5 ms·

But the question at hand is system control, not locomotion! You're not asking the automation to walk (well, I mean someday we will, but Teslas have wheels), no

by ajross 4y ago

But the question at hand is system control, not locomotion! You're not asking the automation to walk (well, I mean someday we will, but Teslas have wheels), nor the aircraft to flap. We want the automation to do what a human pilot would do. And that works with eyes. No, I think this argument is largely correct. And frankly settled: anyone who's driven recent FSD beta versions knows very well that the cars "see just fine". They don't hit anything, they see and avoid obstacles. Frankly they're much more observant than humans are, my car will twitch when pedestrians turn as if they're going to enter the road (where human drivers mostly don't notice, and if they do they ignore it). What problems still exist are in planning: things like sign reading, lane selection, etc... still need some work. But collision avoidance just isn't an issue. It isn't. The LIDAR folks were wrong, basically. (I will admit though that I'm a little sad about the removal of the ultrasound sensors though. It's true the autonomy probably doesn't need them, but I really like having the chimes to guide parking and garage maneuvering.)

elteto 4y ago
> The LIDAR folks were wrong, basically. This is far, far from settled at this point.
- ajross 4y ago
  No, it's over. Look, the LIDAR value proposition was necessarily "Yes, we're outrageously expensive and involve major tradeoffs in physical design of the vehicle, but vision can simply never do what we do". And... vision does. It does, every day. On hundreds of thousands of cars. In point of fact FSD beta vehicles are out there every day in environments where LIDAR has never been deployed, nor likely ever tested. And we're not seeing clear "it can't do this" failures. Anywhere. The closest you're going to get to evidence against vision are things like that "It Hit A Kid!" stunt from a few months back that turned out to be basically faked[1]. [1] At least the perps went silent and no one was ever able to reproduce. I mean the whole idea was ridiculous: my car twitches at pedestrians, including kids, including my kids, every day. It literally draws them on the screen.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - threeseed 4y ago
    > And we're not seeing clear "it can't do this" failures. Anywhere Do you have evidence of the number of accidents, disengagements etc by region ? Because you're making awfully definitive statements about FSD safety.
    - ra7 4y ago
      Tesla doesn’t release any data. But there are community trackers [1] that puts the disengagement rate in the single digit miles. In comparison, Waymo and Cruise had a rate of roughly 30,000 miles/disengagement according to CA DMV data. That’s how much worse Tesla FSD is. [1] https://www.teslafsdtracker.com/ https://www.teslafsdtracker.com/
  - mynameisvlad 4y ago
    Do you actually have FSD Beta? I do. It's not anywhere near the level of polish that you seem to imply it is. It gets things wrong all the time. Turns are downright dangerous.
enragedcacti 4y ago
> No, I think this argument is largely correct. And frankly settled: anyone who's driven recent FSD beta versions knows very well that the cars "see just fine". They don't hit anything, they see and avoid obstacles. Only if you ignore times where intervention stopped it from hitting something, times where it did actually hit something, massive amounts of jitter and popping in the visual output, phantom braking, etc. Unless of course "recent" means n+1 where n is the version that crashed into something. Collision with bollard in Feb 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbSDsbDQjSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbSDsbDQjSU attempts to plow through cyclist Feb 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5wkENwrp_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5wkENwrp_k almost crashes into tram (can't gauge speed or direction?) Jun 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxX4tDkSc_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxX4tDkSc_g Crashes into curb Aug 2022: https://youtube.com/shorts/8Mh1GjejdsI https://youtube.com/shorts/8Mh1GjejdsI Phantom brake Sep 2022: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5v6j_oL7S-g https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5v6j_oL7S-g Almost colliding with bridge pillar 2 weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CMYkDWaqn0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CMYkDWaqn0 Crashes into various objects in testing 2 weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDxqEzV5Zc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDxqEzV5Zc
threeseed 4y ago
> The LIDAR folks were wrong, basically I think your mistake is thinking LiDAR exists to solve the happy day scenario. It doesn't. Vision is sufficient for the majority of use cases. Where LiDAR comes into its own is in the edge cases because it almost guarantees accurate bounding box detection. Which is where vision is at its weakest. So I want to know what does FSD do when it sees a billboard of a person or when it is seeing a new object for the first time.
- mgoetzke 4y ago
  As long as the billboard is not moving into the street or standing in the middle of it what would you expect it to do ?
jeromenerf 4y ago
> We want the automation to do what a human pilot would do. And that works with eyes. Humans can’t really turn senses off, so they have coffee when driving. Touch and hearing are quite important to “read the road”. Equilibrium too.
- johnwalkr 4y ago
  Humans work with much more than just eyes. We subconsciously move our heads in case of uncertainty in the stereo vision algorithm and have pretty good IMUs. And yet, everyone has the experience of wrongly focusing on a repeating vertical pattern (vertical blinds or coiled cord for example) and getting disoriented. And every experienced driver has experienced at least some of the following: a moment of glare from a wet road, driving into a sunset, snowy road with curves in flat lighting conditions, dirty windshield/headlights/backup camera. All of those are challenging for humans and and probably even more challenging for computer vision with cameras only. But except for the last point, all are obviously improved by lidar.
  - wnkrshm 4y ago
    A good human driver also gauges the limits of their own experience and 'phase transitions' into a more cautious mode of driving. Is that something the algos can do? Infer the familiarity of the situation?
    - mgoetzke 4y ago
      The planning absolutely should take that into account and it does somewhat already. When it is really tight for example, it can slow down to a crawl. It should do that in many cases, wet roads, busses with open doors, busses in general maybe, blind corners (does that already to some degree), many people nearby etc.
fzeroracer 4y ago
> The LIDAR folks were wrong, basically. According to who? Tesla? Because Tesla has a vested interest in trying to prove that they're right even if they're obviously wrong. That's why they constantly try to downplay failures, software issues, device issues etc. I'm very confused by the attempts to discredit the usefulness of LIDAR. It's another tool you can use to improve the accuracy of your model. Sure, you can use a screwdriver, flip it around and use it as a hammer. But if you need to deal with nails, it's better to grab a hammer instead.
- ajross 4y ago
  The causality goes the other way. The LIDAR claim was that Tesla's vision approach couldn't work. It did.
  - fzeroracer 4y ago
    Who made this claim? You keep making these grand statements but without linking to people or providing any proof. Like there are going to be some environments where Tesla's vision is going to struggle, that's just a fact because you're relying on a more linear set of data. That's why you incorporate as many data points as possible for reasons other commentators have brought up. And I'm confused by how you qualify it as 'working', given we've seen multiple issues which are directly related to their vision approach.
  - fooblaster 4y ago
    Tesla has not solved self driving, and by all accounts never will with their existing compute and sensor stack.
  - martindbp 4y ago
    Let's do a thought experiment: if Waymo could have seen 10 years ago how well FSD perception works today, would they have invested so heavily into LiDAR? Maybe the answer is still yes, because with the low volumes of vehicles they have they can afford to put it in, but it's not clear cut. If you could show FSD to ML/CV engineers 10 years ago their minds would have been completely blown. My mind is still blown by how well it actually works.
clouddrover 4y ago
> You're not asking the automation to walk Tesla should aim for parking first. Teslas do poorly at self parking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsb2XBAIWyA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsb2XBAIWyA
freejazz 4y ago
Disregarding everything else about your post, which was better addressed by others, I'm amused that you think the FSD being twitchy reflects safety.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
The thing is, they don't see as well as humans. They don't respond to changes in the environment until a car is actually in the middle of changing lanes. It's like being driven around by a drunk person - the reaction happens loooooong after the action that causes it has started.
Slartie 4y ago
> my car will twitch when pedestrians turn as if they're going to enter the road (where human drivers mostly don't notice, and if they do they ignore it) As long as those pedestrians DO NOT actually enter the road after those turns, any "twitching" of your car in response is an ADDITIONAL SAFETY PROBLEM, because other drivers might notice the erratic movements of your car and do erratic things as well, which in the end might result in accidents that wouldn't have happened had your car not "twitched". Especially "twitchy" AIs like that of your car might very well "re-twitch" on noticing your car doing small, but erratic and rapid changes in behavior, thereby initiating a "twitch escalation spiral".

by ajross 4y ago

elteto 4y ago

> The LIDAR folks were wrong, basically. This is far, far from settled at this point.

ajross 4y ago
No, it's over. Look, the LIDAR value proposition was necessarily "Yes, we're outrageously expensive and involve major tradeoffs in physical design of the vehicle, but vision can simply never do what we do". And... vision does. It does, every day. On hundreds of thousands of cars. In point of fact FSD beta vehicles are out there every day in environments where LIDAR has never been deployed, nor likely ever tested. And we're not seeing clear "it can't do this" failures. Anywhere. The closest you're going to get to evidence against vision are things like that "It Hit A Kid!" stunt from a few months back that turned out to be basically faked[1]. [1] At least the perps went silent and no one was ever able to reproduce. I mean the whole idea was ridiculous: my car twitches at pedestrians, including kids, including my kids, every day. It literally draws them on the screen.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- threeseed 4y ago
  > And we're not seeing clear "it can't do this" failures. Anywhere Do you have evidence of the number of accidents, disengagements etc by region ? Because you're making awfully definitive statements about FSD safety.
  - ra7 4y ago
    Tesla doesn’t release any data. But there are community trackers [1] that puts the disengagement rate in the single digit miles. In comparison, Waymo and Cruise had a rate of roughly 30,000 miles/disengagement according to CA DMV data. That’s how much worse Tesla FSD is. [1] https://www.teslafsdtracker.com/ https://www.teslafsdtracker.com/
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  Do you actually have FSD Beta? I do. It's not anywhere near the level of polish that you seem to imply it is. It gets things wrong all the time. Turns are downright dangerous.

enragedcacti 4y ago

> No, I think this argument is largely correct. And frankly settled: anyone who's driven recent FSD beta versions knows very well that the cars "see just fine". They don't hit anything, they see and avoid obstacles. Only if you ignore times where intervention stopped it from hitting something, times where it did actually hit something, massive amounts of jitter and popping in the visual output, phantom braking, etc. Unless of course "recent" means n+1 where n is the version that crashed into something. Collision with bollard in Feb 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbSDsbDQjSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbSDsbDQjSU attempts to plow through cyclist Feb 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5wkENwrp_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5wkENwrp_k almost crashes into tram (can't gauge speed or direction?) Jun 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxX4tDkSc_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxX4tDkSc_g Crashes into curb Aug 2022: https://youtube.com/shorts/8Mh1GjejdsI https://youtube.com/shorts/8Mh1GjejdsI Phantom brake Sep 2022: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5v6j_oL7S-g https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5v6j_oL7S-g Almost colliding with bridge pillar 2 weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CMYkDWaqn0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CMYkDWaqn0 Crashes into various objects in testing 2 weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDxqEzV5Zc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDxqEzV5Zc

threeseed 4y ago

> The LIDAR folks were wrong, basically I think your mistake is thinking LiDAR exists to solve the happy day scenario. It doesn't. Vision is sufficient for the majority of use cases. Where LiDAR comes into its own is in the edge cases because it almost guarantees accurate bounding box detection. Which is where vision is at its weakest. So I want to know what does FSD do when it sees a billboard of a person or when it is seeing a new object for the first time.

mgoetzke 4y ago
As long as the billboard is not moving into the street or standing in the middle of it what would you expect it to do ?

jeromenerf 4y ago

> We want the automation to do what a human pilot would do. And that works with eyes. Humans can’t really turn senses off, so they have coffee when driving. Touch and hearing are quite important to “read the road”. Equilibrium too.

johnwalkr 4y ago
Humans work with much more than just eyes. We subconsciously move our heads in case of uncertainty in the stereo vision algorithm and have pretty good IMUs. And yet, everyone has the experience of wrongly focusing on a repeating vertical pattern (vertical blinds or coiled cord for example) and getting disoriented. And every experienced driver has experienced at least some of the following: a moment of glare from a wet road, driving into a sunset, snowy road with curves in flat lighting conditions, dirty windshield/headlights/backup camera. All of those are challenging for humans and and probably even more challenging for computer vision with cameras only. But except for the last point, all are obviously improved by lidar.
- wnkrshm 4y ago
  A good human driver also gauges the limits of their own experience and 'phase transitions' into a more cautious mode of driving. Is that something the algos can do? Infer the familiarity of the situation?
  - mgoetzke 4y ago
    The planning absolutely should take that into account and it does somewhat already. When it is really tight for example, it can slow down to a crawl. It should do that in many cases, wet roads, busses with open doors, busses in general maybe, blind corners (does that already to some degree), many people nearby etc.

fzeroracer 4y ago

> The LIDAR folks were wrong, basically. According to who? Tesla? Because Tesla has a vested interest in trying to prove that they're right even if they're obviously wrong. That's why they constantly try to downplay failures, software issues, device issues etc. I'm very confused by the attempts to discredit the usefulness of LIDAR. It's another tool you can use to improve the accuracy of your model. Sure, you can use a screwdriver, flip it around and use it as a hammer. But if you need to deal with nails, it's better to grab a hammer instead.

ajross 4y ago
The causality goes the other way. The LIDAR claim was that Tesla's vision approach couldn't work. It did.
- fzeroracer 4y ago
  Who made this claim? You keep making these grand statements but without linking to people or providing any proof. Like there are going to be some environments where Tesla's vision is going to struggle, that's just a fact because you're relying on a more linear set of data. That's why you incorporate as many data points as possible for reasons other commentators have brought up. And I'm confused by how you qualify it as 'working', given we've seen multiple issues which are directly related to their vision approach.
- fooblaster 4y ago
  Tesla has not solved self driving, and by all accounts never will with their existing compute and sensor stack.
- martindbp 4y ago
  Let's do a thought experiment: if Waymo could have seen 10 years ago how well FSD perception works today, would they have invested so heavily into LiDAR? Maybe the answer is still yes, because with the low volumes of vehicles they have they can afford to put it in, but it's not clear cut. If you could show FSD to ML/CV engineers 10 years ago their minds would have been completely blown. My mind is still blown by how well it actually works.

clouddrover 4y ago

> You're not asking the automation to walk Tesla should aim for parking first. Teslas do poorly at self parking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsb2XBAIWyA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsb2XBAIWyA

freejazz 4y ago

Disregarding everything else about your post, which was better addressed by others, I'm amused that you think the FSD being twitchy reflects safety.

Gordonjcp 4y ago

The thing is, they don't see as well as humans. They don't respond to changes in the environment until a car is actually in the middle of changing lanes. It's like being driven around by a drunk person - the reaction happens loooooong after the action that causes it has started.

Slartie 4y ago

> my car will twitch when pedestrians turn as if they're going to enter the road (where human drivers mostly don't notice, and if they do they ignore it) As long as those pedestrians DO NOT actually enter the road after those turns, any "twitching" of your car in response is an ADDITIONAL SAFETY PROBLEM, because other drivers might notice the erratic movements of your car and do erratic things as well, which in the end might result in accidents that wouldn't have happened had your car not "twitched". Especially "twitchy" AIs like that of your car might very well "re-twitch" on noticing your car doing small, but erratic and rapid changes in behavior, thereby initiating a "twitch escalation spiral".