Tesla drives into Wile E. Coyote fake road wall in camera vs. Lidar test
electrek.co
electrek.co
https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot#active-safety-featur...
Testing a wider release rather than a more exclusive one meh.
I insist that my wife and kids drive with FSD, because then I know then that FSD is forcing them to watch the road. Think about that! Use the latest FSD on HW4 for a while (I do 90% of my drives with FSD) and make an informed decision. IMO, not using FSD is killing/hurting people.
All? Of the 30 cars tested, 7 got "Poor" grades for IIHS's "front crash prevention rating". I spot checked a few of the failing cars and they all supposedly use radar.
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/automakers-make-big-strides...
> The poor-rated vehicles also struggled in the tests with the passenger car target. Most failed to slow enough in the 37 mph test with the target centered to qualify for additional AEB testing. However, in most trials with the passenger car and semitrailer, they delivered timely forward collision alerts.
Detecting a motorcycle is significantly harder than detecting a semitrailer, which is what this kind of wall would look like to a radar.
While walls like this are a contrived example, I distinctly remember a case from a few years ago where Autopilot failed to detect a semitrailer, drove under it at full speed, and decapitated the driver.
https://skybrary.aero/articles/autopilotflight-director-apfd...
Granted it's muuuuch easier in planes because 1) they're already being routed to avoid each other by humans when the route is setup, 2) they continually announce their position with a high degree of accuracy, 3) generally speaking only two planes will be that close to each other at a time in the air so deconflicting doesn't cause huge ripple effects and 4) the sky is really big but also gives them a 3d dimension to play with where streets are 2 dimensional.
Some aircraft can avoid other aircraft under some circumstances but those aren’t stationary obstacles and unlike random walls that people build, or mountains, they are all tagged with transponders.
Well a core part of the flight is colliding with the ground at the end.
But also the hazard of a stationary object doesn’t exist - crew receive an IFR clearance and fly that route; that route won’t have stationary obstacles.
Aviation’s autopilots aren’t “eyes-off” in VFR so that’s a meaningless comparison.
If the plane is anywhere near terrain on autopilot things have gone horribly wrong and a person should be flying anyways.
For example, when Tesla detects that you are about to accelerate into a human or a wall, they slow down the acceleration so that you have time to react, but they don’t stop it altogether.
That’s very different from FSD’s decision-making process.
It's emergency breaking. There shouldn't be differing results on whether you paid an extra $8000 usd or not.
FSD does not advertise better emergency breaking as a feature. (Last I checked anyway.)
Most if not all vehicles for sale will plow right through a styrofoam wall like that regardless of whats painted on it.
Because emergency breaking should just work, regardless of mode.
In theory, it can handle the painting on a wall scenario. In theory.
I’d like to see it tested!
This wasn’t it.
FSD is very much correctly named. It does not say you can go for a sleep. It just means, the vehicle is capable of full self driving, which is true for most conditions and something most cars are not capable of. How would you have named it?
That means, by definition, it's not "full" self driving.
I can think of half a dozen terms off the top of my head that would better describe what its doing, but they aren't quite as punchy, and critically, they won't give the impression that the car is capable of functioning without oversight. Being able to obliquely claim-without-claiming is very much the point of the current terminology.
* trip control
* trip assist
* co-pilot
* auto steer and throttle
* partial self-driving (i.e., what it's actually doing!)
* hands-free steeringAll the names you have given suggest, that it is not capable of managing a complete trip but it is.
If you do not need to do anything for 95% (often 100%) of the trip, which is true for most FSD drives, this would not qualify as FSD for you? Then we can end this discussion and just have different opinions.
If "full" doesn't mean "completely autonomous", what would you call a system that can drive a car in exactly all the circumstances a human can?
Joking aside... 95% of the drives are with 1 or no manual disengagement. The disengagement does not have to be critical. I would always disengage to park because I am faster. Is this not enough to call something FSD?
"Mostly Self-Driving"
I would argue that it is getting very close to what people think autopilot can do. A car that, under certain circumstances, can drive for you and doesn't kill you if you don't pay constant attention.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h3WiY_4kgkE
The one which needs a leading vehicle to follow below 40mph on some stretches of freeways? Try to look up videos of it from owners that are not press or mercedes reps.
From: https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot
> Raising the bar in autonomous driving technology, Mercedes-Benz is the first automobile manufacturer in the US to achieve a Level 3 certification based on a 0-5 scale from the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). Under specific conditions, our technology allows drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel, eyes off the road — and take in their surroundings
(Specific conditions being the lead car and speed limits you noted, but that’s not what the person you’re replying to is talking about)
Additionally to their level 3 system, they’ve been granted permission to test Level 4 systems not for public use/availability, on a prototype vehicle:
https://www.wardsauto.com/autonomous-adas/mercedes-benz-gain...
Well, because they named it autopilot.
Autopilot means it pilots... automatically. Automatic pilot. Not Manual Pilot, not with intervention, automatically.
They could have named it "driver assist", "partial-pilot", "advanced cruise control", "automatic lanekeeping" or anything else, but they named it Autopilot. That's Tesla's fault.
do commercial pilots lean back and whip out their phone when they turn on "autopilot"?
As far as I could tell, they only had their hands on the instruments during take off and landing.
It was a bit weird :)
ffs this is such a silly argument
If you go back in history, Tesla was one of the first manufacturers, to provide something more than just a lane assist. It is fair in my opinion to search for a different name, that distinguishes yourself from the competition.
But that’s not true.
It’s not capable of fully driving itself, hence why the supervised part was added
* trip control
* trip assist
* co-pilot
* auto steer and throttle
* partial self-driving (i.e., what it's actually doing!)
* hands-free steeringOtherwise what would you name a L5 system that 100% drives autonomously all the time without any input?
It's also worth noting that the recent ship collision in the north sea is thought to be because the autopilot was left on without proper human oversight, so even trained professionals in high stakes environments make that mistake.
The autopilot controls the watercraft or spacecraft without the need for constant manual control by a human. Autopilots do not replace the human operator, rather the autopilot assists the operator in controlling the vehicle or aircraft, allowing the operator to focus on broader aspects of the operation. (Wikipedia)
I do not like Tesla but to this day I don't get the outrage about their autopilot capabilities. It 100% fits the definition of what an autopilot does.
Combine this with how they released a video[0] with the description "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself." at the same time. This video was about their FSD and not autopilot, but I think it's reasonable to assume most people won't know the difference. It's deceptive on purpose.
Can’t comment on ships, but autopilots in planes definitely match SAE level 3:
- Hands off
- Do not require constant attention
- Will alarm and indicate to the user when attention is required
ie. “when the feature requests, you must drive [fly]” from the SAE nomenclature: https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update
And this is autopilot that’s been in commercial aviation for decades (so long that it’s started filtering down to general aviation).
There is a study which links autopilot to 19 crashes and 175 minor incidents (which have been reported) sine 1983. If you take those numbers an put it into perspective, how often planes crash in general, it is not minor. Same goes for ships.
https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/data_research/resear...
A 20 year old avionics suite (GTN 450) does much more than cruise control - you input a flight plan including an approach, it will fly the flight plan, capture the approach signals (VOR/localiser/whatever - which is far more complex than “keeping course”) all the way down to approach minimums.
The report you linked is specifically about general aviation - not about commercial (part 121) aviation. GA lags behind by decades (still uses carburettored engines burning leaded fuels).
In any case, it’s talking about error cases for autopilots, not the operational domain for when they should/shouldn’t be used. The key take away was improved training for identifying autopilot malfunctions and not reduce/eliminate the usage of autopilots in certain scenarios.
> You can not (irl should not) do something else
I’m curious, what autopilots have you used and what capabilities did they have?
> In addition to the functionality and features of Autopilot and Enhanced Autopilot, Full Self-Driving capability also includes:
> > Traffic and Stop Sign Control (Beta): Identifies stop signs and traffic lights and automatically slows your vehicle to a stop on approach, with your active supervision.
> > Upcoming: Autostreer on city streets
Since I don't see a stop sign, or a traffic light, I cannot imagine how that makes any difference or can in any way be considered a complete f*k up, or how that's a "HUGE misrepresentation of facts". These things, listed here copied verbatim from the website of the manufacturer, are completely irrelevant to what was being tested here. It's like arguing that a crash test is invalid because the crash test dummy had a red shirt instead of a yellow one.
> Active Safety Features
> > Active safety features come standard on all Tesla vehicles made after September 2014 for elevated protection at all times. These features are made possible by our Autopilot hardware and software system [...]
No mention of FSD anywhere in that section. Tesla fanboys, pack it in.
And if collision avoidance doesn’t work better, then why isn’t FSD enabled on all cars — in order to fulfill this basic safety function that should work on all Teslas. Either way you look at it, this isn’t good. Expecting owners to buy an $8K upgrade to get automatic stopping to work is a bit much. Step one - get automatic stopping to work, then we can talk about me spending more money for FSD.
(And yes, I’m still bitter that my radar sensor was disabled).
Caveat: Autopilot is known to disable itself right before the crash (if it senses it) tho. I doubt this is the case because he would've obviously mentioned.
He did not. Please stop making proclamations on things in which you think but do not know. Mark has also released raw footage to negate this line of attack.
https://www.theverge.com/tesla/631308/mark-rober-tesla-youtu...
Normal, non-luxury cars from virtually every other manufacturer come STANDARD with radar. It's hooked into AEB and cruise control. Even new CIVICS come with radar AEB.
A radar-based system generally offers instantaneous speed and depth information. The best Teslas can do with cameras is guess at distance and then take finite differences to estimate speed - i.e. they make an estimate from an estimate.
The entire rest of the self-driving industry has known this forever - it's why Waymo, Cruise, Zoox, et. al. (who have actually tackled the long-tail cases of autonomy) not only use radar/LIDAR, but slap multiple of them on their vehicles.
Even a human being cannot reliably brake based solely on visual information.
If you had trivially Googled it, you'd know that "superior" is a score on the AEB test and does not mean "the best." How can you call me clueless when you clearly don't even understand the measuring system used for AEB testing?
My best guess at the answer is that you own some TSLA and are freaking out at the drop.
In the very first phrase he says "I'm in my Tesla on Autopilot"...
This video is a real missed opportunity. I would love to see how FSD would handle this and I hope someone else takes the opportunity to test it. In fact, testing FSD is such a trivially obvious idea that the fact that it's not even mentioned in the video makes me suspicious that they did test it and the results didn't match the narrative they wanted.
Unless HW4 adds lidar then it doesn't matter. The video shows lidar outperforming cameras.
This is faked as hell.
It has come as a default feature with many new vehicles in the modern age.
Are you trying to say that Tesla's FSD emergency breaking and AutoPilot emergency breaking are different? It's emergency breaking. None of that should matter.
And if it does matter, we are dealing with the possibility that Tesla is selling a deliberately worse product at a lower price point, in exchange for risking the lives of drivers and passengers.
There really is no meaningful difference here, because the result SHOULD be the same, regardless of what feature was enabled or disabled.
Also it's weird that he's acting like he's so special for having seen the inside of Space Mountain as if it's some kind of secret. Millions have seen it all lit up. Back when the PeopleMover/Rocket Rods attractions were running it was a common sight, as the track ran through Space Mountain and sometimes it would be under maintenance with the lights on. And of course in emergency situations they turn the lights on as well.
Another one: he claims they use thin curtains to project ghosts on in the Haunted Mansion which is true, but while he's talking about it he shows footage of a part of the ride that uses Pepper's ghost which is a completely different (and more interesting) technique. Some of the ghosts he shows while talking about it could not be achieved with the curtain method.
Come to think of it, Pepper's ghost could fool lidar. Maybe that's why he didn't talk about it even though it would have been more interesting. It would have been inconvenient for his sponsor. Someone setting up a reflective surface across a road is probably about as likely in the real world as a Wile E. Coyote-style fake road wall.
In this case the real engineering is that Tesla's choice of relying on only visual camera has fundamental issues that can not be solved with cameras only. Namely, visually blocking elements, such as heavy rain, fog, or even blinding lights just pretty much can not be solved by camera-only sensors.
(though I guess one "solution" would be for the system to say I can't see enough to drive, so I'm not going to, but then no one would buy the system)
I really do hope camera only tech will do better than this. But I also hope that lidar technology will eventually make it better. Right now , LIDAR needs much heavier computing power to be reasonably powerful.
Do you remember when Tesla had radar? The idea was brilliant at a time when LiDAR tech was difficult to get en masse. Radar plus camera does what LiDAR could do at lower computing powers.
Yes, humans can (I have) driven in extreme rain or fog where one can barely see one car length ahead. How? Simply by slowing down until you can see a few seconds ahead so there's time to stop if anything shows up in the field of (very limited) view.
The tesla software just continued at constant speed even though it couldn't see anything, completely oblivious.
That's the difference between a human driver and bad software.
The software is only as good as the human who programmed it.
No, the cameras we have now, or at least the data processing, is probably not there yet, but it's absurd to claim it's "never" possible. It's obviously either possible in a year or fifteen years, all basic hardware is advancing fast.
Absolutely correct. The problem is that Elon has been saying that for ten years and we're not really closer to it being true.
So, in the meantime, would it kill him to admit that he was wrong about lidar?
I've never made such a claim. I use self driving features in my car a good bit. They use more than just cameras though.
> Are deaf people allowed to drive cars?
Sure, but I'd say someone unable to hear things would be disadvanted at driving and potentially less safe. But you've also completely ignored the sense of feeling, understanding the feedback you're feeling on the wheel. Ignoring the feeling of the wheels on the road. Ignoring the feeling of the g forces as the car moves. Ignoring the feeling of body sway when it's windy.
You're also ignoring as others have mentioned the theory of mind of how other things actually behave around the streets. We're still not 100% sure these automated systems can actually comprehend these things.
All things a computer could sense, no doubt. But it's far more than just a few cameras.
This is the OP claim I am saying is absurd.
This is obviously untrue if you've ever watched videos from sentry mode.
Perhaps if they're early in their career. But any who have done challenging projects know that it's the last 5% that's the hardest and that often matters the most.
I don't think they build a 3D model of the world around them at all, while humans do (not only based on our stereo vision) and largely rely on that to drive.
Instead of stereoscopic vision, Tesla's neural net processes the data from the cameras to create a 3D view of the surroundings.
https://electrek.co/2021/07/07/hacker-tesla-full-self-drivin...
Although I think it's interesting that even in his demo there are cars popping in and out of existence in the 3D visualization of the environment. I don't think that makes much sense, if a car is observed and then occluded the logical conclusion should be that it's probably still there, maybe add an increasing uncertainty to its location, instead of assuming it disappeared.
The "but they've patched that failure!" excuse has ALSO been around, and while the cars are definitely getting better, they're still also definitely killing people in ridiculous ways.
If they were serious about patching issues, they would have added LiDAR already. They're trying to software patch their way out of the fact their perception stack is essentially blind to huge classes of objects drivers encounter every day.
The goal is to reduce accident and fatalities not eliminate jobs .
If LiDAR has 1/10th the fatality rate of camera setup and is less costlier than 10x the value of human life(as used in legal proceedings) then it still the only viable option
That said, I'm not sure that's what the barrier is. I think humans would have trouble driving with a fixed low resolution camera too.
2. This might be obvious question but: Humans have two eyes and they are few centimeters apart so that we could use stereoscopic vision to estimate the distance. Does Tesla FSD even attempt to do something similar?
Humans have many ways of modeling distances in the real world that do not rely on stereoscopic depth.
As it is, AI just isn't smart enough to rely on only vision and they ought to be taking advantage of every economically viable sensor to make up for the difference. Hell, I thought the goal was to do better than humans?
I would add that it would require not only AGI, but real-time AGI!
I guess we should ban humans driving then.
I'm a fan and everyday user of FSD. It's not perfect, but it's immensely useful, and frankly amazing. It works. It drives me to work and back everyday, with maybe 1 or 2 interventions each way.
I've never met any actual Tesla driver who was confused by the marketing (they're all tech guys). Some like it, some don't think it's worth the money, but everyone understands what it is.
(I'm not arguing against more detection hardware, but engineering is about trade offs.)
It does drive in the rain. I just drove for an hour through a torrential downpour on a road trip, way less stressful than without it.
That said, I very well might drive into a high-res billboard of the exact scenery behind the billboard, if I wasn’t expecting it on a long straight country road. The in-car view in that video looks pretty damn convincing, sure you’d know something was off but I wouldn’t bet on 100% of drivers spotting the deception.
Maybe next video he can show that Autopilot won’t detect a land mine, or an excavation just after the crest of a hill.
From the testing I've seen, there are no Automatic Emergency Braking systems on the market that are anywhere close to being as good as a human that's paying attention.
Do you have any data to prove it?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7037779/ https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-3a3816bd26418... https://www.kbb.com/car-news/studies-automatic-emergency-bra...
These don't break it down by lidar vs camera systems, but AEB systems significantly reduce crashes
Also, an emergency breaking system doesn't have to be better than humans in general. It is sufficient to beat humans in certain facets like reaction time (kid jumping onto the road) or tough lighting. LiDAR has it's own weaknesses I guess. But if the driver and LiDAR can hit the breaks we get best of both worlds.
Truck trailers are typically 3-4 ft off the ground, and have obvious borders.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/01/tesla-dri...
Notably, Tesla's response to the 2016 accident was to remove RADAR sensors in the Model 3. Had they instead taken this incident seriously and added sensors such as LiDAR, that could detected these obstacles (something that any engineer would have done), the 2019 accident and this "cartoon road" failure would have been avoided. For this reason I believe the 2019 accident should be considered gross professional negligence on the part of Tesla and Elon Musk.
Southwest I think.
I dislike the fact that Mark's videos appear to increasingly borrow from the Mr Beast style, which is very distracting. There's also the fact that half the video has nothing to do with cars in the first place.
The main result here is not surprising - Tesla's vehicles are plagued by a litany of poor engineering decisions, many at a fundamental level. Not using Lidar for depth detection is beyond stupid.
Yeah. My daughter likes him, but this latest thumbnail made me roll my eyes.
Just like the video, that if you’d take some time to watch l, you’d see that’s just basic autopilot.
Data is saying other things, but if we want to deny gravity, I’m ok with it.
If you link to Tesla statements that's marketing not data.
Ok, this is marketing.
1) numerous reports of teslas not seeing tractor trailers or fire trucks.
2) numerous reports even on this site where teslas under lane assistance repeatedly and predictably behaved erratically on CA off ramps.
Any optical only system will suffer from optical illusions, this cannot be avoided.
> Tesla Deaths is a record of Tesla accidents that involved a driver, occupant, cyclist, motorcyclist, or pedestrian death, whether or not the Tesla or its driver were at fault
Even the FSD stat says "FSD related" and not "FSD at fault".
Yes, Teslas are involved in accidents that cause death like literally every other car on the road. However to claim they're somehow uniquely dangerous, when in fact the stats show that they're uniquely safe, is ridiculous.
https://x.com/MarkRober/status/1901449395327094898
>Here is the raw footage of my Tesla going through the wall. Not sure why it disengages 17 frames before hitting the wall but my feet weren’t touching the brake or gas.
The playing field level here was significantly slanted comparing a production Tesla, driven by Mark, engaging 10 year old autopilot technology, against a non-production test vehicle, not driven by Mark, using I would assume the latest in LiDAR technology from Luminar.
Volvo sells the EX90 with a Luminar LiDAR sensor (not active it looks like). Why wasn't it used with Mark driving?
https://www.volvocars.com/us/cars/ex90-electric/features/
>Lidar equipped on early production vehicles will begin in data collection mode and over time the technological capabilities of the lidar will expand to include additional sensing scenarios as part of our Safe Space Technology, including the ability to detect objects in darkness at highway speeds up to 820 feet ahead.
https://www.polestar.com/us/polestar-3/safety/#lidar
>LiDAR upgrade subject to availability based on production cycles. Deliveries to start mid-2025.
I'd like to see how more ordinary automating braking systems would fare, which I think usually use radar and camera.
There are none you can buy in the US that have LiDAR active, but certainly Luminar could have gotten one from its partner Volvo and had Mark driven that instead of the professionally driven test rig that was used.
https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1901481711789109259
>I have some questions:
1) Your video "Can You Fool a Self-Driving Car?" uses Luminar’s latest tech but not Tesla’s latest FSD software. Why?
2) Autopilot was turned on at 42 MPH in your YouTube video but you turned it on at 39/40 MPH in your clip above. Why? Multiple takes?
3) In the clip above, Autopilot was activated MUCH closer to the wall than in the YouTube video clip. Why?
4) In your video above, you turned on Autopilot 3.8 seconds before hitting the wall, but it appears you gave Luminar a much longer head start with their tech "activated." Why? Am I wrong in my assumption?
5) Why was putting a child dummy/doll behind the wall a useful thing to do? What car would possibly see or react to a kid through a wall after crashing into that wall?Nio is one of the few actually selling them but not available in the US and still basically unknown outside China. I’m not convinced it would pass the Coyote test either, and the car manual warns that a flat wall or barrier, animals etc will not trigger AEB.
As far as I understand, LiDAR data can be quite noisy so it’s not commonly used for emergency breaking at speed.
The NCAP tests are all focused on car, bicycle and pedestrian detection (all camera based). Most cars on the market fail on AEB for other tests [2] even when the obstacle is another car sideways for example.
I’m not rooting for Tesla at this point, but there is a reason they did not add any other production cars to this test… it’s 100% a media stunt.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9G8vrz7bMM (German)
edit: on rewatch you can pretty clearly see the kid through the rain.
Tesla now suffers from a toxic brand way worse for its future than missing lidar.
Just an easy target for haters now and then.
...shows a photorealistic road on said wall. Last I checked, human drivers didn't have organs capable of LIDAR. Most would have crashed into this ridiculous obstacle.
Human driving through painted wall:
https://x.com/MarkRober/status/1901449395327094898
Did he do the same with LiDAR only turning it on 4 seconds before an impact?