5 ms·

FSD beta tester here. I think they are minimum 3 years away from anything exciting beta.. but the localization, mapping, and visualization are not the reason. I

by elif 4y ago

FSD beta tester here. I think they are minimum 3 years away from anything exciting beta.. but the localization, mapping, and visualization are not the reason. I don't think LIDAR would contribute substantially to improvement. The fundamental flaws are in the decision-making being based upon 10-30 second feature memory, ignoring features outright, and only depending on visible road features instead of persisted map data. For instance, near my house there's an intersection where it will try to use a turn-only lane with a red arrow when it's trying to go straight thru a light. 100% of the time. Even if I'm in the correct lane with no traffic around. That's because the turn arrow on the ground is worn off. It is not a perception problem, it is a) ignoring the obvious red turn arrow signal's significance for lane selection deliberately b) makes no attempt to persist or consult map data for 'which lanes go where' c) it completely disregards painted lines on the ground in the "no drive here" striping. Also one block from my house, FSD will stay still indefinitely waiting for trash cans (displayed as trash cans) to clear the leftmost lane so that it will turn left. None of the failures I encounter are due to lack of perception.

ncmncm 4y ago
The elephant in the room is fraud. Tesla has been collecting thousands of dollars, each, from car buyers and utterly failing to deliver what it represented, and keeping the money year after year. Would be let GM, Toyota, or Audi do this? Where is the criminal prosecution? Where are the refunds?
- cjrp 4y ago
  Could they rely on something in the smallprint? "You're paying for access to features as they become available, no guarantee that they will" etc.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Juries have in the past often not been swayed by fine print, where consumers are involved. It seems to be there mainly to dissuade angry consumers from suing, rather than to win cases based on it. I would not, personally, be so dissuaded.
- elif 4y ago
  I wouldn't call it fraud. I bought it knowing it was in beta and with no timeline for production release. They haven't represented it as anything more than that. Being along for the journey is a big part of why I decided to pay.
  - asdajksah2123 4y ago
    Elon Musk has literally said in a public conference keynote that robotaxis would be running in 2019, and earning Tesla owners 30k/yr since 3 years ago, and that it would be financially foolish to buy anything but a Tesla.
    - elif 4y ago
      Can you cite that? I've heard lots of those claims repeated but never first-hand
      - ra7 4y ago
        https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-robotaxi-app-make-money-repurposing-cars-autonomous-2019-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-robotaxi-app...
        elif 4y ago
        A journalist said "He said he thinks the program can be implemented as early as next year." Is not "literally said in a public conference keynote that robotaxis would be running in 2019"
        ra7 4y ago
        Did you watch the video in the link? Musk says "next year, for sure, we will have over 1 million robotaxis on the road". Here is a longer video of that announcement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GnH_C6NrOM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GnH_C6NrOM
FireBeyond 4y ago
> I think they are minimum 3 years away from anything exciting beta I think that's optimistic. Ten plus years. There's too many exceptions. In my home town, an intersection. Imagine, if you will: Traveling westbound there's four straight ahead lanes. There's a traffic light for each straight lane. The traffic lights will alternate "left two straight, green; right two straight red" and then "left two straight, red; right two, green". It does this because there's a tunnel and a roundabout right there. I guarantee that FSD will choke on this.
- elif 4y ago
  If the pavement is clearly marked i would give it a good chance. We have a 6-way intersection with similar lighting that it succeeds at... Other than completely and recklessly disregarding the clearly visible "no turn on red" sign. We also have a road with a reversible lane in the middle. Thankfully it recognizes the red X sign for this. Unfortunately, if it's driving for 11 seconds without seeing anothee, it will suddenly decide to merge into the incoming lane to make an upcoming left...
  - greedo 4y ago
    Relying on pavement being clearly marked is untenable.
    - elif 4y ago
      Completely agree. I think this is part of the hazard of the fsd training ethos that 'san francisco is the hardest case.' It completely dodges the issue that California actually maintains safe road markings compared to most other states. I think in Japan or China this approach could actually work, but there is zero hope for it to work generally in the US.
justapassenger 4y ago
It’s naive to call yourself beta tester. People who have access to beta are basically just a part of PR exercise by Tesla, that tries to hide lack of meaningful progress towards multiple missed deadlines. You aren’t beta testing complex automation system that’s operating on public roads. To do any meaningful testing you should have defined operation domain, specific behaviors to test, direct line to the engineering team to report issues, etc, etc.
- zarzavat 4y ago
  You're thinking of QA testing. Beta testing is the final stage of testing before release and aims to test the system in as close as realistic environment as possible - that's why betas are often seeded to the general public, you want to find out if your system doesn't work on some configuration or circumstances that you didn't anticipate in internal testing. Better to have it fail for a limited number of users who signed up for that possibility than to have to do a Cyberpunk style recall.
  - formerkrogemp 4y ago
    > You're thinking of QA testing. Beta testing is the final stage of testing before release and aims to test the system in as close as realistic environment as possible - that's why betas are often seeded to the general public, you want to find out if your system doesn't work on some configuration or circumstances that you didn't anticipate in internal testing. I'm thinking of being an unwitting test crash dummy on public roads and sidewalks for "Full Self Driving". They just slap the binding legal agreements and waivers on their drivers, but it is tantamount to fraud. I'd rather this didn't exist on public roads in such numbers, and that people don't have to pay to be free Tesla drivers, beta testers, and data points instead of being considered people.
  - justapassenger 4y ago
    QA testing doesn't exist for FSD. And you're applying standards used to test apps to share dickpics to a software that's moving killing machines in shared environment with other people. It's not acceptable to have it fail for limited number of users. As my kid who may get killed by the failure didn't sign up for it. How would you feel if this was a standard for aircrafts? "Let's just push this change to a small portion of the fleet, and boy, if that plane crashes, it's soooo much better if all our planes would crash. High five, where's my bonus?!".
kaba0 4y ago
That’s not 3 years away, it’s lacking fundamental knowledge of the world, which might require GAI to begin with. It is just shitty drive assist features sold as much more.
- pas 4y ago
  it definitely needs a broad knowledge base about all things road/traffic/sign related, but that's definitely not G nor fundamental. still a very hard problem. but what it requires is a consistent world model. and if it detects that the current stretch of road is incomprehensible for its model it should safely disengage. of course Tesla opted for the cowboy version of this, and turned the confidence of the model up .. without having a good model :|
- elif 4y ago
  Agree I think 5-6 is more likely 3 years was my minimum, assuming they scrap their current model and begin working on one with real geo-spatial awareness now. They have the data for it already. To over-essentialize the problem with their approach, you simply cannot safely drive in Atlanta as a person who has never seen the streets. Humans are no exception. You have to know how each road works, and remember that for next time.
DebtDeflation 4y ago
>I think they are minimum 3 years away I vividly remember a conversation I had with an acquaintance who had recently taken an engineering position with an AV company that occurred circa late 2018. He claimed that they were at most 1 year away. In fact, his exact words were something along the lines of "They're already here. It's just a few edge cases to work out and some regulatory hurdles to overcome." The reality is that the first 80% of the problem had been solved quickly and significant progress had been made at the time on the next 10%. The end was in sight. Unfortunately, that next 10% ended up taking as long as the first 80% to solve, and the final 10% will likely take decades if it's even possible.
tapatio 4y ago
Realistically its 20 years away.

by elif 4y ago

ncmncm 4y ago

The elephant in the room is fraud. Tesla has been collecting thousands of dollars, each, from car buyers and utterly failing to deliver what it represented, and keeping the money year after year. Would be let GM, Toyota, or Audi do this? Where is the criminal prosecution? Where are the refunds?

cjrp 4y ago
Could they rely on something in the smallprint? "You're paying for access to features as they become available, no guarantee that they will" etc.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Juries have in the past often not been swayed by fine print, where consumers are involved. It seems to be there mainly to dissuade angry consumers from suing, rather than to win cases based on it. I would not, personally, be so dissuaded.
elif 4y ago
I wouldn't call it fraud. I bought it knowing it was in beta and with no timeline for production release. They haven't represented it as anything more than that. Being along for the journey is a big part of why I decided to pay.
- asdajksah2123 4y ago
  Elon Musk has literally said in a public conference keynote that robotaxis would be running in 2019, and earning Tesla owners 30k/yr since 3 years ago, and that it would be financially foolish to buy anything but a Tesla.
  - elif 4y ago
    Can you cite that? I've heard lots of those claims repeated but never first-hand
    - ra7 4y ago
      https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-robotaxi-app-make-money-repurposing-cars-autonomous-2019-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-robotaxi-app...
      - elif 4y ago
        A journalist said "He said he thinks the program can be implemented as early as next year." Is not "literally said in a public conference keynote that robotaxis would be running in 2019"
        ra7 4y ago
        Did you watch the video in the link? Musk says "next year, for sure, we will have over 1 million robotaxis on the road". Here is a longer video of that announcement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GnH_C6NrOM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GnH_C6NrOM

FireBeyond 4y ago

> I think they are minimum 3 years away from anything exciting beta I think that's optimistic. Ten plus years. There's too many exceptions. In my home town, an intersection. Imagine, if you will: Traveling westbound there's four straight ahead lanes. There's a traffic light for each straight lane. The traffic lights will alternate "left two straight, green; right two straight red" and then "left two straight, red; right two, green". It does this because there's a tunnel and a roundabout right there. I guarantee that FSD will choke on this.

elif 4y ago
If the pavement is clearly marked i would give it a good chance. We have a 6-way intersection with similar lighting that it succeeds at... Other than completely and recklessly disregarding the clearly visible "no turn on red" sign. We also have a road with a reversible lane in the middle. Thankfully it recognizes the red X sign for this. Unfortunately, if it's driving for 11 seconds without seeing anothee, it will suddenly decide to merge into the incoming lane to make an upcoming left...
- greedo 4y ago
  Relying on pavement being clearly marked is untenable.
  - elif 4y ago
    Completely agree. I think this is part of the hazard of the fsd training ethos that 'san francisco is the hardest case.' It completely dodges the issue that California actually maintains safe road markings compared to most other states. I think in Japan or China this approach could actually work, but there is zero hope for it to work generally in the US.

justapassenger 4y ago

It’s naive to call yourself beta tester. People who have access to beta are basically just a part of PR exercise by Tesla, that tries to hide lack of meaningful progress towards multiple missed deadlines. You aren’t beta testing complex automation system that’s operating on public roads. To do any meaningful testing you should have defined operation domain, specific behaviors to test, direct line to the engineering team to report issues, etc, etc.

zarzavat 4y ago
You're thinking of QA testing. Beta testing is the final stage of testing before release and aims to test the system in as close as realistic environment as possible - that's why betas are often seeded to the general public, you want to find out if your system doesn't work on some configuration or circumstances that you didn't anticipate in internal testing. Better to have it fail for a limited number of users who signed up for that possibility than to have to do a Cyberpunk style recall.
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  > You're thinking of QA testing. Beta testing is the final stage of testing before release and aims to test the system in as close as realistic environment as possible - that's why betas are often seeded to the general public, you want to find out if your system doesn't work on some configuration or circumstances that you didn't anticipate in internal testing. I'm thinking of being an unwitting test crash dummy on public roads and sidewalks for "Full Self Driving". They just slap the binding legal agreements and waivers on their drivers, but it is tantamount to fraud. I'd rather this didn't exist on public roads in such numbers, and that people don't have to pay to be free Tesla drivers, beta testers, and data points instead of being considered people.
- justapassenger 4y ago
  QA testing doesn't exist for FSD. And you're applying standards used to test apps to share dickpics to a software that's moving killing machines in shared environment with other people. It's not acceptable to have it fail for limited number of users. As my kid who may get killed by the failure didn't sign up for it. How would you feel if this was a standard for aircrafts? "Let's just push this change to a small portion of the fleet, and boy, if that plane crashes, it's soooo much better if all our planes would crash. High five, where's my bonus?!".

kaba0 4y ago

That’s not 3 years away, it’s lacking fundamental knowledge of the world, which might require GAI to begin with. It is just shitty drive assist features sold as much more.

pas 4y ago
it definitely needs a broad knowledge base about all things road/traffic/sign related, but that's definitely not G nor fundamental. still a very hard problem. but what it requires is a consistent world model. and if it detects that the current stretch of road is incomprehensible for its model it should safely disengage. of course Tesla opted for the cowboy version of this, and turned the confidence of the model up .. without having a good model :|
elif 4y ago
Agree I think 5-6 is more likely 3 years was my minimum, assuming they scrap their current model and begin working on one with real geo-spatial awareness now. They have the data for it already. To over-essentialize the problem with their approach, you simply cannot safely drive in Atlanta as a person who has never seen the streets. Humans are no exception. You have to know how each road works, and remember that for next time.

DebtDeflation 4y ago

>I think they are minimum 3 years away I vividly remember a conversation I had with an acquaintance who had recently taken an engineering position with an AV company that occurred circa late 2018. He claimed that they were at most 1 year away. In fact, his exact words were something along the lines of "They're already here. It's just a few edge cases to work out and some regulatory hurdles to overcome." The reality is that the first 80% of the problem had been solved quickly and significant progress had been made at the time on the next 10%. The end was in sight. Unfortunately, that next 10% ended up taking as long as the first 80% to solve, and the final 10% will likely take decades if it's even possible.

tapatio 4y ago

Realistically its 20 years away.