3 ms·

I think the stubborn refusal to make use of LIDAR and other advanced sensors along with the idiotic claim that "humans can do fine with two eyes so so can we" w

by xoa 6y ago

I think the stubborn refusal to make use of LIDAR and other advanced sensors along with the idiotic claim that "humans can do fine with two eyes so so can we" will go down as one of the most genuinely foolish and bullheaded moves by Elon Musk. Having unavoidable surprises and accidents in the development of something like self-driving is understandable, and ultimately a few such things are frankly acceptable losses if the rate of tens of thousands of annual deaths by humans is cut. But they should be unavoidable and surprises, and there should be failsafes to try to avoid the worst. Driving into an object at full speed is obviously the most fundamental Bad Thing, Don't Do That in driving. Having a system that can cut into the more complex autopilot and at least slam the breaks every single time, even at worst within a short range where it's too late to avoid but can at least greatly minimize impact energy, should have been a day 01 foundational safety measure before embarking upon the rest. Huge point of self-driving should be being better than humans are. They should have FLIRs to deal with both moose and dark pedestrians at night, LIDAR/terahertz/ultrasonics, 360° cameras, whatever is needed to not just meet but actively avoid all kinds of crashes humans have. I hope Tesla really does get a bit slammed for cheaping out and then refusing to do a mea culpa on it, it's just so dumb.

smilekzs 6y ago
Well in a traditional frontal collision avoidance system you rely on the very same mmwave radars and cameras (even a stereo pair in the Subaru system). Yes, L4+ self driving needs more for performance. A Tesla has more sensors than normal FCA/LKA system implementations; so IMHO the blame in this specific case is more likely with software than hardware.
- xoa 6y ago
  Even amongst traditional manufacturers, Ford, Nissan, and Volvo have all opted for use of lasers along with mmWave. Volkswagon also has laser sensors on at least some models. And normal CAS are merely final emergency backups to normal involved human driver. They're added systems to help cover gaps in attention, and many simply depend on alerting the driver, not even doing breaking on their own. Whereas Tesla has been marketing autopilot as on the path to full level 5 since the beginning right down to the branding (vs "advanced driver assistance" or something), and whatever asterisks they've added since drivers keep depending on autopilot and autopilot vehicles keep crashing into stationary objects. Sure, maybe better software could avoid that, but the fact on the ground is that it hasn't. And for a life safety critical system, throwing hardware at a problem vs pure software is not wrong just because it's more expensive. Tesla may be trying to optimize costs and be aggressive as they have been in other areas, doing the whole MVP/iteration thing, but this is one place where that just isn't necessarily the greatest strategy. They should be aiming to be better than human drivers not just as-good-as, and the challenges and limitations of ultra complex software based systems development are hardly some new revelation. They should have been prepared for that too with more hardware backstop.
- mshook 6y ago
  Someone explained it best here a long time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16239612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16239612 Namely, this user wrote: To add even more detail, as there still appears to be a lot of confusion: The radar systems in these vehicles send out a radio pulse in a broad approximate-cone forward. They get bounces back from everything that reflects radio in front of them. Distance from the object is calculated by time between pulse and response. Speed towards/away from the object is calculated from Doppler shift of the radio frequency. There are two main things that these systems can't detect. 1. Speed of the object perpendicular to the direction of radio wave travel. 2. Location of the object within the approximate-cone the radio pulse travels in. Note that thanks to the second, you can't calculate the first with higher-level object tracking, either. So the data you get back is a list of (same-direction velocity component, distance) pairs. There's no way to distinguish between stationary objects in the road and stationary objects above the road, to the side of the road, or even the surface of the road itself. Radar just doesn't provide the directional information necessary to handle obstacle detection safely.
taisalie 6y ago
(Score: 2, Strident)

by xoa 6y ago

smilekzs 6y ago

Well in a traditional frontal collision avoidance system you rely on the very same mmwave radars and cameras (even a stereo pair in the Subaru system). Yes, L4+ self driving needs more for performance. A Tesla has more sensors than normal FCA/LKA system implementations; so IMHO the blame in this specific case is more likely with software than hardware.

xoa 6y ago
Even amongst traditional manufacturers, Ford, Nissan, and Volvo have all opted for use of lasers along with mmWave. Volkswagon also has laser sensors on at least some models. And normal CAS are merely final emergency backups to normal involved human driver. They're added systems to help cover gaps in attention, and many simply depend on alerting the driver, not even doing breaking on their own. Whereas Tesla has been marketing autopilot as on the path to full level 5 since the beginning right down to the branding (vs "advanced driver assistance" or something), and whatever asterisks they've added since drivers keep depending on autopilot and autopilot vehicles keep crashing into stationary objects. Sure, maybe better software could avoid that, but the fact on the ground is that it hasn't. And for a life safety critical system, throwing hardware at a problem vs pure software is not wrong just because it's more expensive. Tesla may be trying to optimize costs and be aggressive as they have been in other areas, doing the whole MVP/iteration thing, but this is one place where that just isn't necessarily the greatest strategy. They should be aiming to be better than human drivers not just as-good-as, and the challenges and limitations of ultra complex software based systems development are hardly some new revelation. They should have been prepared for that too with more hardware backstop.
mshook 6y ago
Someone explained it best here a long time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16239612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16239612 Namely, this user wrote: To add even more detail, as there still appears to be a lot of confusion: The radar systems in these vehicles send out a radio pulse in a broad approximate-cone forward. They get bounces back from everything that reflects radio in front of them. Distance from the object is calculated by time between pulse and response. Speed towards/away from the object is calculated from Doppler shift of the radio frequency. There are two main things that these systems can't detect. 1. Speed of the object perpendicular to the direction of radio wave travel. 2. Location of the object within the approximate-cone the radio pulse travels in. Note that thanks to the second, you can't calculate the first with higher-level object tracking, either. So the data you get back is a list of (same-direction velocity component, distance) pairs. There's no way to distinguish between stationary objects in the road and stationary objects above the road, to the side of the road, or even the surface of the road itself. Radar just doesn't provide the directional information necessary to handle obstacle detection safely.

taisalie 6y ago

(Score: 2, Strident)