat

Another thing I missed the memo for, 360 degree birds eye view cameras. Game changer for parking.

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

#132

Post by nradov »

tablespoon wrote: post #115
pclmulqdq wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like they are transparently trying to raise their margins. I guess they are more supply-constrained than they thought. The "smart car of the future" from Tesla now has no sensors other than cameras, and not very many of those.

> It looks like they are transparently trying to raise their margins. I guess they are more supply-constrained than they thought. The "smart car of the future" from Tesla now has no sensors other than cameras, and not very many of those. Don't worry, it won't be a problem as long as they can keep the marketing budget up.

Tesla's marketing budget is actually very small and even decreased last year.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459021...

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

#133

Post by techdragon »

MarkMarine wrote: post #91
m463 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The parking sensors on the Tesla are really good and very useful. I respectfully disagree. I think their primary use case is parking. Tesla does a really good job with automatic parking, and it IS useful especially for parallel parking. But honestly, I have curbed my rims and hung up my underbody front spoiler on a curb and they did not help. Really there is an opportunity for cameras to protect the car from nearby…

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 are fallible, and huge software with endless features sometimes forgets which ones still work properly in combination with others.

Industrial robots are kinda like this too. You can buy an arm based on physical specs like how large it is, how precise it is with certain weights of objects (because it may be less precise with larger objects), how quickly it can move around, how quickly it can get from precision point A to precision point B (because precision and speed are a tradeoff once weight is involved due to momentum), how much power it uses, is it hydraulically powered or electrically powered, available off the shelf end effectors provided by the manufacturer... etc.

Then you have to install it, as in mechanically bolt it to the ground (which might have issues with load cantilevering), mark safety areas humans cant be in when its operating (that could require redesigning the entire floor plan of a building depending on how much spare room there is around everything because people still have to get around to other important things when the robot is doing its job), then you have to program the robot (which can in some ways be simple xyz coordinate motion, but also you need to tie it into some form of process control software so it knows when to do its job, and other things around it know when to do theirs, and process control systems are software, and may not be compatible, or have bugs, etc), then you have to maintain it (spare parts, breakdown rates, warranty turnaround times, industrial equipment built to be used, is sometimes used to do things that will wear them out, but its at a known rate that was planned for, but is not lived up to, requiring replanning or additional costs)

Its a web of complexity that can lead to what seems simple "just buy a robot to lift this thing from here to there and then buy another robot to weld it to the car" ... into a project that takes piles of money, months of work-hours by multiple different disciplines from construction to programming, and anything going wrong dominos down the line making it take even longer and cost more...

I wouldn't hold failing to get industrial robots working against them. Feel free to continue holding all the other opinions though :) everyone is entitled to our opinions after all... i just had something relevant to say about the robots.

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

#134

Post by victor22 »

vzaliva wrote: post #110

As an engineer, I see little value in removing any sensors. No matter how noisy or limited they are, they bring additional information which, if processed, could improve overall accuracy. This is commonly referred to as "sensor fusion". So this is probably is purely cost-saving move. While I understand how radar could be expensive, I am not sure the saving on much cheaper ultrasound sensors is worth the loss of addit…

this seems like a major downgrade disguised as questionable upgrade

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

#135

Post by ctvo »

nradov wrote: post #132
tablespoon wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It looks like they are transparently trying to raise their margins. I guess they are more supply-constrained than they thought. The "smart car of the future" from Tesla now has no sensors other than cameras, and not very many of those. Don't worry, it won't be a problem as long as they can keep the marketing budget up.

Tesla's marketing budget is actually very small and even decreased last year. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459021...

Their marketing is mostly Elon Musk. He uses Twitter for this and it has cost him / them quite a bit. From fines by the SEC, to potentially 45 billion USD for the purchase of the platform.

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

#136

Post by ajross »

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…

So... your first sentence is very likely true. But it doesn't match your argument two paragraphs down:

> The cheapest bargain-bin cars have this feature. Your $100k+ Model S or X will not.

If cheap "bargain-bin" cars have these things, then there is no supply chain problem. In fact it's likely these parts aren't available in quantity anywhere right now and every manufacturer is having to deal with it. It's just not news when Ford has to rejigger options on a bunch of models to adjust to demand. But with Tesla, yikes.

It's just so exhausting the level of emotion this brand drives. Every decision they make is An Affront to All Sensibility to someone, it seems like.

FWIW: I like the parking sensors too, they're helpful. But good grief, maybe tone down the outrage?

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

#137

Post by jtsiskin »

mlajtos wrote: post #15
olliecornelia wrote: post #4

Wow, how fucking stupid. Does that mean that cars that already have ultrasonic sensors (and radar modules) will stop using that sensor data?

The reason why they decided to remove ultrasonics is that combining contradictory signals from cameras and ultrasonic is not straightforward. What should have the higher precedence? So they ultimately decided that cameras can do what ultrasonics can do, but even better. They won't remove ultrasonics from the delivered cars, but they will probably disable them in coming months.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensor_fusion

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

#138

Post by i2infinity »

aeternum wrote: post #64
Qworg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see the convincing data RE: radar - they're using the same radars as every other car that has emergency braking from the car in front of the car that's in front of you. I've not heard of many "phantom braking" sessions from these other vehicles - I may have missed something.

Karpathy covered it during a conference keynote here: https://youtu.be/g6bOwQdCJrc?t=1368 It also is pretty common with other vehicles, they just don't get as much press as Tesla: https://www.rivianownersforum.com/threads/phantom-braking-an... https://www.fox43.com/article/news/feds-try-to-determine-why...

Hypothetically, Tesla would spin this story differently in no time if they are making great strides in a cheap solid-state radar.

For now, though, it looks like Tesla is building a case after they decided to do away with radar. I recall EM saying that it looks ugly and expensive too. I really got confused when Telsa came up with this patent though https://twitter.com/iamkellex/status/1534240730633236480?s=2...

No one sensor will work for all use cases; each has pros and cons. Radar really shines with depth sensing; it can cut through rain, fog, and snow like a hot knife through butter, much better than pure vision-based systems. At the same time, it seems to fail during harsh breaking and maybe a few other scenarios.

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

#139

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

dagmx wrote: post #75
m463 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The parking sensors on the Tesla are really good and very useful. I respectfully disagree. I think their primary use case is parking. Tesla does a really good job with automatic parking, and it IS useful especially for parallel parking. But honestly, I have curbed my rims and hung up my underbody front spoiler on a curb and they did not help. Really there is an opportunity for cameras to protect the car from nearby…

Tesla is probably the WORST at automatic parking. Here’s a comparison against some other competitors. https://youtu.be/nsb2XBAIWyA My own model Y has maybe successfully automatically parked 2/10 times. Most of my friends and coworkers have similarly low success rates.

I'm surprised the they pulled out an older Tesla and that parked quite well after all the duds.

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

#140

Post by salil999 »

CivBase wrote: post #51

> Will vehicles equipped with ultrasonic sensors have their functionality removed? > At this time, we do not plan to remove the functionality of ultrasonic sensors in our existing fleet. I really really do not like the use of the phrase "our existing fleet" here. It heavily implies that Tesla has some level of ownership over the vehicles they sell post-purchase.

They do though! They can easily disable features like Autopilot, Autopark, Summon, etc fleetwide in a snap if they wanted to.
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