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Tesla Autopilot

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Re: Tesla Autopilot

#151

Post by z92 »

pxndx wrote: post #139
wilhil wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because when you buy software, you know you are renting it - you technically can reverse engineer/decompile, copy, clone, resell - but you know you shouldn't. If I buy a car and want to take the engine out, or a light and resell it - I would be very stupid, but, it is my property and I should be able to. If Tesla want to lend instead of sell you something - fine, just be honest!

Why is there a difference between sowtware and the car? Didn't you also pay for the software?

He said the payment was more like a rent than gaining full ownership, as in a car.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#152

Post by the_rosentotter »

Animats wrote: post #64

Watch this at 0.25x speed or slower to see what's going on. This is a carefully chosen environment. Every place it drives has very clear highway centerline markings. It seems to be highly dependent on those for guidance. Sometimes it can't quite identify the road edge, but the centerline provides a position reference. The inputs seem to be road line recognition, optical flow for the road, and solid object recognition…

It terrifies me to think of relying on image recognition software to correctly determine an upcoming crossing road (with cars zipping across) so it can properly slow down, rather than get broadsided at full speed. Or a number of other life-and-death situations (which are common during driving). It just seems fragile (what if the 'vision' is somehow impaired, f.ex. blinded by sunlight, or the road markings are wrong or obscured) when the failure mode is so catastrophic.

I suppose once statistics start to prove that these cars are safer than human-driven ones, we can chalk it up to an irrational fear, but for now it seems crazy to me to put my life in the hands of an AI, when a mistake means that I die or kill someone, rather than play the wrong song on Spotify.

I don't fully understand why more effort is not put into a hardware solution, where roads are simply marked up for self-driving vehicles, e.g. magnets lining the lanes or something like that. Of course a more expensive solution, but seems like it would make the vehicles themselves a whole lot simpler and safer. Begin with inner cities, where the area is limited and traffic is most complex.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#153

Post by mtgx »

wilhil wrote: post #131
castratikron wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this any different than Microsoft restricting Home versions of Office for non-business use? They've been getting away with that for decades now.

Because when you buy software, you know you are renting it - you technically can reverse engineer/decompile, copy, clone, resell - but you know you shouldn't. If I buy a car and want to take the engine out, or a light and resell it - I would be very stupid, but, it is my property and I should be able to. If Tesla want to lend instead of sell you something - fine, just be honest!

Vehicle makers are already starting to make that argument, that because they own the software, you can't do anything to the car without their permission:

https://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#154

Post by ErikHuisman »

smitherfield wrote: post #91
kyberias wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that - whether it's physical or not - determine what kind of licenses you can attach to the product?

When you buy a car, the title is signed over to you, and you become its owner. Microsoft Office is information that Microsoft agrees to share with you subject to certain restrictions on your use of it. To actually purchase Microsoft Office the intellectual property, as opposed to a license for it, would cost you about 9 orders of magnitude more. They're also restricting their customers' actions in meatspace (you can'…

tesla is restricting the autopilot software not the car itself

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#155

Post by factsaresacred »

prostoalex wrote: post #126
ljf wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the USA are there not rules about which lanes you use? Various dash cam videos from the US seem to show drivers choosing any lane, though I could viewing then wrong. In the UK you use the outside lane if you are a slower vehicle and use the inside lane(s) as overtaking lanes, with the inside for the fastest speeds (within the limit) . If you are using one of the inside lane and are travelling slower that traffic i…

The dash cam videos would be correct, outside of high-occupancy lane (2+ people) there are no lane speed restrictions, and if someone feels like getting into the left-most lane and driving 5 miles below the speed limit, they most certainly act on that impulse. As you can imagine, anybody intending to use the left-most lane for high-speed driving is now forced to use the brakes, execute a [rarely safe] lane merge to t…

I only recently discovered that in the US many people driving in the left lane will not move to the middle lane to allow cars approaching from behind overtake them.

That's incredibly selfish, not least because it's incredibly dangerous for the driver that has to weave into the middle lane and back again.

Seems bizarre. Then again, you Yanks also don't have kettles, so nothing surprises me ;)

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#156

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #68
deelowe wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty obvious what the poster meant. Why doesn't tesla need lidar? Cars aren't humans, so that comparison isn't really helpful.

What the poster seems to have meant is that LIDAR is essential hardware. Which is not some universal truth, so it is they who should justify it.

Visual cameras can be blinded fairly easily - even high-end cameras - simply point such a camera at the sun and try to make out a cloud in the sky. If Tesla were using true high-dynamic-range cameras (e.g. Oversampled binary imagers) then I would be more confident - but Tesla isn't saying that they are - and if they really were they would definitely boast about it.

LIDAR also does work great in the rain - provided you have multiple LIDAR units (e.g. Ford's snow-proof sensor array: https://qz.com/637509/driverless-cars-have-a-new-way-to-navi... ).

What I like about LIDAR is that it will never give you false-negative data regarding object proximity (i.e. it will never tell you an obstruction in the road is not there) but visual-only cameras can be fooled very easily and definitely can give you false-negatives regarding road obstructions.

It seems inherently less safe to rely on a more homogeneous sensor array: conversely it makes sense to use as many different types of sensor as possible to ensure your design isn't susceptible to being brought down thanks to a weakness in your predominant sensor type.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#157

Post by stretchwithme »

in_cahoots wrote: post #140
ageofwant wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, its still an objectively better driver than you.

Is that what they're claiming here? It looks like they're just saying that the hardware is capable of it, and that it will beat human driving at some point in the future.

Correct. There are probably primates that have all the hardware required to drive a car too. But more is required.

Humans are still better at interpreting many things and probably dealing with weather and construction and when there is no data.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#158

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

p49k wrote: post #123
sbierwagen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If true, then it seems rather disingenuous to advertise that all Teslas are capable of self driving, if it costs eight grand to turn the sensors on. I wouldn't expect a car advertised to have 1000 horsepower to require a multi-thousand dollar software patch to be able to use more than a hundred hp.

They didn't advertise that all Teslas are capable of self-driving, they just say that the hardware has the capability. They're specifically speaking in computer terms, even - I wouldn't expect that buying a computer advertised as having the hardware to run at 120fps would include a copy of that game.

But if it's a game-console that's advertised as being able to play a particular game very well... but it's also the only console capable of playing that particular game... and they're both made by the same company, seems a bit mean.

It's also equivalent to those high-end network switches with 48 ports that have soft-locks to disable ports on the switch until you fork-out $lots to unlock them: it's an artificial limitation.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#159

Post by ageofwant »

in_cahoots wrote: post #140
ageofwant wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, its still an objectively better driver than you.

Is that what they're claiming here? It looks like they're just saying that the hardware is capable of it, and that it will beat human driving at some point in the future.

"All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver."

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#160

Post by willvarfar »

the_rosentotter wrote: post #152
Animats wrote: post #64

Watch this at 0.25x speed or slower to see what's going on. This is a carefully chosen environment. Every place it drives has very clear highway centerline markings. It seems to be highly dependent on those for guidance. Sometimes it can't quite identify the road edge, but the centerline provides a position reference. The inputs seem to be road line recognition, optical flow for the road, and solid object recognition…

It terrifies me to think of relying on image recognition software to correctly determine an upcoming crossing road (with cars zipping across) so it can properly slow down, rather than get broadsided at full speed. Or a number of other life-and-death situations (which are common during driving). It just seems fragile (what if the 'vision' is somehow impaired, f.ex. blinded by sunlight, or the road markings are wrong o…

> It terrifies me to think of relying on image recognition software to correctly determine (... snip)

Do you not drive using only your eyes? If you are not terrified of the sensors, then software? Turing's central belief was that the human brain was 'just' a computer.

Regards doing things like embedding reflectors in roads and other ways to simplify lane holding, completely agree. But we can't forego the cameras etc that deal with situations that don't contain reflectors.

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