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Tesla Autopilot thinks the moon is a yellow traffic light
- ezekg 5y agoWhat a crazy edge case. I wonder why it thinks an object that is not actually 'moving' (i.e. getting closer) is a traffic light.
- version_five 5y agoYou highlight the big challenge with computer vision and other computerized identification of things, regardless of the underlying technology. There is no "mental model" of what makes sense against which to check observations. There can be coded rules, but if something passes them, there is no extra sanity check like a person would do. Put another way, models have no common sense, and we don't really have a meaningful way to give it to them. This is going to remain a problem for self driving cars and is a big part of the reason why they have not lived up to expectations.
- aabhay 5y agoHumans use stereo vision to overcome things like this. I think some kind of stereoscopic strategy would be a feasible strategy, no? Why revert to the age-old argument of "common sense"?
- patch_cable 5y agoI have one eye and have no problem not making these kinds of mistakes.
- nyx 5y agoHumans have more than just stereo vision sensors. Like GP said, we also have robust schemata, seeded by biology and improved over our entire lives, that allow us to make sense of the things we see. These heuristics are trivial for us to access, but relatively difficult to describe and implement in a software system. That's what "common sense" means in this context.
- clon 5y agoStereo vision is overrated. One of my buddies is a pilot with 1 eye (since birth) and around 11 thousand landings. Top of his game. There is more to depth perception than stereo vision for sure
- jazzyjackson 5y agoWe have a lens that has to flex to bring far away objects into focus, so I figure that can give us some feedback.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoFor sufficiently distant objects, this is completely irrelevant. This lets us roughly gauge the reciprocal of distance.
- blakesterz 5y agoFunny, when I saw that I thought how did they miss this one? It's the moon, how is it possible no one has driven a Tesla at the right time in the right direction to have picked up the moon? The moon is out quite often. It doesn't seem like that much of an edge case to me, though I could be wrong.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoCalifornians mostly drive north and south, so facing the moon head on would be rare xD
- Retric 5y agoThe exact situation with the moons coloration changed by atmospheric conditions and being in just the right location over a long straight road to trigger this on a long stretch of straight road is probably quite rare. The software eventually does reject it as not a yellow light, only to change it’s mind back to the moon. I am wondering if this relates to the image classification system starting over from scratch regularly for some reason.
- dingaling 5y agoA friend has a 2018 Honda with auto-dipping headlights, it mistakes a near-full Moon low to the horizon as an oncoming car and switches the headlights to low-beam.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoTo be fair to the Honda, what do you need high beams for when the full moon is out?
- walrus01 5y agoThe real world is full of 'edge cases' that humans can deal with through their intuition and understanding of context. Humans are unlikely to mistake a yellow-ish moon for a yellow traffic light unless very intoxicated. I'd like to see a Tesla on full autonomous autopilot take a drive in Calgary or Edmonton a few days after a heavy snow, when it's been mostly plowed but the lines are missing from the roads, all the lines at the side of the road are covered in snow, etc.
- Retric 5y agoAt level 3 they just reject things back to the driver if they can’t see road markings. Longer term GPS makes that an easier problem for self driving cars than bad weather. The post blizzard random trails through deep snow seem like a more difficult challenge, largely because it’s so rare.
- jvm_ 5y agoLanes in heavy snow covered roads are more of a suggestion. You can either drive on the bare 'wagon tracks' of road, or on the proper lane (that you can't even see) with 6-12 inches of snow on them. Often when driving like this, you see a glimpse of the middle-yellow line inside one of the wagon tracks, and you realize that you're actually driving in part of the other lane. Fortunately the opposing traffic's wagon tracks are also shifted so that they're driving partially on the shoulder. A GPS guided car would make a mess of the wagon track pattern that all the humans decided to just go with.
- Retric 5y agoI am not talking 6-12 inches, when it’s 4+ feet of snow even pickup trucks need to stick to the valley’s which rarely have much to do with traffic lanes.
- spicybright 5y agoWe regulate impaired driving, texting and driving, and a ton of other stuff. Yet tesla somehow gets a pass with autonomous tech. When it's fully rolled out, it's going to kill a loooot of people.
- deadmutex 5y ago> When it's fully rolled out, it's going to kill a loooot of people. Do you have any data to back this up? Because there is definitely evidence that shows that it is saving lives: https://twitter.com/Model3Owners/status/1383545728488808453 https://twitter.com/Model3Owners/status/1383545728488808453 I think it is more fruitful to realize that humans also make mistakes. It may also be also beneficial to compare Human + FSD driving vs. Human driving (instead of just FSD vs Human).
- anotherman554 5y agoYou could have told us your evidence of Tesla safety data is "Tesla says" and saved me a click.
- HatchedLake721 5y agoAre you suggesting Tesla is lying?
- soneil 5y agoThey can be cherry-picking without being lying.
- heavyset_go 5y agoIs it a lie to call Tesla's level 2[1] driving system "Full Self Driving" when it isn't actually capable of full self-driving? What about when Tesla's marketing says FSD can do[2] things it can't do? [1] https://www.thedrive.com/tech/39647/tesla-admits-current-full-self-driving-beta-will-always-be-a-level-2-system-emails https://www.thedrive.com/tech/39647/tesla-admits-current-ful... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/oey4g1/for_those_who_never_know_and_those_who_have/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/oey4g1/for_tho...
- microtherion 5y agoI'm sure Elon Musk is going to take this problem extremely seriously, given that it's going to be twice as prevalent on Mars.
- josefx 5y agoIt will be all boring company tunnels on mars, no surface roads. So no moons. A lot of autonomous car problems would go away if companies and governments went for enhanced roads instead of trying to create a generic solution on the first try. No need to detect traffic signs or lights if that information was made readily available by the road you are driving on.
- swiley 5y agoI'd go farther and say that it's not possible to drive correctly in some cases on current roads. Everyone who's driven east/west with the arc of the sun parallel to the road knows this.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoSounds an awful lot like Positive Train Control, which has a hard enough time keeping communication up with just one vehicle per track section. You're not going to get very many nines of uptime when dealing with electronics exposed to the environment.
- josefx 5y agoI think you wouldn't have to go that far, even things like identifying traffic lights would be a lot easier if you had an up to date list of their locations. Worst case I can think of are car accidents where the people involved have to place warning signs on the road and construction/cleanup crews that are slowly moving along the road, but that would still be a limited amount of exceptions to handle instead of trying (and failing) to handle everything.
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- ortusdux 5y agoThe choice to remove radar has definitely reduced the chances that I will buy a tesla. It would be one thing if they lowered the price, but the "full self driving" upgrade continues to be $10k usd. https://www.tesla.com/support/transitioning-tesla-vision https://www.tesla.com/support/transitioning-tesla-vision
- pcbro141 5y agoYou can get Full Self Driving* for only $199/month now!: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/17/tesla-debuts-fsd-subscription-for-199-per-month.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/17/tesla-debuts-fsd-subscriptio... Plus the cost of the latest FSD computer upgrade, even if Elon Musk promised your old model "has all the required hardware for Level 5 autonomy". Your fault for believing him, pay up. * Isn't actually Full Self Driving
- adoxyz 5y agoAnd even then - all the features are in perpetual Beta and don't work. I've had a Model 3 for 3 years with FSD. My experience: Autopark - trying to get it to show up is almost impossible. When it does show up, the chance of curb rash is between 95-99%. Summon - for the most part works if it can connect. still does some sketchy stuff some times. Smart Summon - literal piece of shit that will always do the wrong thing and then just stop in the middle of the road. Navigate on Autopilot - kind of works, but it makes the auto-lane change feature finicky. Without NOA, auto lane change works fine, with it enabled, fails 80% of the time with the car jerking back into the original lane. Can't wait for FSD though /s
- ortusdux 5y agoI saw that. I do like that I would be able to try it out for a month. I would be much more amenable to it if they took the monthly fee off the flat purchase price.
- akmarinov 5y agoRadar is only out for the Model 3 and only in North America. So if you’re in Europe/Asia/Oceania or in the market for an S/X - you’re in luck!
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- walrus01 5y agoCue the Star Wars "that's no moon..." jokes in 3, 2, 1....
- Retric 5y agoWhat’s going on is more interesting than that. The Tesla keeps seeing it as a traffic light then rejecting it as not a yellow light over and over in the UI. Just the right atmospheric conditions plus just the right angle probably don’t show up a lot in it’s sample sets. GPS gives accurate timing and location which should make filtering out the moon straightforward, but it might just be overly cautious as a level 3 system.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoIt's not really rejecting it, it's just getting confused why the yellow light is still there when stationary objects typically fly by at about the same speed you're moving forward. Whatever stereo-depth perception of the camera they're using apparently can't tell the difference between where a traffic light should be and a celestial body. OTOH, I have mistaken a Burger King light-up sign for a full moon when it was coming up behind some trees, so I can't fault them too badly.
- Retric 5y agoThe full clip shows the false yellow light is absent from the UI for long periods of time. Watch a Tesla UI for a while and you will regularly show objects being reclassified. What’s breaking that loop is the fact the moons relative position is fixed so after rejecting it as not a traffic light the software then sees that same input and starts treating it like a new object after a while. I don’t know if the slowing behavior is related to the misclassified moon or a response to the model being confused.
- soheil 5y agoAt least it's not detecting it as a red traffic light and slamming on breaks at 60mph. I know AP can't do that but if it happened on a FSD car.
- tyingq 5y agoBlood moon is a thing...
- rich_sasha 5y agoMy significantly dumber car keeps picking up speed limit signs for side roads and supermarkets, sometimes as low as 5mph. I’m glad it cannot slam on the brake when it sees them!
- Tempest1981 5y agoEasy fix: Compute the moon's position in the sky (for current GPS location) and compare it to the car's heading. And factor in ascension. And weather.
- lordnacho 5y agoAnd what will happen when you get to a light with the moon behind it?
- jhpankow 5y agojust speed up a little bit
- robotresearcher 5y agoAnd don't ignore traffic lights that appear where you expect the moon....
- Tempest1981 5y agoVersion 2.0
- bbarnett 5y agoNext up, yellow, red and green (oh crap!) hot air balloons.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoThis wouldn't be a problem if the self-driving cars used celestial navigation, which I've always advocated for.
- ldiracdelta 5y agoTesla's AI-operated sextant.