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Tesla Autopilot

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Re: Tesla Autopilot

#191

Post by asdfgadsfgasfdg »

aidos wrote: post #184
TeMPOraL wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, human "machine vision" has graceful failure modes. You don't switch from seeing cars to seeing nothing to seeing an elephant just because the input got a little noisy. The same cannot be said about current ML demonstrations - because they operate on just vision. Humans continuously reconcile visual input with their model of the world and with other inputs, to the point of overriding visual data if neede…

I'm not sure the teslas are going to be trained to see elephants either!

They will need to be if they are to be able to recognise all the potential real world phenomena they might encounter!

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#192

Post by EmielMols »

lifeformed wrote: post #183
quotemstr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think our legal system should allow car manufacturers to impose these kinds of restrictions on cars fully owned by their operators. If I have the title on my vehicle, I should be able to use it in any legal capacity. This restriction is an attack on the fundamental ideas of ownership and property.

I wonder if it's to prevent the following scenario in the future, where the self-driving capabilities are perfect and legal: rich people buy as many Model 3's as possible, and deploy their own taxi fleet. Each one pays itself off in 4-6 months (est ~$15/hr, can operate 24/7), and generate lots of passive income forever.

This is not how markets work. Once the "self-driving capabilities are perfect and legal":

- investing in such a fleet would be like investing in any other kind of business: it's easier if you have the money, but if not you can go to any bank and get a loan.

- prices for a trip with a self-driving taxi will drop immensely, this is probably going to be a big liability if you would start the aforementioned business

- other effects that I can't think of right now

It is true that in a lot of places rich people have an edge on the less-wealthy (it's easier getting/staying rich if you are rich), but that's more of a generic problem than something that would be amplified by change to self-driving cars.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#193

Post by Daviey »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #180
willvarfar wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The thing is, human "machine vision" has graceful failure modes. You don't switch from seeing cars to seeing nothing to seeing an elephant just because the input got a little noisy. The same cannot be said about current ML demonstrations - because they operate on just vision. Humans continuously reconcile visual input with their model of the world and with other inputs, to the point of overriding visual data if neede…

You've never been temporary blinded by a low-sun? Never sneezed and had your eyes closed at the wrong moment?

This is the same thing..

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#194

Post by joeblau »

wazoox wrote: post #182
rvalue wrote: post #55

I don't think these autopilot systems will work well in crowded cities or cities with poor infrastructure for roads. The amount of objects for detecting and avoiding will be way too high. The tests shows almost clear conditions for driving. This should be tested on streets of NY or a busy city like Mumbai

Check GM autopilot demos in the streets of San Francisco. Much more impressive than this one. Pedestrians, bicycles, delivery van stopped in the middle of the street, etc. daytime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSc8AHIEG9o night time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHIq0MMViZg

Cruise is also using Lidar which provides depth sensing[1]. You can do depth sensing with cameras, but that requires building depth maps from multiple cameras (like eyes) and still being able to interpret the depth map with computer vision. Capturing depth is definitely possible with monocular cameras (because humans can do it), but it seems like lidar works a lot more accurately.

[1] - https://www.getcruise.com

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#195

Post by OliverJones »

blazespin wrote: post #89
dperfect wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can now experience Enhanced Autopilot features including Traffic-Aware Cruise Control, Autosteer, Auto Lane Change, Parallel + Perpendicular Autopark, and Summon Scary stuff, really. No consumer wants (or needs) autopilot "features" - at least not from a marketing standpoint. If you ask me, the car either drives itself or you are driving it. It's a bit ridiculous to expect people to use these things safely. If…

well, it yells at you if you let go of the steering wheel and will even disable itself if you keep doing it. It's not that scary. And the features are real. At least it gives owners the confidence that things are moving forward and if they buy a Tesla today they will have full self driving some day.

I have about 18K miles on my Model S with the first-generation sensor package. I live and drive in New England.

The lane-holding feature (autosteer) does expect you to keep slight pressure on the wheel. It has, that I can discern, four modes ...

freeway following (another vehicle in front) freeway leading nonfreeway following nonfreeway leading.

Only in the first case, you have five minutes before it starts pestering you to hold the wheel. In the other cases it's one minute.

Lane holding and adaptive cruise control in freeway following mode is a WONDERFUL feature. It drastically reduces the driver's workload in heavy traffic. And, it has speed control features that contribute to the melting of compression-wave traffic jams.

Lane holding can be a little squirrely when the road surface is dirty. I think the car sometimes mistakes tire marks for lane markings. There are parts of my regular route where I just take over from lane holding.

Snow or heavy rain? the lane holding feature goes first, then the adaptive cruise control. Snow, rain, or frost on the windshield interferes with the forward looking camera. Snow or ice on the nose interferes with the radar. Ice on the bumpers interferes with the near-field sonar proximity sensors.

Autonomous driving on the Stanford campus and up Sand Hill Road is one thing. Autonomous driving in a nor'easter snowstorm on winding Atlantic Coast roads is another. We shall see.

I admire and support people who tackle hard problems fearlessly. Tesla's doing that.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#196

Post by beaconstudios »

tptacek wrote: post #174
ageofwant wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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."

"Have the hardware needed". Note: not the capability ; just the hardware. It's an unnatural way to write promo copy for a feature, and is written that way for a reason.

I think that with tesla's wireless software updating capabilities they'll continue to improve the software over time after you buy the car.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#197

Post by _up »

Autopilot for Batteries. What I wonder is, why isn't anyone building self driving batteries that park near the road and can follow you and give you more range if needed. They only would need to implement some kind of follow mode witch should be relatively easy. Cars could be build light and inexpensive and at the same time come with infinitive range.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#198

Post by vultour »

honestoHeminway wrote: post #128
takeda wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between autopilot and examples you mentioned is that autopilot can decrease safety. If it works correctly 99.9% of the time, you get used to it and when 0.1% arrive you will cause accident, because you weren't paying attention.

The airplanes of this world demonstrate this.

IMHO airplanes demonstrate the exact opposite. A plane can not only potentially fly the entire flight path on its own, it can also autonomously land. The reason why pilots still hand fly planes is 1) because the whole process is not automatic and you are still receiving directions from an ATC, and 2) to keep their proficiency in controlling the plane.

Numerous times I've seen pilots complain that their employer requires autopilot to be used wherever possible, while they would like to fly the plane by themselves occasionally.

If we polished off the autopilot to also handle take-off and taxi, and installed it in every single plane that exists, I'm pretty sure the entire aviation industry could be completely automated.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#199

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

Self-driving cars' marketing pitch is that they could reduce road accidents, but if we really want to reduce road accidents, might we not have a better chance at it if we removed cars from roads altogether? We could replace them with, I don't know, some kind of overground system of personal pods on rails, or something like that.

I think one big selling point of cars has always been that they grant the user a great amount of autonomy (unprecedented, in their time, taken for granted nowadays). You can ride your car and go anywhere you like! The cost of that autonomy of course is that some of us will be killed or maimed in road accidents, because you can't give silly little monkeys autonomy behind the controls of big powerful machines without death and carnage ensuing.

Self-driving cars propose to reduce this risk of death and injury by taking away the autonomy we traded it for in the first place. What remains would be just a mindless automatic system carting the user to and fro. Well, in that case- we don't need to wait around for full level-5 autonomy. We already have dumb machines that can do that: trains, trams, all sorts of vehicles-on-rails.

Why do we need self-driving cars, then?

Answer: we don't. And I haven't for a moment believed that any of this is anything to do with road safety. Note that nobody even discusses the other 900 pound gorilla in the room: pollution.

Guess what? Taking cars off roads completely would also reduce air and noise pollution tremendously.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#200

Post by ReverseCold »

joeblau wrote: post #190
aidos wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure the teslas are going to be trained to see elephants either!

You don't necessarily have to train it to see elephants, but Neural Networks fail in pretty interesting ways. This that are very obvious to you and I have the ability to confuse a CNN[1]. [1] - http://www.evolvingai.org/fooling

Those aren't too bad (out of context of the Tesla article), I can see how the ai might misinterpret those images. The bagel one, for example, is pretty on point.
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