6 ms·
Well that's clearly a design flaw and speaks to the lack of engineering on the part of Tesla which I find frightening. In a different domain, nuclear power pla
by davidf18 10y ago
Well that's clearly a design flaw and speaks to the lack of engineering on the part of Tesla which I find frightening.
In a different domain, nuclear power plant design, the Three Mile Island plant had a solenoid activated valve for letting high pressure out of the reactor vessel. The problem was that although the plant operators said set the valve to close, the valve was stuck open. It turns out that the control panel light signifying that the valve was closed simply displayed the signal sent to the solenoid, not that the valve had actually closed. No secondary valve, no meter to determine flow.
There had been a operator's manual change for TMI and other plants of the same design, but the proper hardware change was never made. Hence TMI.
But I worry about the kind of thinking as in TMI and also in Tesla.
- vvanders 10y agoFYI the dashboard on the Tesla shows exactly what the sensors are seeing, so in some respects it's a full feedback loop unlike the 3MI example above.
- davidf18 10y agoWell, yes, they got that right, but I was speaking in terms of not thinking through the engineering in a mission critical design (and in the case of the TMI reactor it had to be approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or whatever its predecessor was). TMI failed in this level of design thinking which would seem fairly obvious (as did NRC in plant design review) scares me in terms of overall engineering thinking. (In other words, if they got that wrong, what else did the designers get wrong). In the case of Tesla, they have to engineer so that the cars knows about obstacles before crashing into them. The fact that Tesla did not think through this pretty obvious scenario is frightening and suggests a fault in their overall process in engineering. I just feel that Tesla cannot be trusted in terms of engineering unless they have some very smart group check their design. I doubt BMW would have made such a mistake.
- bllguo 10y agoPlease, stop with the fearmongering. You are coming to some weird conclusions.
- davidf18 10y agoNo, I am someone who has a BS EE/CS degree that worked four years as an engineer at a large firm. It is not fear mongering. It is legitimate questioning about engineering, from someone who has the experience. For all of his self-promotion and as head of a car company and a rocket company, Elon Musk has never worked as an engineer for a large firm where he'd be mentored in engineering. For example, the CEO of GM is an engineer (EE) who was mentored in engineering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Barra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Barra And the same for IBM: (EE & CS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginni_Rometty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginni_Rometty
- vvanders 10y ago> lack of engineering on the part of Tesla which I find frightening. That looks a tad like fear mongering.
- davidf18 10y ago> That looks a tad like fear mongering. Please be specific. What is the fear mongering? It is a statement from someone educated as an engineer and trained as an engineer. Engineering, whether it is designing buildings, cars, airplanes, is thinking through the scenarios and testing for them. This seems to be a situation where they were ruling out overhead signs, but because of trucks clearance of these signs would be well over 10 feet and they could check for anything under 10 feet or 8 feet and should have. And, as I said before, if they didn't think this through, what else that we can't see are they not thinking through?
- vvanders 10y agoJust because you're an engineer doesn't make all of your arguments automatically correct. I've got the word "Engineer" in my job title but I don't beat people over the head with it when I want to make an argument for a technical position. It's not like they haven't thought this through. Tesla has been clear that this is a Driver Assistance, not a full autonomous car. There are multiple warnings, including every time you enable auto pilot that makes it clear you must pay attention. This accident while tragic from current reports looks like the driver was not paying attention to the road. The best way that we're going to get to fully autonomous cars is to collecting real world data and I think auto pilot has been a reasonable approach in that direction.
- danbruc 10y agoThe problem is, as far as I know, if you point the radar upwards, you will start detecting structures above the street like traffic lights and signs.