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Tesla Vision Update: Replacing Ultrasonic Sensors with Tesla Vision

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341–349 of 349 posts

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

#341
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…

With the removal of radar, they showed some pretty convincing data that the radar was too noisy to be useful, especially with discriminating things like highway overpasses vs. stopped cars. They showed that vision could already outperform radar. With these parking sensors it's different. They have no current alternative and it will cause a pretty significant loss of functionality. Disappointing move.

Radar has a longer wavelength than visible light. Thus making it better at some stuff and worse at others. It's a crime to not be using as much of the EM spectrum as possible for an application like this.

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

#342
I am not sure if this is smart technically but from an environmental perspective I prefer cars to have passive sensors. Blasting out ultrasound and Lidar is pollution that can impact animals.

Personally I think self driving cars will only work once roads are built for them with specific markers and self driving cars communicate with each other.

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

#343
post #242
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…

> The parking sensors on the Tesla are really good and very useful. They show a rough outline of what is around you and are displayed very nicely compared to some other cars. It is a real shame to remove this, and downright dishonest to characterize it as some kind of leap forward. My 4 year old Ford Focus doesn't show an outline of obstacles around the car, but still provides Park Assist and Autopark. Especially Par…

My 2021 Jetta GLI doesn't have these features. :(

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

#344
post #181

Geohot was right. Tweet re: LIDAR, but still: "When this delusion ends and all these companies fold, it won't be LIDAR vs. Or ride sharing vs. None of this matters. All that matters is building an intelligent machine. Self driving is 100% a software problem. Given software written by God, a smartphone can drive a car." https://twitter.com/comma_ai/status/1577045884159676416?s=20...

Musk has said similar things in the past; that cars should be able to do everything human drivers can do with only vision, because that's all human drivers have (discounting the far more minor sensory inputs like sound and touch). I find that take fascinating. Its, in effect, saying "well, computer hardware and the human brain are similar enough; the human brain just got an evolutionary headstart on its software, so…

not to mention the fact that humans with just sight and sound for sensory input are pretty crappy drivers - just look at accident statistics. Don't we want our AI drivers to be better than humans.

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

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that regularly demonstrate catastrophic failures, yes, I know.

What's your definition of catastrophic?

"Would cause an accident without intervention".

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

#346
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 develo…

If fog or rain is so intense that objects within a few feet of your car are obscured from vision, I'd suggest that maybe you shouldn't be operating the car at all, regardless of any assistance technologies it might possess.

True, that is good advice. I have been surprised by terrible rainshowers and fog before while already driving though.

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

#347
post #192
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More data shouldn't actually hurt, it can be use as bayesian prior on the camera data when the vision stuff is uncertain if nothing else.

But that’s the thing. Tesla wasn’t able to tell when the radar was “uncertain”. So when do you trust one data source more than the other? If it was so easy to label misinformation as such, the misinformation would probably not have been communicated in the first place. Tesla explained this at AI day 1.

No sensor is certain and can be blindly trusted - the data is going into a neural net anyway so the computer can be trained to understand what the most likely ground truth is given all sensor data.

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

#348
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a problem well suited for ML, which is basically the thing most of us expect Tesla to be best at. Just throw sensor data at cases and let the situations in which certain values should get precedence manifest in the weights and biases.

I expect Waymo to be the best at it. Waymo has a bunch of sensors on their cars to provide accurate information, because they know that cameras aren't always reliable. Tesla may not be right here.

Fair enough, I was comparing them to traditional car companies.

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

#349
post #123

This would potentially work... if the cameras could see the places where the ultrasonic sensors were. But they can't! There are big blind spots near the bumpers. I guess they are planning to just have the car fill in the blind spots by remembering what it saw from other perspectives? But that only works when the car is moving and can't account for small obstacles that can move unpredictably, like animals or toddlers.…

I assume these new Teslas will have a bumper camera. No way they’re planning to rely on memory.

They don't: https://old.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/y3ymsr/2023_mo...
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