Camera-Only Autopilot Requires Automatic High Beams Enabled
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Stereo vision can also be fooled by things like reflections.
Stereo vision at the human level also requires head movements and so on.
Or am I missing something?
Beating the prime of the prime human driver with cameras may be hard. Beating tired / drunk / old drivers is a different story.
I have an adversarial example.
Systems wise, that's going to be a lot more complex than having more cameras. Of course, if you've got enough cameras you can probably get better visibility than a human, and continuously process all viewpoints. But 2 cameras is definitely insufficient.
A camera or even a stereo pair of cameras mounted in or on the car will provide inferior imagery to the control system than eyes to the brain. They have less dynamic range and no articulation. If you wanted to replicate human style vision you'd need a bunch of fixed cameras and inertial and acceleration sensors all on top of AI that's better than what Tesla's been demonstrating.
LIDAR is the most straightforward augmentation for fixed cameras because it can build very accurate depth maps and image segmentation. You need fewer fixed cameras if your spacial model is built with LIDAR. You're in even better shape if those systems are augmented with radar.
While humans don't have LIDAR and such, our visual systems are highly developed and augmented with highly developed proprioception. Trying to replicate it with just cameras and tons of processing power is a fool's errand.
I remember the first time we had problems with a matte black surface with our LIDAR that would have been easily spotted by our camera and vice versa with a shiny white surface in direct sunlight relative the car being easily picked up by lidar but nearly invisible to the cameras.
In theory a camera-only autonomous system can work effectively but in practice there's innumerable edge cases where it doesn't work well and edge cases are where catastrophic failures happen. If you had infinite processing power and error free AI you might be able to cover many edge cases but Teslas have neither.
Now, there’s this little thing called The Pareto Principle.
That last 20% is going to take a long time to achieve, and is going to be very, very expensive.
Are you willing to roll a ten sided die every time you get in the car, and only if you roll a three or higher, do you get to arrive at your destination unhurt, on time, and without major incident?
Stereo vision is mostly usable below 15 ft/5m range, if even that.
No surprise then that the vision-only "level 5 autonomous driving" system would want the high beams on...
And what about how fish use fins to swim?
Tesla is hiring for a DSP engineer for electronic scanning radar, so the rumor is this is temporary (camera only safety systems) until they’re ready to deploy their own, more advanced radar sensor (trained off of the visual neural net) versus the crude Continental radar sensor they’ve deprecated.
https://electrek.co/2021/05/26/lucid-reveals-ux-intuitive-us...
It will mean Tesla is done with trying to avoid adding it. They test with lidar so they might as well start using it:
https://insideevs.com/news/508669/tesla-model-y-luminar-lida...
Edit: the reason here is that road paint (and the marking on a sign) is typically retroreflective, while roads (and regular painted sheet metal) are not. Retroreflective materials are very easy to detect with LIDAR. Even if you are on older roads that don't have retroreflective paint, white objects and black objects also tend to show up differently.
Edit2: there's also no reason you can't use detection algorithms to characterize pointclouds. You can also fuse the returned objects from the lidar sensor(s) with the objects from the camera(s). You have the latter problem even with just multiple cameras. Inevitably, whatever you are using for segmentation/classification will return different results on different sensors, for sensors that share the same FOV - you do need a strategy for handling this.
Tesla has not added LIDAR because of cost (and because of Elon's ego...) - they are one of the few companies going directly for consumer sales - more parts that cost $$$ and require calibration aren't good for that.
Single cameras (even stereo cameras) require a lot more assumptions about contrast and environment lighting to do image segmentation and depth maps. They're rarely as accurate as LIDAR and often far worse.
Depth maps and image segmentation are the building blocks of object identification. You can try to AI your way into those with a single camera but it'll be less accurate and more error prone.
Even the best implementations dazzle other drivers.
Auto high beams are only realistic when used where normal high beams are. That is, mostly on single lane roads with no dividers, little to no street lights, where opposing traffic is not appearing often, etc.
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It seems like such a small thing compared to driving a whole car... but this is one of the few vision features that directly affects other drivers on a regular basis.
The comments explain how for example, vehicles with tall ride heights like commercial trucks get dazzled due to their tailights sitting much lower than their mirrors
It's just not realistic to leave your high beams "potentially on at all times" unless you're willing to dazzle other drivers.
https://www.autoweek.com/news/technology/a34417809/nhtsa-sti...
It’s not an irrelevant bit of context.
A human driver will see the headlights coming and turn their high-beams down preemptively.
Its doubly shitty because cars outfitted with auto high-beams typically have those high intensity lamps too. Ugh.
They are a safety hazard, and unless they consistently operate headlamps in accord with rhe applicable local law [0], using them already is illegal.
[0] e.g., https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
If it wants auto high beam, it can just enable the setting itself, and restore your own preference if you disable autopilot (and even better: it can control the beams when autopilot is enabled, irrespective of any user settings, after all if autopilot can steer why couldn't it also change the lights)?
it's funny to me because you'd expect music to be lower stakes and such, but it just highlights that actually driving a car is a much more well defined problem than picking the music i like
This is especially highlighted in the parts of the USA that have a real winter with permanent snowcover. In these areas of the country sometimes the road surface is not visible for months at a time and the lanes that are formed have little to do with existing road markers. Instead humans sort of flock and form new emergent lanes and behaviors. And all the other humans (mostly) follow this visually in a low constrast (white snow) environment. Any system that uses absolute positioning or non-visual cues will not be able to follow the emergent lanes and cause danger.
First, does following others' tracks necessarily mean visual-range light? I'd expect you could see tracks on infrared. Probably also LIDAR—this isn't my field of expertise but obviously tracks have depth, so I'd think it'd work if the resolution/precision is sufficient. (Not sure how well LIDAR works while snow is falling but that's a different concern than the one you mentioned.)
Second, does using visual-range light (for some or all of the input) mean having automatic high beams on? I very rarely use high beams myself. (Then again, maybe automatic high beams very rarely turns on too.)
And certainly if other vehicles/pedestrians are actually present at the moment—when it's most important to be behaving like them—infrared, LIDAR, and RADAR are options for seeing them.
It’s important (often more important) while driving that you’re doing what others expect, less what the rules say must be done - especially on edge case behavior.
Each sensor suite has it’s own pros and cons - LiDAR can have real challenges with reflective surfaces or highly absorptive ones (wet and slick, oily, snow). It’s range is based off return signal strength. There are also problems with many LiDAR sensors and daylight drowning out the signal.
Time of flight sensors (really a type of ‘broadcast’ LiDAR) have similar issues combined with some weird edge cases with reflective geometries or some surfaces.
Passive visual light sensors have issues with contrast (high signal strength drowns out low signal strength in nearby areas) and lacks useful information about time of flight unlike LiDAR. They are Cheap though generally, and give us a signal we generally think are ‘obvious’
Active radar sensors (including phased array) also provide very useful signals, also have pros and cons.
Sonar, same.
Ideally you’d have 360 coverage from enough different sensors that you can do sensor fusion and detect and exclude a sensor in situations where you’re hitting a known problem for a sensor suite. Looking into the sun? Well visual and potentially LiDAR/ToF data is iffy, switch to sonar and radar. In a high EMF environment? Surrounded by metal? Switch off radar perhaps.
Those cost money - equipment and development - however.
First rule of the road is avoid accidents. From there flows rules like driving in a predictable manner and giving up right of way when necessary.
If you are in a climate with lots of snow and slush, and are in a road with zero lane visibility and everyone is moving along too fast for road conditions (unable to effectively stop in time stopping distance wise).
Do you 1) go slow in the right hand lane, potentially leading to a pileup? 2) keep up with the road traffic (maybe trying to stay in the low side), and then maybe get in a wreck if a deer jumps out in front of you? 3) know this is a common situation for that road in the current weather condition and avoid the road entirely? 4) some variant of these?
In many cases it can only be judged retroactively, or as Waymo or others are finding out, REALLY be respected by being so paranoid and conservative you can’t really function in the real world environment that presents itself and/or require essentially walled gardens so the environment is controlled enough you can have the certainty you need. The waymo answer here is ‘don’t drive at all’. Which is great, unless you’re running out of food and a bigger storm is coming in, or you’ll lose your job if you don’t show up in the next 39 minutes.
Humans manage to be somewhat functional in these kinds of environments - we’ve had to be, evolutionary pressure wise. We’ve got a ways to go before self driving cars will be a help instead of a hindrance here.
"Leading to different outcomes" is exactly why autonomous driving is attractive... Why is that a cons for you ...?
The touch interfaces in cars have really been a step backwards in this regard.
I’ll wait for other automakers to start making 300 mile+ range vehicles.
Not a Tesla apologist, just someone comfortable with a Devil's Bargain.
- https://www.lucidmotors.com/air
- https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/f150-lightning/2022/
- https://electrek.co/2021/04/05/mercedes-benz-eqs-specs-range...
Rivian deliveries will start in July, Lucid later in the year, and Ford in Spring next year. The F-150's range figures are with 1,000 pounds of weight onboard so the unweighted range will be greater.
The Audi e-tron GT and the Porsche Taycan can also achieve 300 miles range. If you put thinner, smaller tyres on you can achieve more range:
And with the chip shortage, there are a lot of other vehicles that are hard to find too.
On paper, the Tesla Model Y AWD Long Range (EPA range 326 miles) should have more range than a Ford Mustang Mach-E AWD Extended Range (EPA range 270 miles). But in a real world test the Mach-E has more range:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSmSiOo-v8s
Another test:
https://insideevs.com/reviews/433010/tesla-model-y-70mph-hig...
https://insideevs.com/reviews/502506/mustang-mach-e-70mph-ra...
The Mustang Mach-E RWD California Route 1 trim should get more range again because AWD vehicles typically have lower range than FWD or RWD vehicles.
And you should also try the route you want to drive with A Better Routeplanner. It should give you a pretty good idea about which vehicles will be suitable (both in range and charging options):
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
https://www.nypa.gov/innovation/initiatives/evolve-ny
The smartest thing Tesla can do in North America at this point is to switch to CCS (like they did in Europe two years ago) and to open their chargers to all brands of EV.
Tesla will open their network to other brands when other brands contribute to the $600 million+ capital investment Tesla made (as Tesla has previously stated publicly, and no automaker has taken them up on).
Too bad you're not in Europe then. Sorting out the charging infrastructure standards is one of the reasons Europe is the biggest EV market at the moment (stricter emissions standards being the other):
https://insideevs.com/news/482202/europe-world-biggest-plugi...
In the meantime, watch North American CCS locations grow here:
https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html
New locations are being added every week. And try A Better Routeplanner to see what CCS charging infrastructure is like in your area. In some North American locations there are more CCS charging locations than Tesla charging locations.
> Tesla will open their network to other brands when other brands contribute
The way you "contribute" is by simply paying for the electricity when you use it. You know, just like how Telsa can use other charging networks.
Tesla, in my opinion, is the least worst option based on all available information if you want an EV that isn’t tied to your home location (and you intend to travel far from home).
Tesla should also hurry up and get to an 800 volt platform for better compatibility with CCS.
The human eye is incredibly dynamic, especially at low light levels when adjusted. A camera can get close to that sensitivity with a longer exposure and a big SLR lens, but exposure isn’t an option at speed, and the sensors on my car are pretty tiny.
Is Tesla actually developing new CCD or CMOS tech? That seems unlikely. More speculatively, perhaps they are supply constrained on RADAR and decided it was better to ship and retrofit later. I hope that’s not what’s going on.
That auto high beams as implemented dazzle commercial vehicles, cannot handle reflective road signs correctly, etc.
Anyone who's owned a car with auto high beams is probably aware, you can't leave them on 24/7 unless you're willing to dazzle other drivers in many situations.
Does anyone really believe the cheap VGA webcams Tesla is slapping on their car for their "autopilot solution" can probably be blinded by even the slightest hint of a high beam?