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Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

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Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#181

Post by throw2016 »

tlb wrote: post #53
cletus wrote: post #39

What befuddles me is that in all these discussions about self-driving cars seemingly no one refers to the massive body of knowledge in this area that comes from the aviation world. I've posted variants of this same comment several times and I'm starting to feel like a broken record. Look at studies of efforts to make planes safer by removing the human element. While efforts like autopilot have made things safer it re…

There's a big difference: commercial pilots are highly trained, even-tempered, and take their job seriously. Most drivers are lazy, distracted, and apt to do something stupid in an emergency. It's very hard to make something safer than a commercial pilot. It's much easier to make something safer than a typical driver.

most drivers are lazy, distracted and accident prone.

If this had any element of truth roads would be empty.

This kind of sweeping and bigoted dismissal of other people is a bit too self serving in the context of self driving cars and is made too casually and too often on HN now to allow balanced discussion.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#182

Post by [deleted] »

int_19h wrote: post #150
kbenson wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently drove an Accord with lane-following and speed adaptive cruise-control recently. It completely failed (but thankfully by refusing to try) in the one instance that I wanted to use it (stop-and-go traffic), but it was nerve wracking when it was on as it kept losing the lane. People naturally alter the throttle and speed when going around corners and up slight inclines. It feels alien when that doesn't happen.

I have a Subaru with lane-following and adaptive cruise. Lane follow fails miserably because it keeps losing the lane boundaries, even on clearly marked roads. But adaptive cruise control works extremely well, and particularly shines in stop-and-go traffic. One catch there is that it'll stop automatically, but it won't ever go if it came to a full stop - you need to tap the gas to reactivate cruise. If the car in fro…

[deleted]

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#183

Post by rconti »

aerovistae wrote: post #56
tdees40 wrote: post #20

I just ordered a Model S with Autopilot, and as I've been reading the comments on the various Tesla forums, I'm not sure I'm ever going to use it. Some of the stories are honestly terrifying (sudden deceleration on the highway, swerving into other lanes, etc).

Absolutely do not use it. I am one of the biggest Tesla fans out there. I fucking love the company. But Autopilot in its current form is nothing short of dangerous. I took a test drive in a Model S a couple months ago and enabled Autopilot at the Tesla rep's encouragement while on a straight stretch of route 90 near Boston. We were going 70mph, a safe speed. The car came to a point where the highway curved, and a sli…

Sounds like the issue was the steering input, not the speed. I call BS on there being a single non-construction stretch of I-90 you can't take at 70mph in a Model S. Hell, the true speed is probably much closer to 110.

Normally I'd call the issue "the driver", but since the car was automated, it was an input failure, not a curve that couldn't be negotiated at that speed.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#184

Post by trhway »

tyrw wrote: post #83
Animats wrote: post #78

Tesla's system doesn't have enough sensors. Musk forced his engineers to try to do this almost entirely with vision processing, and that was a terrible decision. Vision processing isn't that good yet. Everybody else uses LIDAR. I've been saying for years that the right approach was to take the technology from Advanced Scientific Concepts' flash LIDAR and get the cost down. I first saw that demonstrated in 2004 on an…

It depends on what you're optimizing for. Others using LIDAR are optimizing for speed to market, while potentially sacrificing ability to solve the problem as fully. Musk's argument is that we know for certain that the entire road system can be navigated by visual cues, because that's how humans do it. We do not know for certain that this is possible with LIDAR.

> Musk's argument is that we know for certain that the entire road system can be navigated by visual cues, because that's how humans do it.

i'm hesitant to argue against Musk, yet the actual goal is to navigate better than humans, and it seems reasonable to suspect that having wider range sensors would be a good (and may be necessary) foundation to achieve it.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#185

Post by cr0sh »

otakucode wrote: post #79
empath75 wrote: post #8

The level-2 driving that Tesla is pushing seems like a worst case scenario to me. Requiring the driver to be awake and alert while not requiring them to actually do anything for long stretches of time is a recipe for disaster. Neither the driver nor the car manufacturer will have clear responsibility when there is an accident. The driver will blame the system for failing and the manufacturer will blame the driver for…

Yes, it is the worst case scenario. Also, it's the best you're gonna get. Toyota already got the nod from the courts to kill people via technology bugs in their cars (see the 'unintended acceleration' controversy that killed someone (maybe 2? I forget) a few years ago due to absolutely preventable bugs if they'd splashed out and spent a couple grand on static analysis tools), so if you think companies are going to br…

> There's no such thing as "industry standard practices" that you could even CLAIM they failed to follow.

Are you sure? What about IEC 61508 and ISO 26262? The latter especially, as it was derived as a vehicle-specific version of the IEC standard.

It's an industry-wide standard:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_26262

...geared specifically to ensuring the safety of electrical, electronic, and software of vehicles.

Look it up - you'll find tons of stuff about it on the internet (unfortunately, you pay out the * for the actual spec, if you want to purchase it from ISO - it's the only way to get a copy, despite the power of the internet, afaict).

...and that's just one particular spec; there are tons of others covering all aspects of the automobile manufacturing spectrum to attempt to ensure safe and reliable vehicles.

Are they perfect? No. Will the prevent problems? No.

But to say there isn't any standards to look to isn't true.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#186

Post by crocal »

petra wrote: post #147
crocal wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No personal opinion here. It's just facts from the only ones around who have done this before. Your argument is flawed. We have also been there. Here is the catch. You are willing to take the risk, but society as a whole will not. As soon as you release /total/ control to a machine, public authorities having authorized this become responsible for your life and those your car may threaten. Requirements for said author…

A 5x reduction in accident rate(plus the convenience of self-driving) , advertised and lobbied in the right way, can be translated to a huge political power. That could, with time, convince authorities, And that wasn't the case in the other systems you mention.

"Huge"? Are you so sure?

First, you do not need self driving car to achieve 5x improvement. Good driver assistance systems will get you there.

Then, put yourself in the choose of the politician that is authorizing this technology to be used massively. Picture the amount of cars that are going to run everywhere once this authorization is given and ask yourself: what will happen to him once the first hundred people have died because of a wrong autopilot decision (it will be such figures, since you are OK with x5 reduction). Do you think he will be sleeping well at night? Do you think his political career will be better, especially if you consider my first point? Would you step in his shoes?

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#187

Post by pitaj »

sbierwagen wrote: post #153
pitaj wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't quote with code blocks. It messes with formatting on both mobile and desktop.

It messes with formatting on both mobile HN has never been mobile friendly, (element spacing, upvote button size) so I'm not terribly worried about that. If YC wanted HN to work on phones, they would fix their CSS. and desktop Oh?

Additionally to what Jtsummers said, quoting on desktop can drastically reduce the line length compared to the rest of the lines in the comment, which is both ugly and annoying, especially since it makes it more difficult to read since your eyes are whipping back and forth.

There are a multitude of mobile apps for consumption of HN, most of which solve the code-block-line-overflow problem by adding a horizontal scroll, which only makes the problem worse by forcing users to scroll side to side to read the full quote.

Just use `>` at the start of the line to signify that it's a quote, please.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#188

Post by anarazel »

ghaff wrote: post #108
Animats wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring the driver to be awake and alert while not requiring them to actually do anything for long stretches of time is a recipe for disaster. Everybody who's looked at this seriously agrees. The aviation industry has looked hard at that issue for a long time. Watch "Children of the Magenta".[1] This is a chief pilot of American Airlines talking to pilots about automation dependency in 1997. Watch this if you have…

This is a well-researched area, in addition to being pretty obvious to everyone. Personally, I stopped using cruise control years ago. If I have to pay attention, I'm better off driving. This isn't just a matter for Tesla. The auto industry is rapidly heading for much better assistive driving systems. There's no way that the people heads-down in their cell phones are going to do this less once they realize they don't…

> Personally, I stopped using cruise control years ago.

Cruise control seems fairly harmless - you still have to keep lanes, and keeping your foot on the gas isn't particularly demanding either. I largely use cruise control because I am able to save on gas that way, by avoiding unnecessary acceleration/deceleration. Combination with lane following and holding of distance is more problematic imo.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#189

Post by avar »

aerovistae wrote: post #138
Cshelton wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is 100% false. I've owned a Tesla for over a year. I take several curves on a daily basis with the speed set to around 82 mph. Going into the curve, the car slows down to about 65 mph, which is the speed every other car on the road takes that curve. It's even stated in the AP documentation and release notes. Go ask other Tesla owners as well. I've never heard of a Tesla being "swung" out of a lane on a cur…

I am glad to hear this. But it is not 100% false that the Tesla I test drove functioned this way. It is, in fact, 100% true. This happened last month.

You may however be overestimating how much a car like the S needs to slow down in a turn. It has a really low center of gravity. Maybe it didn't need to slow down at all and you were just being paranoid.

Can you provide a map link to the stretch of road where this happened?

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#190

Post by reubenswartz »

tlb wrote: post #53
cletus wrote: post #39

What befuddles me is that in all these discussions about self-driving cars seemingly no one refers to the massive body of knowledge in this area that comes from the aviation world. I've posted variants of this same comment several times and I'm starting to feel like a broken record. Look at studies of efforts to make planes safer by removing the human element. While efforts like autopilot have made things safer it re…

There's a big difference: commercial pilots are highly trained, even-tempered, and take their job seriously. Most drivers are lazy, distracted, and apt to do something stupid in an emergency. It's very hard to make something safer than a commercial pilot. It's much easier to make something safer than a typical driver.

I agree. I think it will be very hard to make something that drives better than a really good human driver who is focused on driving. Getting better than the 50+% of people I see with their phone clapped to their faces while they drive (despite that being illegal in Austin) is much easier (though still difficult) task.

The other thing is that something going wrong with a plane in the air is a pretty big deal. You can't just pull over and wait. If you assume a "first, do no harm" principle of robotics for driverless cars, the failure mode should in most cases by "pull over and wait." This can still cause problems in many situations, but people do it now.

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