
Tesla Autopilot - chetangole
https://www.tesla.com/autopilot
======
Animats
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, all vision-driven. Object recognition is limited. It
doesn't recognize traffic cones as obstacles, either on the road centerline or
on the road edge. Nor does it seem to be aware of guard rails or bridge
railings just outside the road edge. It probably can't drive around an
obstacle; we never see it do that in the video.

This looks like lane following plus smart cruise control plus GPS-based route
guidance. That's nice, but it's not good enough that you can go to sleep while
it's driving.

~~~
the_rosentotter
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 or obscured) when the failure mode is
so catastrophic.

I suppose once statistics start to prove that these cars are safer than human-
driven ones, we can chalk it up to an irrational fear, but for now it seems
crazy to me to put my life in the hands of an AI, when a mistake means that I
die or kill someone, rather than play the wrong song on Spotify.

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. Of course a more expensive solution,
but seems like it would make the vehicles themselves a whole lot simpler and
safer. Begin with inner cities, where the area is limited and traffic is most
complex.

~~~
willvarfar
> 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
that deal with situations that don't contain reflectors.

~~~
TeMPOraL
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 needed.

I suppose you could make ML avoid sharp changes in recognition, but I don't
trust the current neural-network models to do so reliably.

~~~
Daviey
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..

~~~
obastani
Humans know when they can't see properly. The problem with adversarial
examples is that the neural net _thinks_ it's doing great. You have to
manually specify every possible failure mode for the neural net before hand --
if you miss one, you might have an accident.

~~~
taneq
Motorcyclists have a word for this phenomenon. It's called SMIDSY - "sorry
mate, I didn't see you." Clear road, good vision, bike traveling in a straight
line within the speed limit, car still somehow pulls out and hits the bike.
Even worse, the times when the bike is stationary at a red light and the car
just drives through it.

~~~
ebalit
And it's not limited to cyclists. I think the general term used in cognitive
science is "Looked but failed to see".

------
adanto6840
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."

~~~
quotemstr
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.

~~~
djloche
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 to make sure we are liable for as few of
problems as possible.

~~~
bubblethink
>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.

~~~
grkvlt
It sort of _does_ hold for current cars. Generally a driver (in most cases, a
human) must obtain a further license or some form of government
permission/authorization to drive a vehicle for commercial purposes like a
taxi or other passenger carrying service. This seems to be simply pointing out
that the same restriction will apply to the _software-based_ driver in a
Tesla...?

~~~
bubblethink
There is no legislation about ride sharing/taxi with self driving cars. So
whether or not an extra authorization is needed by the owner of the car is a
different issue. Here Tesla is asking you to not engage in ride sharing unless
Tesla gets a cut. i.e., Even if the government and insurance companies allow
you to do so, Tesla won't unless you hand over your cut to them. Is there more
to it than that ? Tesla is getting approval to make a car road legal. An
insurance company may underwrite insurance for various purposes including
taxi. Why do I need tesla's permissions to combine a road legal car for taxi
purposes ?

~~~
grkvlt
Because Tesla is assuming responsibility (that is, guaranteeing fitness for
purpose, and all the ramifications that come with that) for the car being able
to drive you under the same circumstances as any other private person driving.
They would be taking on much more (legal, insurance, etc.) risk if they were
to allow the car to drive as a passenger carrying, fare accepting, commercial
entity, therefore it seems fair that they require you to use their managed
system to (I assume) mitigate and/or manage that risk. I would guess that it
would also be possible, eventually, to license the autopilot software for your
own arbitrary commercial use.

------
billhathaway
Tesla sent out an email today.

Autopilot Updates We just released the latest version of Autopilot. You can
now experience Enhanced Autopilot features including Traffic-Aware Cruise
Control, Autosteer, Auto Lane Change, Parallel + Perpendicular Autopark, and
Summon. Automatic Emergency Braking, Forward + Side Collision Warning, and
more advanced safety features are also active and standard.

All Tesla vehicles have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability
at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver. And Tesla
vehicles continue to improve with over-the-air software updates, introducing
new features and improving existing functionality to make your vehicle safer
and more capable over time.

~~~
dperfect
> 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 anyone
has to _think_ about when the car is or isn't in control, I'm sorry, but
you've already lost in my book. Humans just aren't that good at switching
context or remembering what a product does (or what this particular _version_
of a product does).

~~~
wheelerwj
this is probably one of the most ignorant and short sighted comments i've ever
read on HN and reaks of competitive shilling.

It's like saying we shouldn't have released seatbelts because people moght not
have used them. Or maybe we shouldn't have released vaccines because you still
need booster shots.

Safety features, even incremental ones, make the world safer for everyone.

~~~
takeda
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.

~~~
honestoHeminway
The airplanes of this world demonstrate this.

~~~
roenxi
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%.

~~~
IanCal
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?

------
ilaksh
From this you can see, they are selling, and people are buying, a self-driving
car.

My theory is still that the demo video is actually from Nvidia's SDK and the
actual autopilot they deployed is totally different and not actually in the
'self-driving' category at all at this point.

But they are very aggressively rolling out updates and new features for more
autonomy and yes they do intend to push for a complete door-to-door self-drive
ASAP, ideally before the end of 2017 (at least as a new alpha version they can
demo). Otherwise they would not sell it as such. But they do not plan to take
another year to get there, based on Musk's tweets and the fact so many already
paid extra for a full self-driving ability.

~~~
Cyph0n
I very highly doubt they'll have a full self-driving solution by year's end,
but I'd be happy to be proven wrong!

------
pilif
This is an old microsite from last October. Most features listed on that page
are not available in production (or at all).

~~~
excalibur
I believe the claim is that all of their vehicles include the hardware
required for these planned future features. They call attention to regulatory
challenges, but gloss over the fact that many of these items aren't ready yet
from a software perspective.

~~~
RijilV
I think this is old, or at least deceptive advertisement.

There are two packages for the model S which add up to $9k extra[0]:

Enhanced Autopilot

Full Self-Driving Capability

The fact those are add-ons and their descriptions seems at odds with the
statements made on the page.

0: [https://www.tesla.com/models/design](https://www.tesla.com/models/design)

~~~
EngineerBetter
The add-ons are software unlocks. The old 60D models actually had a 75KwH
battery pack, but were software-limited to 60KwH unless you paid for an
upgrade.

------
manav
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 MobilEye.

I think they will need a hardware revision for actual full self driving
perhaps 2 years away.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
But they are only using two of the eight cameras in AP2 at the moment. There
is more capacity in AP2 hardware to tap into.
[https://electrek.co/2017/03/30/tesla-
autopilot-2-0-camera-8-...](https://electrek.co/2017/03/30/tesla-
autopilot-2-0-camera-8-1-update/)

~~~
manav
There are rumors they might want to use Lidar. People have seen Tesla's
equipped with Lidar, but it could be a 3rd party testing it or even Tesla
doing some comparison research.

Since newer sensors are become more cost effective I could imagine them
incorporating them into future hardware revisions.

~~~
taneq
Could be using the LIDAR for ground truth for training a depth-from-stereo
system?

------
EngineerBetter
This is not news. Current Tesla vehicles with Autopilot 2 hardware can do
nowhere near this aspirational list. My AP2 Model X cannot even tell when to
turn the windscreen wipers on.

This is a statement of intent, and production vehicles are a long way from
having software that enables this.

~~~
sjwright
Do you mean the X doesn't have rain sensors, or it does but they aren't hooked
up in software yet? Surely it has rain sensors, they couldn't do Autopilot
using cameras behind the windscreen without them.

~~~
EngineerBetter
It will use the Autopilot cameras (there are no additional sensors), and the
Tesla Vision software on AP2 hardware does not support detection of rain on
the windscreen. The driver has to turn the wipers on manually. My Renault Zoe,
which costs about 25% of my Model X, does this automatically.

Tesla Autopilot is cool, but the software is very limited at present. The
original link is essentially what Tesla think they can achieve with the AP2
hardware, but the production software is nowhere near capable of these feats.

~~~
taf2
My version 1 tesla does rain detection

~~~
myko
Right, those have actual rain sensors. AP2 vehicles will eventually rely on
the camera to detect rain. AP2 cars are waiting on a future software update to
make this happen.

------
jonah
"All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go. If you don’t
say anything, the car will look at your calendar and take you there as the
assumed destination or just home if nothing is on the calendar." \-- that'll
teach you to make sure your schedule is up-to-date!

------
madengr
Will I get a DUI if I'm drunk and my car drives me home? Say I'm in the back
seat.

~~~
_ph_
That question only becomes relevant when it would be considered legal to have
the car drive without a licensed driver in control. As long a driver with a
license is required, you have of course to be fit for driving.

~~~
baby
This is really interesting to me as I do not have a driver's license and I am
not intending to get one.

------
rvalue
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

~~~
wazoox
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSc8AHIEG9o)

night time:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHIq0MMViZg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHIq0MMViZg)

~~~
joeblau
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](https://www.getcruise.com)

------
jshap70
I love watching videos like the one they have on there. theres something
almost hypnotic about it

~~~
sshanky
The car seems to stop for no apparent reason. I noticed it once next to two
pedestrians just off the road, and again after turning right at a stop sign. I
wonder if that is why they are showing it in a sped up format -- it certainly
makes it harder to notice.

~~~
baby
I wonder how fast the car is going as well.

------
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.

~~~
IanCal
> 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.

A car that can drive itself does not remove the autonomy having a car gives
you. The key part of the autonomy is going where you want, when you want. Not
that you get to push the pedals and turn the wheel.

> We already have dumb machines that can do that: trains, trams, all sorts of
> vehicles-on-rails.

Which travel only from and to certain places, at certain times. It's why what
would be a three hour drive is likely to take me closer to five hours
tomorrow, for example. For another example: the train station near my friends
house stops running trains at 7pm, the roads are open all night.

> We could replace them with, I don't know, some kind of overground system of
> personal pods on rails, or something like that.

Building an entirely new, country wide, overhead rail system that goes to or
extremely close to every house? That sounds incredibly expensive.

> Why do we need self-driving cars, then?

They're an incremental improvement which requires no new major infrastructure.

------
SigmundA
Hopefully better than AP1:
[http://imgur.com/gallery/T5j32i9](http://imgur.com/gallery/T5j32i9)

~~~
perryprog
Read this comment:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/5welnn/my_car_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/5welnn/my_car_hit_a_barrier_while_i_was_on_autopilot/de9hv3d/)

------
_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.

~~~
jesusthatsgreat
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.

------
redthrowaway
That car is driving oddly. It stopped for pedestrians who were on the
sidewalk, and several times it stopped _after_ making a turn. I could see that
being really frustrating for other drivers and even dangerous if it's doing
unpredictable things no human driver would do in those circumstances.

~~~
EngineerBetter
Current Autopilot tends to brake abruptly in slow-moving queueing traffic,
which I'm sure annoys the people behind me.

------
PinguTS
"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."

That claim is strong and false. What about Roadster and the old Model S with
the old AP1 hardware?

~~~
erikpukinskis
"All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory" is present perfect tense,
implying an event that happened at an unspecified time in the past and
continues to the present. You would have to add "ever" to include all vehicles
ever produced.

~~~
PinguTS
So then, what about the Model S with AP1? It was produced just last year.

~~~
dewski
That isn't present tense, by saying "All Tesla vehicles produced in our
factory" means today and going forward.

~~~
dilemma
No, that's not what it means. It's past tense.

------
bshimmin
I love the idea of Smart Summon - it reminds me of one of the Assassin's Creed
games where you would whistle and your horse would magically appear a moment
or two later!

~~~
johnbellone
I was thinking of Red Dead Redemption, same feature!

------
make3
Tesla plans to restrict the use of their car AI when it is for uber-like uses
to their own to-be-announced network! That's probably the biggest news here,
for me at least! "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."

------
arikr
> Please note that Self-Driving functionality is dependent upon extensive
> software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary widely by
> jurisdiction. It is not possible to know exactly when each element of the
> functionality described above will be available, as this is highly dependent
> on local regulatory approval.

I wonder what the current status is, both in terms of software validation, and
regulatory approval.

~~~
lern_too_spel
You can look at their CA DMV disengagement report here:
[https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2016).
They were very far away as of the start of this year.

~~~
Matthias247
The lists are interesting. And for me they are mostly telling that they are
all in some super early prototyping phases. E.g. Tesla lists tests with < 600
miles with 4 cars in a year. Mercedes 670 miles with a single car. The only
outlier which really seems to do serious testing is Waymo with 630k miles.

To give some comparison numbers how normal series cars are tested at bigger
automotive companies: There are test fleets of partly over 100 cars for a new
car model, where some of those are tested all around the clock (> 600 miles
per day). All in all often 2digit million kilometers.

~~~
lern_too_spel
The autonomous car services are going to launch in specific areas first, so
they do not need to be tested in all the conditions that a Corolla would be
tested in and can instead be tested in the launch markets. The key figure is
miles per disengagement, and Tesla appears to be very far from having a viable
autonomous car.

------
BatFastard
No one seems to be commenting on the fact that they are doing this all with
camera's and ultrasonic sensors. No LIDAR at all, which in the short term
certainly provides for a better looking car. And considering the fact that it
lowers the car price by a significant factor, seems like a pretty amazing
thing!

------
Waterluvian
Progress will of course be incremental. But I think about the delta between
summer in California and Canadian winter driving conditions and I think
there's still such a long long way to go to full full autonomy.

------
aerovistae
I don't think this is a new page on their site-- why is this suddenly at the
top of HN? There's no new info here; this isn't an update or press release.

~~~
NuDinNou
I don't know if there is or not something new with that page, but Elon
recently tweeted this

"Radar-only braking on HW1 is getting better with every release. We're hoping
to do the demo where it brakes for a UFO in the fog soon."

So maybe that has something to do with it.

------
vosper
I sure hope it works, for the sake (and lives) of people who own them. And for
the people who have to drive alongside them (everyone).

------
f0under
Anyone identify which road the car is driving on? Looks familiar like the area
around Foothills but couldn't tell.

------
welpwelp
There's so much room for error I can't wait to see how this will turnout.

------
swah
What kind of hardware supports all this signal processing? FPGAs? GPUs?

------
aladine
that is amazing offer from Tesla as hardward+software upgrade as a package. I
also love the design of "call to action" buttons for buying 2 new car models.

------
theprop
Can it self-drive in snow and rain?

~~~
DeonPenny
I've seen multiple ottos and uber self driving cars driving during the rain so
I'd trust it.

~~~
hoschicz
Ubers self-driving cars have LIDAR. Tesla autopilot is fully based on view
from cameras that can be obstructed.

~~~
bitL
LiDAR doesn't work well in rain and it's just a ray of infrared laser light
scanning surroundings, so it can be obstructed the same way as cameras; radar
is what you want. But NVidia uses just 3 normal cameras and deep learning to
drive in rain/snow/night and it seems to be working for them.

~~~
ktta
If anyone isn't aware: While most companies use LIDAR, Tesla uses radar

[https://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-
world-...](https://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-world-radar)

~~~
bitL
All of them use both, and in multiple instances of each. So they might have
two front LiDARs, two side LiDARs, one rear LiDAR, one front and one rear
radar, ultrasonic sensors etc. and then perform a sensor fusion to map car's
surroundings.

------
stdcall83
Look ma! No hands!

------
neofromfut
Staged demo. Just driving on single lane, Occasional turns roads at best
demonstrates advanced lane guidance. Do a cross country and you've shut
everyone's mouth.

