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Comment by phkahler | Hacker News Reader

>> What if it's covered in mud, or snow?

That's the entire problem. These systems don't understand anything about the world. If you see a sign covered in snow you're going to recognize it as such and make your best guess as to what it says and weather you care. You probably don't need that information to drive safely because you have a lot of knowledge to fall back on. These things dont, so some folks want to improve GPS accuracy and maps and signage. That's not a viable solution on so many levels.

General AI is the only way forward for fully autonomous cars.

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> If you see a sign covered in snow you're going to recognize it as such and make your best guess as to what it says and weather you care.

The first winter after I got my license, I was driving around at night on a road I hadn't been to before.. kind of in the middle of nowhere, unpaved unlit back roads.

I saw a sign, partially covered in snow, and had a hard time making sense of it. Why this odd shaped sign in the middle of nowhere? I really wanted to figure it out and fixated on it a bit too much.. only right after making it past the sign, I realized it's warning about a tight bend in the road right ahead. Almost made it into the ditch. Thanks, sign, I would have seen the curve just fine if I had just focused on the road ahead.

Right now, the TSLAs with FSD will disable it in snow+rain, so I assume that even if TSLA achieves L4, it will be only under ideal conditions until they have enough data to resolve these edge cases.

I keep seeing people incorrectly call less than perfect driving conditions "edge cases." That term refers to rare conditions. Rain, snow, pedestrians, and support pillars are not rare.

You're right, they are not really edge cases, but the original poster mentioned a sign covered in snow. In that case, a human would probably just do the same thing the TSLA would: blow the stop sign or continue at the current speed limit until they get pulled over.

>Right now, the TSLAs with FSD will disable it in snow+rain

What about that instant before it figures out it's bad enough weather to shut itself off? What is the threshold?

It seems like currently the minute it detects rain it shuts it down. (wipers are automatic also)

On the other hand, there are a lot of videos of FSD Beta on youtube that show the car driving into the sun where it's almost impossible for a human to see, but the cameras detect all of it.

Musk said after winter 2019 they would have all the data they need for all human drivable ice and snow conditions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucp0TTmvqOE

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