Live data from Hacker News

Tesla Autopilot

tesla.com

211–220 of 347 posts

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#211

This is quite interesting, I hadn't seen or heard about their intention to restrict like this, prior reading it tonight: "Please note also that using a self-driving Tesla for car sharing and ride hailing for friends and family is fine, but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla Network, details of which will be released next year."

Let's hope for someone to initiate GNU/Tesla hehe.

Unfortunately, such a thing will never exist, at least in a road legal sense. No government is going to approve it if it can be modified by the user. At best, you can have "look but don't touch" kind of open backed by some company if it has to be road legal. We aren't even fully over wifi router firmware yet.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#212
post #79

I have an AP1 car and a AP2 loaner (for the last month). This is just reaching parity to AP1 autopilot capabilities. AP2 has been crippled since launch. There a few new features that my AP1 might not have like Perpendicular Autopark, but I won't know till I get it back. From what it seems it's just gotten to the level that they were with with the previous generation that was developed by or in conjunction with MobilE…

They reached feature parity with the Mobileye solution starting from zero in something like 8 months. If this is not impressive then I think that we have very very different perspectives. And from now on things will only improve, and if they maintain the same fast pace I think that they are perfectly on track for their first coast to coast full autonomous drive before the end of the year.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#213
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

It's not. When you're being blinded by sun, you don't suddenly see elephants or spaceships or comic books. You also don't think the world just disappeared - you know to just ignore the visual input. Also, I'm more worried about temporary, unexpected configuration of things that suddenly make a NN see something weird.

That doesn't sound as an insurmountable problem.

Humans don't see elephants suddenly because a prior is telling them that an elephant is improbable in that context.

Something like that in a computer system shouldn't be above the current capabilities.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#214
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The airplanes of this world demonstrate this.

Airplanes generally somewhat safer than driving. By quite a margin. Without consulting the literature, it just seems easy to believe that machine-like consistency 99.9% of the time is more important to safety than confusion in the 0.1%.

It really depends on what 0.1%.

If the car fails to detect one in a thousand cars in front of you, or one in a thousand corners, I can see that being highly dangerous.

Let's say you change lane 5 times while commuting. That's 50 times per week. Now, are you going to pay attention well enough that you catch it twice a year just before it pulls out right into another car?

Perhaps likening it to having another person driving you would be good. If you were given a perfect chauffeur, except with the knowledge that they'll drive straight through one in a thousand red lights with no warning, are you confident you'll catch them?

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#215
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…

"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."

How would "magnets" be any improvement over visual markings? Is there some sensor that can track magnets at greater distance, or with greater reliability than visual markings?

Besides, how many millions of miles of road would need to be equipped with these magnets around the world? What would that cost? Would it be acceptable that autonomous cars could only drive on roads that have been properly equipped?

It's worth remembering that self-driving AI does not solely rely on lane markings to navigate. It also can see the road edge, follow other vehicles, and cross-reference with a (learned/crowd-sourced) navigation model of the laneway. Additional sensor types, like LIDAR and radar, are often used in addition to cameras.

You can see a lot of this at work, in a complex London traffic environment, in this demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfRqNAhAe6c

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#216
post #26

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.

the question is one of responsibility in the case of accident. is it the owner of the car? or the driver? what happens when there is no driver? well, my guess is that TSLA the manufacturer of the auto-driving software is going to be liable in place of the driver, and as such, they have every right to say, nope, no using our auto-pilot for commercial activity unless it is on our own network where we can self-regulate…

>what happens when there is no driver? well, my guess is that TSLA the manufacturer of the auto-driving software is going to be liable in place of the driver, and as such, they have every right to say, nope, no using our auto-pilot for commercial activity unless it is on our own network

Why does this argument hold true only for self-driving cars, and not current cars ? As such, self-driving cars are just a point in continuous evolution. Current cars are already quite different from what they were a few decades ago. Why is now a good time to draw a line ? Every change in this eveolution goes through government approval. If it is approved, it should be safe enough for everyone.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#217
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…

One day some joker with two pots of paint (one white, one gray) is going to have a field day causing cars to run off the road.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#218
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…

They tried the magnet thing but it isn't flexible enough. For instance during roadworks you can't easily move the lanes, it only works when everything is perfect. There was a test track in NL with this technology a few years ago.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#219
post #197

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.

Yeah I've thought about this too... like fighter jets being refueled by tanker jets mid-air. It should be safe for two vehicles to latch on to each other safely and for one to charge the other, then the 'tanker' vehicle goes back home to refuel itself or goes on to fuel another vehicle etc..

This seems like such an obvious step... i.e. if you're at 20% battery capacity and your car reckons it would need 40% to get to your destination, then it would send out a request to local tanker vehicles and the nearest one would come to you, connect and refuel without you having to stop or break speed.

People would probably pay a premium for that service.

Re: Tesla Autopilot

#220
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…

well all one had to do before to understand how staged previous demonstrations were was to go you youtube and type in tesla autopilot failures. some were downright spectacular and at those at night, well just forget about it.

I would love to see some work made towards configuring HOV lanes that many interstates have (toll or otherwise) to have not only clear visible markings but in road indicators to facilitate easier autonomous driving in a more controlled environment.

It would have so much safer to Tesla to have trademarked (not sure of proper legal term) Autopilot for later use and call it CoPilot until its safe on its own

Post reply on HN