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Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

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Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#31
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They specifically call that out in the doc. "At this time, we do not plan to remove the functionality of ultrasonic sensors in our existing fleet."

However they said the same for radar and removed it regardless after some time.

Yeah i think that's probably gonna happen here too, hence their "at this time" language.

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#32
post #22

There are multiple tells that this move, just like the removal of radar, is supply-chain and cost-driven and not actually driven by engineering. If this were a planned move, the software would already be ready to replace it. It is not. Cars without radar still aren't at parity with the car that have it, although they "fixed" this a few weeks back by simply turning off the radar on the older cars. The parking sensors…

When you have a several month wait list for your product, legions of devoted potential customers, if you're head and shoulders above any of your competitors, you're able to get away with things like this.

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#33
post #24

“In the near future, once these features achieve performance parity to today’s vehicles” Right... like how vision vehicles have parity with autopilot speeds and following distance? Oh wait they don't. Vision-only vehicles are still limited to a max of 85mph and 2 car minimum following distance for autosteer while radar is 90mph and 1 car following distance. Texas has 85mph highways. The two car following distance con…

> Vision-only vehicles are still limited to a max of 85mph and 2 car minimum following distance for autosteer while radar is 90mph and 1 car following distance. Is that common knowledge, what's the source of that I'm curious.

I can confirm first hand, owning a legacy 2018 Model S with front facing radar and a Vision 2021 Model Y.

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#34

“In the near future, once these features achieve performance parity to today’s vehicles” Right... like how vision vehicles have parity with autopilot speeds and following distance? Oh wait they don't. Vision-only vehicles are still limited to a max of 85mph and 2 car minimum following distance for autosteer while radar is 90mph and 1 car following distance. Texas has 85mph highways. The two car following distance con…

I thought I remembered being taught in driver's ed that you should leave a 1 car gap for every 10mph of speed. 1-2 cars at 85mph is clearly not enough distance to stop.

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#35
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why they decided to remove ultrasonics is that combining contradictory signals from cameras and ultrasonic is not straightforward. What should have the higher precedence? So they ultimately decided that cameras can do what ultrasonics can do, but even better. They won't remove ultrasonics from the delivered cars, but they will probably disable them in coming months.

An autonomous vehicle is operating on a road network designed for humans with eyes. If we are aiming for the kind of “common sense” required for parity with a human driver it seems intuitive that the vehicle would have sensory inputs in common.

Cars do not use ultrasonic sensors for autonomy. They are for low-speed situations (such as parking) and are designed to give more information than the driver is otherwise capable of gathering.

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#36
post #12

Cars delivered today without USS will not have: "Park Assist: alerts you of surrounding objects when the vehicle is traveling This is the most basic feature that almost every car has had for years - but not your $60k Model Y. Why can't they wait to remove sensors until they've achieved feature parity with the vision only system? This seems crazy. I don't really understand the push to do everything through the cameras…

I guess they think their computer vision and AI can catch up to and exceed the visual processing capabilities of vertebrates with their millions of years of evolution. I think they are wrong. Multi-media sensor data fusion is the only sane path for the foreseeable future, in my lay opinion.

They are wrong. A truly unbelievable coincidence coming across this article, I just got rear-ended by a Model 3 this morning.

Low speed, I'd figure about 10 mph tops: A softball to end all softballs for AEB, and somehow I got hit with considerable force. We've had radar based systems that would have avoided this since the 2000s.

I work in the self-driving space and while it's not an apples to apples comparison because of cost, all I could think is how our sensor stack would have allowed recognizing the car I stopped for, and probably the car it stopped for, let alone my car stopping.

I've already harped on how stupid the "FSD Beta" is, but I quite literally the absurdity of it shoved in my face just this morning only to come and read this. Why is Tesla even being allowed to run this circus at this point?

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#37
post #15

Wow, how fucking stupid. Does that mean that cars that already have ultrasonic sensors (and radar modules) will stop using that sensor data?

The reason why they decided to remove ultrasonics is that combining contradictory signals from cameras and ultrasonic is not straightforward. What should have the higher precedence? So they ultimately decided that cameras can do what ultrasonics can do, but even better. They won't remove ultrasonics from the delivered cars, but they will probably disable them in coming months.

The decision about what sensor to use is more easily made when one of the sensors provides no data, or clearly disturbed data. Like in case of fog, mud on a camera, pouring rain, etc.

My phone often signals me that I have to clean the lenses of my camera, so I'm sure it's possible to detect unreliable sensors. Sure, you have to decide on all sorts of tipping points, and in the end that is probably expensive to develop and the reason the sensors are dropped.

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#38
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla cameras have sizeable overlap, so if one is obstructed it tries to extract the information from the others. If it can't then it tells you to clean the cameras. It's not perfect but it's better for them (Tesla) and hopefully better long term for all Tesla owners

They have some overlap but not large enough to be reliable. My B pillar is regularly blinded due to their inefficient moisture sealing (called out in their manual instead of fixing it) and sunlight. It causes it to fail to see most things to our side

They are reliable enough to use for FSD: https://youtu.be/hx7BXih7zx8 so i think it's reliable enough for park assist, summon etc. Yeah you're def right about the moisture sealing... it's been hit or miss on production tolerances

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#39

“In the near future, once these features achieve performance parity to today’s vehicles” Right... like how vision vehicles have parity with autopilot speeds and following distance? Oh wait they don't. Vision-only vehicles are still limited to a max of 85mph and 2 car minimum following distance for autosteer while radar is 90mph and 1 car following distance. Texas has 85mph highways. The two car following distance con…

Dude if you are going 85-90 miles an hour and you aren't leaving AT LEAST 2 cars in between you, please stay off the road. You should be keeping 3 seconds of distance between you and the car in front of you. At 90 miles per hour that's a hell of a lot more than 2 car lengths.

Just to clarify, when it says "1 car length", the car adjusts the amount of space depending on speed. So its not literally just one car length.

Re: Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

#40

It is crazy to me that these cars are always recording and streaming the result to Tesla. Sure, that data might be good for training self-driving cars, but also a lotttt of other things.

They are absolutely not streaming the data to Tesla in real-time. They are storing some data on-board to retrieve later which makes it convenient for them to deflect blame in crashes.
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