7 ms·

> With birds eye view, parking sensors aren't really needed anymore, so they didn't place an order for new sensors. Sorry but that's a large logical chasm you

by mertd 4y ago

> With birds eye view, parking sensors aren't really needed anymore, so they didn't place an order for new sensors. Sorry but that's a large logical chasm you just casually leapt. How does bird's eye view magically determine the distance to a textureless wall when parallax fails to detect it? Why do cars with birds eye view still come equipped with parking sensors if they are obviated?

gnicholas 4y ago
Parking sensors are handy if you're looking to the side or back when reversing, since you can hear them without looking at the screen in front. I honestly don't know where I'm supposed to look when backing up sometimes — it feels irresponsible to just look forward at a camera display, but in most cases that shows more than looking all around would. Parking sensors are nice because you can hear them chirp no matter where you look.
- pohatoo 4y ago
  A friend of mine was backing in to an unfamiliar parking garage and was watching the screen and all of a sudden we hear a scrape. There was an air duct over hanging the car and we hit it. The camera didn't think to show the roof. Luckily for us we hit the duct before hitting the sprinkler. That would have been a disaster.
- officeplant 4y ago
  >honestly don't know where I'm supposed to look when backing up sometimes Even with the addition of backup cameras I still look all around and check blind spots as if I didn't have a camera. No backup camera I've used shows enough information to be confident enough otherwise. Unless ya'll have some truly high end cars I don't see how anyone can confidently back up with just a camera and not fear hitting objects/children etc. I never even thought about my habit until a friend who is very terrified of riding in cars told me they were made comfortable by how much I look around me while driving. Which just convinces me further that most people shouldn't be on the road.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    > Unless ya'll have some truly high end cars I don't see how anyone can confidently back up with just a camera and not fear hitting objects/children etc. If I look backward I wouldn't see a small child right behind my vehicle. The parking sensors and backup camera would, though. That's why I feel like it's weird to look backward instead of looking at the video feed from the wide-angle camera.
    - officeplant 4y ago
      I don't mean that I look backwards the whole time. I mainly look at the camera, but at the same time I'm glancing around checking mirrors and looking out of the windows for hazards. I've watched some people just stare down into a camera and then be surprised when they nearly hit a truck that was coming down the parking lot not yet visible in the camera.
      - janoc 4y ago
        That's why many cars include also a radar that detects and alerts you of approaching traffic from the sides before it comes into view - both camera and the driver (the blind spots when reversing are large). E.g. Mazda 3 has that - if it detects a vehicle or even a pedestrian approaching from the side while reversing, it starts beeping and showing orange chevrons on the camera screen to alert me. Obviously, this doesn't remove the need to look around and not rely only the sensors and cameras. The tech may fail and the ultimate responsibility is with the driver.
    - giantrobot 4y ago
      Which is where the utility of backup cameras comes from. It's nearly impossible, at least impractical, to design a car that holds human beings with a rear view that could provide the same field of view as a camera. Even if the back of the car was a giant pane of glass just having a trunk or back seat will occult the driver's rear view such they could miss a curb, pet, or small child. Even a shitty camera will give a better view than most cars' actual rear view from the driver's seat. They're even more useful when you consider they better enable shorter or taller drivers that don't have the ideal view out the back of the car. I check blind spots I know my camera has but then use the camera to actually back up because it's got a far better view from the back of my car than I do from the front seat.
- jwestbury 4y ago
  I nearly backed into a tree that managed to slip into the blind spot between stitched-together camera feeds on a rented BMW with 360-degree camera. I was only saved by the curb stopping me inches before impact with the tree. tl;dr, look around in real life, too. I'm not sure why the parking sensors didn't notice the tree or the curb, to be honest.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
Was just about to post this, glad someone else did. I have a car with both (birds eye view and parking sensors), and they are absolutely complimentary to each other, and I use them for different reasons. E.g. for squeezing through my garage door (I only have about 1.5 inch of clearance on each side) I like the birds eye view, but then when I pull up to the front of the garage I use the sensor because I know exactly how many inches from the front my car should be so that I can both walk around the front and the back if I need to unload stuff from the trunk.
- xenospn 4y ago
  How do you open the car door inside the garage?!
  - tom_ 4y ago
    At a guess, the garage is wider than its door.
    - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
      Correct.
  - doublesocket 4y ago
    They exit via the sunroof.
  - pieter_mj 4y ago
    By opening the door to the living room, opening the car door in the free space that has been cleared by opening the living room door. easy peasy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-MaC9fFtz0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-MaC9fFtz0 edit : English subtitles : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4jeN2QO1Gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4jeN2QO1Gs
    - sharno 4y ago
      lol, never saw that before, the last step of pushing the car to close its door is just a beauty
ajross 4y ago
It's a parking sensor. How many parking garages are textureless walls? Borrowing phrasing from the grandparent: "promise the impossible" may indeed be bad marketing, but "demand the needless and infeasible" is at least as much a problem here. Everything, everything about Tesla has to be some kind of existential argument about how This One Thing Proves Everything I Hate. And.. it's still just a parking sensor. Meh. I have the sonar equipment in my car and it works nicely, and I'd view its removal as a mild loss. But it wouldn't have changed the purchase decision. It's a technical mistake, and at the margins will probably hurt them in sales. But there's nothing here to justify the size of the thread we're spending on it. It's a parking sensor.
vardump 4y ago
"parallax fails to detect it" AFAIK, pretty much none of the driverless systems are using parallax. The reason why not is that parallax only gives good depth information at most up to about 10 feet. Disparity mapping is pretty limited in real life. Instead they get depth from video. I'd imagine in almost every situation the car would cast a shadow to that featureless wall. Although Tesla might not have a camera placed to a right spot to actually see that shadow...
- rcv 4y ago
  > Instead they get depth from video. Do you have a source for that? DfM is pretty much always a worse option than multi-camera reconstruction AFAIK. > almost every situation the car would cast a shadow to that featureless wall. I think "almost every situation" a pretty low bar for automotive safety. I don't know too much about what people do in the automotive world, but in robotics it's pretty common to have an IR pattern projector if you really need depth on featureless surfaces.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  While it does work for human eyes somehow, it is quite difficult in computer vision. It could give you precise information but you need to match two almost identical pictures via stereoscopy and that with a significant framerate and resolution. The advantage might be that you can have better conditions that a human skull provides, but the needed calculation power is quite significant. I think this can only ever be reliable with a projection. A pulsed line laser or something that is synced with the camera. Then again, a simple ultrasound sensor might do a better job. Otherwise the system might work, but is much more unstable in non-optimal conditions. Robustness is a pretty important feature for driverless systems. That said, stereoscopy would at least be better than only one camera.
mostdataisnice 4y ago
What it comes down to is a strong, dogmatic belief at Tesla that vision will solve all problems. It's not aligned with reality unfortunately
- giantrobot 4y ago
  A strong dogmatic vision that seems to come entirely from a desire for cost reduction rather than a concern for safety or functionality.
  - janoc 4y ago
    The set of parking sensors costs what? 100 USD? On a car that sells for upwards of $30-40k? That's a pretty ridiculous penny pinching.
    - xenospn 4y ago
      Almost every component of your car is the result of absolutely insane cost cutting and overworked suppliers. Car companies are notorious for putting enormous pressure on subcontractors to reduce prices at all costs.
    - aylmao 4y ago
      Worth noting there's other savings associated with reducing complexity; operational, supply, QA, etc. But yeah a car that's worth that much I think should certainly have them.
      - FredPret 4y ago
        I’d pay extra if they remove FM too. My previous car always blasted the radio when started. The radio is either white noise or people talking or music that isn’t mine… not sure which is worse.
        aylmao 4y ago
        Throwback to a past where you cloud remove the audio player and replace it with one you bought, all for not that expensive. Modern cars, like all tech, are losing customizability and repairability in favor of slick designs and vendor control. I just hope the car-equivalent of tower PCs never fully go away.
voisin 4y ago
> With birds eye view, parking sensors aren't really needed anymore, so they didn't place an order for new sensors. Is OP saying that the proximity beeping would be done by the cameras (some sort of computational videography like an iPhone?) rather than the old sensor type or that the only answer would be visual? If the latter, that’s crazy - my truck has amazing cameras but if I am trying to back up with the sun low in the sky behind me, or the camera covered in dirt or snow, it is useless.
bdcravens 4y ago
Yes, my EV6 has both, and they are just 2 different useful features.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
Theoretically they would not be needed, but I agree that the mechanism of some ultrasound sensors is much more reliable. Given that they are as cheap as they are, I don't know why a car would leave them out in the first place given the margins of modern cars.

by mertd 4y ago

gnicholas 4y ago

Parking sensors are handy if you're looking to the side or back when reversing, since you can hear them without looking at the screen in front. I honestly don't know where I'm supposed to look when backing up sometimes — it feels irresponsible to just look forward at a camera display, but in most cases that shows more than looking all around would. Parking sensors are nice because you can hear them chirp no matter where you look.

pohatoo 4y ago
A friend of mine was backing in to an unfamiliar parking garage and was watching the screen and all of a sudden we hear a scrape. There was an air duct over hanging the car and we hit it. The camera didn't think to show the roof. Luckily for us we hit the duct before hitting the sprinkler. That would have been a disaster.
officeplant 4y ago
>honestly don't know where I'm supposed to look when backing up sometimes Even with the addition of backup cameras I still look all around and check blind spots as if I didn't have a camera. No backup camera I've used shows enough information to be confident enough otherwise. Unless ya'll have some truly high end cars I don't see how anyone can confidently back up with just a camera and not fear hitting objects/children etc. I never even thought about my habit until a friend who is very terrified of riding in cars told me they were made comfortable by how much I look around me while driving. Which just convinces me further that most people shouldn't be on the road.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  > Unless ya'll have some truly high end cars I don't see how anyone can confidently back up with just a camera and not fear hitting objects/children etc. If I look backward I wouldn't see a small child right behind my vehicle. The parking sensors and backup camera would, though. That's why I feel like it's weird to look backward instead of looking at the video feed from the wide-angle camera.
  - officeplant 4y ago
    I don't mean that I look backwards the whole time. I mainly look at the camera, but at the same time I'm glancing around checking mirrors and looking out of the windows for hazards. I've watched some people just stare down into a camera and then be surprised when they nearly hit a truck that was coming down the parking lot not yet visible in the camera.
    - janoc 4y ago
      That's why many cars include also a radar that detects and alerts you of approaching traffic from the sides before it comes into view - both camera and the driver (the blind spots when reversing are large). E.g. Mazda 3 has that - if it detects a vehicle or even a pedestrian approaching from the side while reversing, it starts beeping and showing orange chevrons on the camera screen to alert me. Obviously, this doesn't remove the need to look around and not rely only the sensors and cameras. The tech may fail and the ultimate responsibility is with the driver.
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    Which is where the utility of backup cameras comes from. It's nearly impossible, at least impractical, to design a car that holds human beings with a rear view that could provide the same field of view as a camera. Even if the back of the car was a giant pane of glass just having a trunk or back seat will occult the driver's rear view such they could miss a curb, pet, or small child. Even a shitty camera will give a better view than most cars' actual rear view from the driver's seat. They're even more useful when you consider they better enable shorter or taller drivers that don't have the ideal view out the back of the car. I check blind spots I know my camera has but then use the camera to actually back up because it's got a far better view from the back of my car than I do from the front seat.
jwestbury 4y ago
I nearly backed into a tree that managed to slip into the blind spot between stitched-together camera feeds on a rented BMW with 360-degree camera. I was only saved by the curb stopping me inches before impact with the tree. tl;dr, look around in real life, too. I'm not sure why the parking sensors didn't notice the tree or the curb, to be honest.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

Was just about to post this, glad someone else did. I have a car with both (birds eye view and parking sensors), and they are absolutely complimentary to each other, and I use them for different reasons. E.g. for squeezing through my garage door (I only have about 1.5 inch of clearance on each side) I like the birds eye view, but then when I pull up to the front of the garage I use the sensor because I know exactly how many inches from the front my car should be so that I can both walk around the front and the back if I need to unload stuff from the trunk.

xenospn 4y ago
How do you open the car door inside the garage?!
- tom_ 4y ago
  At a guess, the garage is wider than its door.
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    Correct.
- doublesocket 4y ago
  They exit via the sunroof.
- pieter_mj 4y ago
  By opening the door to the living room, opening the car door in the free space that has been cleared by opening the living room door. easy peasy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-MaC9fFtz0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-MaC9fFtz0 edit : English subtitles : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4jeN2QO1Gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4jeN2QO1Gs
  - sharno 4y ago
    lol, never saw that before, the last step of pushing the car to close its door is just a beauty

ajross 4y ago

It's a parking sensor. How many parking garages are textureless walls? Borrowing phrasing from the grandparent: "promise the impossible" may indeed be bad marketing, but "demand the needless and infeasible" is at least as much a problem here. Everything, everything about Tesla has to be some kind of existential argument about how This One Thing Proves Everything I Hate. And.. it's still just a parking sensor. Meh. I have the sonar equipment in my car and it works nicely, and I'd view its removal as a mild loss. But it wouldn't have changed the purchase decision. It's a technical mistake, and at the margins will probably hurt them in sales. But there's nothing here to justify the size of the thread we're spending on it. It's a parking sensor.

vardump 4y ago

"parallax fails to detect it" AFAIK, pretty much none of the driverless systems are using parallax. The reason why not is that parallax only gives good depth information at most up to about 10 feet. Disparity mapping is pretty limited in real life. Instead they get depth from video. I'd imagine in almost every situation the car would cast a shadow to that featureless wall. Although Tesla might not have a camera placed to a right spot to actually see that shadow...

rcv 4y ago
> Instead they get depth from video. Do you have a source for that? DfM is pretty much always a worse option than multi-camera reconstruction AFAIK. > almost every situation the car would cast a shadow to that featureless wall. I think "almost every situation" a pretty low bar for automotive safety. I don't know too much about what people do in the automotive world, but in robotics it's pretty common to have an IR pattern projector if you really need depth on featureless surfaces.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
While it does work for human eyes somehow, it is quite difficult in computer vision. It could give you precise information but you need to match two almost identical pictures via stereoscopy and that with a significant framerate and resolution. The advantage might be that you can have better conditions that a human skull provides, but the needed calculation power is quite significant. I think this can only ever be reliable with a projection. A pulsed line laser or something that is synced with the camera. Then again, a simple ultrasound sensor might do a better job. Otherwise the system might work, but is much more unstable in non-optimal conditions. Robustness is a pretty important feature for driverless systems. That said, stereoscopy would at least be better than only one camera.

mostdataisnice 4y ago

What it comes down to is a strong, dogmatic belief at Tesla that vision will solve all problems. It's not aligned with reality unfortunately

giantrobot 4y ago
A strong dogmatic vision that seems to come entirely from a desire for cost reduction rather than a concern for safety or functionality.
- janoc 4y ago
  The set of parking sensors costs what? 100 USD? On a car that sells for upwards of $30-40k? That's a pretty ridiculous penny pinching.
  - xenospn 4y ago
    Almost every component of your car is the result of absolutely insane cost cutting and overworked suppliers. Car companies are notorious for putting enormous pressure on subcontractors to reduce prices at all costs.
  - aylmao 4y ago
    Worth noting there's other savings associated with reducing complexity; operational, supply, QA, etc. But yeah a car that's worth that much I think should certainly have them.
    - FredPret 4y ago
      I’d pay extra if they remove FM too. My previous car always blasted the radio when started. The radio is either white noise or people talking or music that isn’t mine… not sure which is worse.
      - aylmao 4y ago
        Throwback to a past where you cloud remove the audio player and replace it with one you bought, all for not that expensive. Modern cars, like all tech, are losing customizability and repairability in favor of slick designs and vendor control. I just hope the car-equivalent of tower PCs never fully go away.

voisin 4y ago

> With birds eye view, parking sensors aren't really needed anymore, so they didn't place an order for new sensors. Is OP saying that the proximity beeping would be done by the cameras (some sort of computational videography like an iPhone?) rather than the old sensor type or that the only answer would be visual? If the latter, that’s crazy - my truck has amazing cameras but if I am trying to back up with the sun low in the sky behind me, or the camera covered in dirt or snow, it is useless.

bdcravens 4y ago

Yes, my EV6 has both, and they are just 2 different useful features.

raxxorraxor 4y ago

Theoretically they would not be needed, but I agree that the mechanism of some ultrasound sensors is much more reliable. Given that they are as cheap as they are, I don't know why a car would leave them out in the first place given the margins of modern cars.