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Assuming autopilot was indeed engaged, this seems to be clear evidence that cameras alone are insufficient to perceive big objects in a car's path OR judge its

Assuming autopilot was indeed engaged, this seems to be clear evidence that cameras alone are insufficient to perceive big objects in a car's path OR judge its distance to them. This car traveled in a straight line in near-perfect weather for at least 10 seconds toward a large motionless object blocking its lane and the next one, but still overlooked the danger. Imagine if this had happened in bad weather or at night, where risk of failure is substantially greater. This degree of incapability implies that vision alone is not only inadequate to perceive obstacles ahead that should be obvious to any human, but profoundly inadequate.

birdyrooster 6y ago
Nah dude, everyone trusts Elon Musk even though he lies repeatedly. Amazing that someone so unethical could come from a family mining blood Emeralds in South Africa. But alas, keep buying his vehicles because he totally cares about human lives.
- close04 6y ago
  What's worse is that it didn't detect the person that was clearly on the car's lane.
svachalek 6y ago
Humans do it with vision alone, do they not? This seems to be a failure of processing, not data.
- thefounder 6y ago
  How do you think the objects are detected with "vision" by autopilot? Are you considerig classifying all the objects in the world in all the possible situations so that that dumb computer can avoid them? So far that seems the plan.
  - skellington 6y ago
    You don't need to train with every object in the world to train in the general concept of road occluders. Autopilot users are ALWAYS supposed to watch the road and take control in unusual circumstances. Like an autopilot system in an airplane, it will fly you straight into a mountain if you give it that course and don't monitor where you are.
    - thefounder 6y ago
      >> Autopilot users are ALWAYS supposed to watch the road and take control in unusual circumstances. It looks like there is no single general concept of road occluders. If autopilot can't avoid a big object in the middle of the road what is it good for? Tesla claims to provide more than an airplane autopilot, they say its tech would avoid that mountain.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > Humans do it with vision alone, do they not? This seems to be a failure of processing, not data. In the best case scenario, sure, but having been in Motorsports since I was 16 and then a lot of my Adult Life in the Auto Industry the reality is a resounding: NO, Humans are horrible behind the wheel of what is essentially a less-volatile bomb with 4 wheels. I won't even mention my time riding around on a motorcycle on the street, as I have literately looked into the eyes of a driver only to see them make the mistake anyway--it's why I have to have a straight-pipe liter bike for the street, we've tested this and you can seriously hear me 1/3 mile away. Its astonishing how bad 99% of drivers are and realistically don't have the reaction times needed to drive anything with that much weight much less power in public and yet me let them anyway. Hell, during this weekend's protests saw police and normal citizens running straight into People on the street with signs, why isn't that seen in this same light? So, it is exactly because of those experiences that I have to side with this failure being just one of the many to get us to a more viable future where cars are fully autonomous. Its a shame, I'm just glad I got to live and learn in era where Humans were able to do what seems an entirely absurd thing.
- moralestapia 6y ago
  Yes and no, if you were driving based on a stream of fixed, low-res, low-framerate video you would definitely crash more often than you do now. You're also disregarding the (hugely important) role of other senses like sound and stuff like "I saw a bike coming from the right 10 seconds ago, where should it be now?".
djannzjkzxn 6y ago
The occurrence of this crash shows that the self-driving system as a whole is insufficient. I don’t see how you can be sure the problem is the camera and not the software.
Dylan16807 6y ago
I don't think it's a problem with cameras. I think it's a problem with autopilot. We don't know exactly how it's coded, but lots of other adaptive cruise control systems don't try to look for stationary objects at all.
- close04 6y ago
  > lots of other adaptive cruise control systems don't try to look for stationary objects at all At highway speeds they tend not to [0] since slamming the brakes at perceived stationary objects (signs on the side of the road, cars veering in front of you, etc.) might be even more dangerous. Maybe the next generations of (reasonably priced) hardware will reliably detect such objects in the path of the car. P.S. Of course it's not an excuse, it's an explanation for why this happens. [0] https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/ https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    For stationary objects as big as a [fire]truck, that's not an excuse. They could see it early and slow down pretty gently if a lane change is out of the cards. Edit: "P.S. Of course it's not an excuse, it's an explanation for why this happens." For objects where you would not have to slam on the brakes, saying that it would be dangerous to slam on the brakes is not an explanation.
    - close04 6y ago
      Slamming the brakes on the highway, interstate, autobahn is dangerous for the driver behind you. In some countries (maybe all) it's illegal to to this without an immediate danger. The car may see a sign on the side of the highway as "in your path" simply because the road is curving and the car can't tell that there's a radius and the sign is outside it. Between RADAR, LIDAR, and cameras I'm sure there's a hardware setup that can adequately resolve the issue but that would be too expensive. Most manufacturers don't pretend their cars are self driving. But one stands out, with Musk insisting the car is fully self driving, safer than a human driver, and ready for prime time except for pesky regulation. It is not and it will not be for a long time. They can probably self drive in less than 1% of driving conditions and even then they won't do it successfully 100% of the time. The only reason the statistics don't look much worse is that most drivers aren't suicidal and will keep saving the situation when the car shows that even driving straight between to painted lines is a challenge for a computer.
freerobby 6y ago
It doesn't say anything about the limitations of cameras. It says a lot about the current software limitations of Autopilot. As does the owner's manual: > Traffic-Aware Cruise Control cannot detect all objects and may not brake/decelerate for stationary vehicles.
- msandford 6y ago
  > Traffic-Aware Cruise Control cannot detect all objects and may not brake/decelerate for stationary vehicles. Maybe then the problem is one of labelling and/or fraud. "Come on down to Elon's Pizzeria where we're serving up what can only be called pizza!" - The place that serves calzones Calling a thing "autopilot" that can't do trivial human driving tasks like this is perfect conditions (much less poor ones) isn't great.
  - sidibe 6y ago
    To be fair, Tesla has for years now been pushing the fact that Autopilot doesn't mean you can sit back and let the car drive, and "Full Self Driving" is the term for that. Now that Full Self Driving doesn't look like it will live up to its name (not saying Teslas wont ever be fully self-driving, but the product they marketed as FSD to the first buyers of FSD are clearly never going to enable L4), they are saying FSD is just a collection of features in that direction, and "robotaxi" is the next word they seem to mean "really really self-driving." Given the nonsensical timelines Musk has been giving, they'll have to find a way to subvert the expectations of that word too.

birdyrooster 6y ago

Nah dude, everyone trusts Elon Musk even though he lies repeatedly. Amazing that someone so unethical could come from a family mining blood Emeralds in South Africa. But alas, keep buying his vehicles because he totally cares about human lives.

close04 6y ago
What's worse is that it didn't detect the person that was clearly on the car's lane.

svachalek 6y ago

Humans do it with vision alone, do they not? This seems to be a failure of processing, not data.

thefounder 6y ago
How do you think the objects are detected with "vision" by autopilot? Are you considerig classifying all the objects in the world in all the possible situations so that that dumb computer can avoid them? So far that seems the plan.
- skellington 6y ago
  You don't need to train with every object in the world to train in the general concept of road occluders. Autopilot users are ALWAYS supposed to watch the road and take control in unusual circumstances. Like an autopilot system in an airplane, it will fly you straight into a mountain if you give it that course and don't monitor where you are.
  - thefounder 6y ago
    >> Autopilot users are ALWAYS supposed to watch the road and take control in unusual circumstances. It looks like there is no single general concept of road occluders. If autopilot can't avoid a big object in the middle of the road what is it good for? Tesla claims to provide more than an airplane autopilot, they say its tech would avoid that mountain.
Melting_Harps 6y ago
> Humans do it with vision alone, do they not? This seems to be a failure of processing, not data. In the best case scenario, sure, but having been in Motorsports since I was 16 and then a lot of my Adult Life in the Auto Industry the reality is a resounding: NO, Humans are horrible behind the wheel of what is essentially a less-volatile bomb with 4 wheels. I won't even mention my time riding around on a motorcycle on the street, as I have literately looked into the eyes of a driver only to see them make the mistake anyway--it's why I have to have a straight-pipe liter bike for the street, we've tested this and you can seriously hear me 1/3 mile away. Its astonishing how bad 99% of drivers are and realistically don't have the reaction times needed to drive anything with that much weight much less power in public and yet me let them anyway. Hell, during this weekend's protests saw police and normal citizens running straight into People on the street with signs, why isn't that seen in this same light? So, it is exactly because of those experiences that I have to side with this failure being just one of the many to get us to a more viable future where cars are fully autonomous. Its a shame, I'm just glad I got to live and learn in era where Humans were able to do what seems an entirely absurd thing.
moralestapia 6y ago
Yes and no, if you were driving based on a stream of fixed, low-res, low-framerate video you would definitely crash more often than you do now. You're also disregarding the (hugely important) role of other senses like sound and stuff like "I saw a bike coming from the right 10 seconds ago, where should it be now?".

djannzjkzxn 6y ago

The occurrence of this crash shows that the self-driving system as a whole is insufficient. I don’t see how you can be sure the problem is the camera and not the software.

Dylan16807 6y ago

I don't think it's a problem with cameras. I think it's a problem with autopilot. We don't know exactly how it's coded, but lots of other adaptive cruise control systems don't try to look for stationary objects at all.

close04 6y ago
> lots of other adaptive cruise control systems don't try to look for stationary objects at all At highway speeds they tend not to [0] since slamming the brakes at perceived stationary objects (signs on the side of the road, cars veering in front of you, etc.) might be even more dangerous. Maybe the next generations of (reasonably priced) hardware will reliably detect such objects in the path of the car. P.S. Of course it's not an excuse, it's an explanation for why this happens. [0] https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/ https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  For stationary objects as big as a [fire]truck, that's not an excuse. They could see it early and slow down pretty gently if a lane change is out of the cards. Edit: "P.S. Of course it's not an excuse, it's an explanation for why this happens." For objects where you would not have to slam on the brakes, saying that it would be dangerous to slam on the brakes is not an explanation.
  - close04 6y ago
    Slamming the brakes on the highway, interstate, autobahn is dangerous for the driver behind you. In some countries (maybe all) it's illegal to to this without an immediate danger. The car may see a sign on the side of the highway as "in your path" simply because the road is curving and the car can't tell that there's a radius and the sign is outside it. Between RADAR, LIDAR, and cameras I'm sure there's a hardware setup that can adequately resolve the issue but that would be too expensive. Most manufacturers don't pretend their cars are self driving. But one stands out, with Musk insisting the car is fully self driving, safer than a human driver, and ready for prime time except for pesky regulation. It is not and it will not be for a long time. They can probably self drive in less than 1% of driving conditions and even then they won't do it successfully 100% of the time. The only reason the statistics don't look much worse is that most drivers aren't suicidal and will keep saving the situation when the car shows that even driving straight between to painted lines is a challenge for a computer.

freerobby 6y ago

It doesn't say anything about the limitations of cameras. It says a lot about the current software limitations of Autopilot. As does the owner's manual: > Traffic-Aware Cruise Control cannot detect all objects and may not brake/decelerate for stationary vehicles.

msandford 6y ago
> Traffic-Aware Cruise Control cannot detect all objects and may not brake/decelerate for stationary vehicles. Maybe then the problem is one of labelling and/or fraud. "Come on down to Elon's Pizzeria where we're serving up what can only be called pizza!" - The place that serves calzones Calling a thing "autopilot" that can't do trivial human driving tasks like this is perfect conditions (much less poor ones) isn't great.
- sidibe 6y ago
  To be fair, Tesla has for years now been pushing the fact that Autopilot doesn't mean you can sit back and let the car drive, and "Full Self Driving" is the term for that. Now that Full Self Driving doesn't look like it will live up to its name (not saying Teslas wont ever be fully self-driving, but the product they marketed as FSD to the first buyers of FSD are clearly never going to enable L4), they are saying FSD is just a collection of features in that direction, and "robotaxi" is the next word they seem to mean "really really self-driving." Given the nonsensical timelines Musk has been giving, they'll have to find a way to subvert the expectations of that word too.