aren't auto manufacturers that don't have features like autopilot currently adding things like lidar and automatic breaking to improve safety?
why wouldn't you add the thing that will make your system as safe as possible?
what's the goal here? some aspirational tech challenge that competes on arbitrary merits in some humans vs. machines challenge problem or building the best and safest way to move vehicles around?
They have since taken untold sums of cash from people (millions? tens of millions?) who they promised would get access to "Full Self Driving" with the hardware on board. Now they're in the situation where they cannot admit that the problem requires more hardware. The hardware is a fixed property here, a design requirement; they have to achieve actual full self driving with the hardware in place, or they're going to face refunds and lawsuits.
So now it's a delay game. I think it's clear now that short of AGI, Tesla will never get to "full" self driving with the sensor suit they have. Nonetheless they can't switch to a new sensor suit because that will admit defeat. Instead, they have to show continual improvement of the current sensor suite, while promising that "Full" self driving is just around the corner so they can continue the charade.
they since retrofitted the hardware twice since the claim was made, last retrofit being to the tune of 10k$.
the truck was seen by both the radar and also could be clearly observed by the narrow camera from quite a distance away (pictures are spaced 1 second apart)
By the way, as a roboticist this whole situation is completely baffling to me. We go through such great lengths in our research to make our robots safe. Safety is a huge concern to our community. How is it that this company can just ship beta quality software to customers for use in production amongst the rest of us? In industry, we paint our robots orange and put them behind impenetrable cages due to safety concerns. Entire facilities are designed around the robots to make their operation safe. Operators are trained to use them. People working around them are trained to work along side them and observe proper safety protocols. Proper insurance is carried in case of accidents. And when an accident does occur, the situation is taken apart, analyzed, and changes are made so they won't happen again.
Not in the marketplace though, it seems. Apparently it's okay to just code whatever you want; put the code on whatever machine you want, even if it's "beta" quality; ship it to whomever you want who can pay for it; provide little to no training; lie about the capabilities ("Full self driving" minus the full, and self, and driving. "Autopilot" that isn't.); and when people inevitably and predictably end up dead, apparently it's okay to just keep on pushing this software out without a shred of self reflection or humility. Because you're saving the world I guess? I just don't understand this culture.
A Tesla vehicle, when under human control, has AEB but when under AutoPilot it essentially does not since it is the same logic used for both processes and therefore it doesn't act as an additional safety feature.
Obviously there are situations where cameras or our eyes simply won't be able to see enough. Dark unlit objects at night aren't exactly an obscure edge case scenario, the crash from the video is something we already see on a regular basis with human driven cars, sadly. And even if not, I'd rather pay $1000 or so extra to protect me from that freak scenario that's likely never going to happen. Until it does.
I also have airbags in my car although I never needed them.
Even if it is a real issue, the government regulators can simply set the max power limits lower for LiDAR units to ensure it's safe.
"So coherent is laser light that one may observe interference effects even when the path difference between the interfering rays is much greater than 109 wavelengths! ... If two waves are exactly “in phase” as shown in Figure 1a, they will reinforce each other; this is called constructive interference." [0]