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Comment by dontreact | Hacker News Reader

Elon’s belief that humans doing it with vision is proof it can be done with video

You’re right about Elon but I’ve thought about it and it’s flawed reasoning. Humans don’t do it “with vision” we do it with five senses and the human brain. The computer is severely limited compared to the human brain, so in the context of things like LiDAR, the computer needs all the help it can get. And for rain sensing, the camera doesn’t see the windshield like a person does!

Alternatively: it’s a cost cutting measure and the “humans can do it with vision” is essentially a marketing spin.

Considerably more than five senses, actually. We rely on a huge variety of inputs beyond the basic ones when we drive.

Vision and hearing are the main senses we use to driving, and touch a distant third. Using taste, smell or proprioception means something is probably wrong with your vehicle.

I thought about smell but actually vehicles do malfunction, and smell can be an important indicator. “Something is wrong with your vehicle” is a real scenario that actually happens pretty often.

I feel we must be using smell all the time to be able to detect when a burning odour begins to arise. It’s just that we’re not aware of it when nothing unusual happens.

If you’re not running AC you can certainly smell rain also

Personally, proprioception ranks ahead of hearing for me.

Vision is first, but proprioception is how assess nearly everything else. Braking speed, acceleration, throttle input, cornering, traction, hydroplaning, tire pressure (even in specific tires), alignment issues (down to the specific wheel), balance issues, toe rod issues, transmission issues, engines issues, wind, payload, towing, etc, etc, etc.

I could probably tell you within 100lbs how much and roughly where payload is in the vehicle simply by feeling how the car is driving.

I literally cannot do racing game because I can’t sense the vehicle. Flip side, I used to think professional racers were crazy for being able to call in subtle issues to their crew chief. Turns out when you drive a specific car enough, you learn how it out to feel.

Driving without proprioception is probably almost impossible. That's how you know where your hands are, how the steering wheel is turned, where your feet are, how to move your hand to the indicator lever, etc.

That is a reasonable argument that it is likely to be theoretically possible. It’s absolute madness to jump from “theoretically possible” to production without actually inventing and testing the technology. What is going on over there at Tesla? I suspect an emperors new clothes type of situation where employees are too terrified to state basic facts, like “we tested 20 ideas out but none worked, we haven’t figured out how to get this to work yet.” Not the kind of culture I want designing a 2 ton vehicle I’m trusting my families lives to.

> I suspect an emperors new clothes type of situation where employees are too terrified to state basic facts, like “we tested 20 ideas out but none worked

Or maybe the emperor is a "idea #16 is good enough for me" type of person?

Giving Musk the benefit of the doubt, probably his thinking is more along the lines of:

"I'd like to solve this with vision. Sure, we can ship a $5 part to do it the tried-and-true way, but if we do that then we're probably never gonna solve it with vision, because there will no longer be a pressing need to do so. So I'm gonna force us to not ship our cars with a proper rain sensor in the hope that it will continually push my teams to get this shit done and do the improbable".

That sounds so cool when a billionaire vision-guy says it. Too bad reality is that "pressing need" isn't magic, and sometimes just isn't enough. Like this time.

There’s no doubt to give him the benefit of… even in your version they still decided to ship a basic feature that doesn’t work in a production automobile. Other car manufacturers push teams hard to develop new tech also, but they also test the heck out of them so they’re 100% functional before they would put it into production.

Piech was famous for outlandish demands on engineers at VW, but his demands took the form of the desired test results: the Phaeton had to be capable of being driven all day at 186 mph with an exterior temperature of 122 °F whilst maintaining the interior temperature at 72 °F. And they did it…

I'm not defending the mindset, just pointing out that this is what I would assume is going on in his head.

And like him or not, his companies have delivered a lot of innovation in the past.

Fair point- that does seem like a likely explanation, I am just horrified that it would lead to putting broken systems on a mass produced production automobile.

Vision would make sense... if the cameras were placed back where the driver actually sits.

And if you could rapidly move the cameras in multiple dimensions.

This is true in a sense, but humans incorporate so much more information. Like if I drive past a sprinkler, I know there will be a short burst of water hitting the window. But this requires a fairly complex assessment of the surrounding environment.

But it can be done better with more sensors. Why handicap the technology? It seems to me like the compromise isn’t worth it here.

My phone can take my face scan in a room that’s pitch black, because it uses infrared sensors and a projection of dots. It’s able to check who I am, regardless of the natural light in the environment. If that technology was limited to “only a camera” it would be way worse.

A camera is cheaper than LiDAR. But it’s also less capable.

As best I can tell. Other cars just use a dedicated infrared sensor to detect the water? Seems like a weird corner to cut. Seems like tesla cut those in favor of just having other cameras attempt to fill in? But seems like that isn’t working.

I think that's more of justification and excuse than a legitimate belief.

I know a few people who work/worked there. I don’t agree with it but it is a genuinely held belief

That's terrifying

Humans do it with variable focus vision. The Tesla cameras are permanently focused at infinity.

Normal human eyes also have more dynamic range than the cheap cameras used in Teslas. This matters in some difficult lighting conditions.

For seeing rain it's mostly that they are offset back from the windshield more. People over 50 barely have variable focus vision and it isn't really important in driving.

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