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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

#21

Post by solidasparagus »

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…

> But humans drive... only using vision.

No they don't. Driving uses multiple senses. Sound is the most obvious one, but other less-well-known senses almost certainly play a role as well.

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

#22

Post by tmotwu »

I could not get through the entire article with straight face. It's riddled with fallacies and misconceptions on the problems currently facing self driving. It was especially this horrible take that put the credibility of this article into question:

> "A simple analogy can illustrate the conceptual difference between Computer Vision and LiDAR. Imagine two students, where one is just cramming and memorizing the content (LiDAR), while the other one is trying to really understand the material and truly learn it (Tesla FSD). The student that learned the material (Tesla FSD) will be able to answer the exam questions correctly, even if the questions on the exam are swapped, the questions are rephrased, or new components are added to the questions, while the student that memorized the content (LiDAR) will likely fail the exam."

Tesla's advantage isn't even it's computer vision systems - computer vision models don't exactly scale like language transformers (where larger, sparser parameters make better models). There hasn't been any significant advancements in vision models since Faster-RCNNs or YOLO, which is close to five years old now. Especially if you want to compare Tesla's SotA against Waymo, which has an army of Captcha labelers and a large plethora of example images.

The goldmine is in identifying and navigating around rare edge cases - data that can only be obtained with hundreds of thousands of hours of real world driving. It has very little to do with the correct set of camera and calibration configurations. The novel research is deep into safety verification strategies. Like how do can we predict human or object behavior by using miliseconds of prior movement of an object? Or how to use human arm movements and eye pupils to determine if a pedestrian or other driver is distracted? Can we avoid an accident if we have a better behavioral understanding of the scene?

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

#23

Post by invisible »

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'm a fan of both approaches, but Waymo is very heavily reliant on Lidar (and uses CV for augmenting). They have been working on this problem for 12 years now and have just launched in Phoenix, using high definition maps, lidar, and a suite of other sensors. They have Tesla has been working on this problem for somewhere close to half the time and with far fewer resources initially. Tesla has a million cars on the road across the entire world and only use basic sensors and CV. Six fatalities have been attributed to Tesla (and the driver).

So there really isn't a lot of data to go on for who is "winning" but Tesla has much more driver data. The fatalities are so low compared to the miles driven that it's difficult to really know if Waymo could achieve a better result.

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

#24

Post by verdverm »

bpodgursky wrote: post #12
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.

Ascribing fault and insurance claims are some likely reasons it will take better than human performance

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

#25

Post by johnmorrison »

adflux wrote: post #20

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 worki…

What portion of Volkswagens sold are outfitted with an array of HD cameras passively collecting data?

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

#26

Post by Someone »

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.

You don’t need lidar to make the good choice to slow down significantly in a snowstorm or to not drive the car at all when you encounter a heavy one.

I also doubt human brains are the best at visual processing. Certainly at subtasks, quite a few animals are better.

In particular, I would think the night vision of nocturnal animals are better at that “detecting cars in a snow storm” task than middle-aged humans wearing not quite correct glasses.

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

#28

Post by sliken »

verdverm wrote: post #4
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.

Note both Waymo and Tesla have sensor fusion systems. I believe both are using CV and (ultrasonic?) radar, Waymo is additionally including Lidar. https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2020/03/04/waymo-reve...

Tesla uses CV, radar, and ultrasonic. But ultrasonic is just for parking type measurements, up to 36" or so.

Tesla did just apply for approval to use 60-64 GHz band for radar, not clear to me how that will change the range/performance they get from the sensors.

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

#29

Post by Someone »

_ea1k wrote: post #6

Given the early stage, I find the idea of anyone having an "unassailable lead" to be laughable. The idea that the one with such a lead is Tesla is even more laughable, and I say that as someone that actually likes some significant elements of Tesla's approach. Although I pretty strongly dislike some aspects too.

Even if they had perfect FSD, that lead wouldn’t be unassailable.

On the contrary, it would tell would-be competitors that the goal can be reached, and what it would approximately cost.

They would do the math and see whether that’s worth it financially. Even if it weren’t (say because Tesla would license the tech for pennies), I think the likes of China still would spend the money to create a competitor.

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

#30

Post by sudosysgen »

bigtones wrote: post #11
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 may…

You can make cameras that can differentiate objects covered in white snow.

It's just going to be quite expensive, you would need quite good dynamic range and resolution, and I'd guess depth from de focus and parallax helps.

But that's with ~40 bits per pixel of dynamic range (17-18 effective bits per channel), at fairly high resolutions.

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