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> This is a result of Tesla’s strategy to rely upon Tesla Vision to replace all sensors – which they’ve successfully used most recently to replace the ultrasoni
by pavel_lishin 2y ago
> This is a result of Tesla’s strategy to rely upon Tesla Vision to replace all sensors – which they’ve successfully used most recently to replace the ultrasonic parking sensors (USS) on their vehicles. Tesla believes that vision is the solution to achieving all self-driving capabilities, and this includes the elimination of extraneous sensors such as USS and radar.
Why are they so hell-bent on using nothing but video?
- dontreact 2y agoElon’s belief that humans doing it with vision is proof it can be done with video
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoYou’re right about Elon but I’ve thought about it and it’s flawed reasoning. Humans don’t do it “with vision” we do it with five senses and the human brain. The computer is severely limited compared to the human brain, so in the context of things like LiDAR, the computer needs all the help it can get. And for rain sensing, the camera doesn’t see the windshield like a person does!
- yareal 2y agoConsiderably more than five senses, actually. We rely on a huge variety of inputs beyond the basic ones when we drive.
- ASalazarMX 2y agoVision and hearing are the main senses we use to driving, and touch a distant third. Using taste, smell or proprioception means something is probably wrong with your vehicle.
- SequoiaHope 2y agoI thought about smell but actually vehicles do malfunction, and smell can be an important indicator. “Something is wrong with your vehicle” is a real scenario that actually happens pretty often.
- kranner 2y agoI feel we must be using smell all the time to be able to detect when a burning odour begins to arise. It’s just that we’re not aware of it when nothing unusual happens.
- coffeebeqn 2y agoIf you’re not running AC you can certainly smell rain also
- SkyPuncher 2y agoPersonally, proprioception ranks ahead of hearing for me. Vision is first, but proprioception is how assess nearly everything else. Braking speed, acceleration, throttle input, cornering, traction, hydroplaning, tire pressure (even in specific tires), alignment issues (down to the specific wheel), balance issues, toe rod issues, transmission issues, engines issues, wind, payload, towing, etc, etc, etc. I could probably tell you within 100lbs how much and roughly where payload is in the vehicle simply by feeling how the car is driving. I literally cannot do racing game because I can’t sense the vehicle. Flip side, I used to think professional racers were crazy for being able to call in subtle issues to their crew chief. Turns out when you drive a specific car enough, you learn how it out to feel.
- mkl 2y agoDriving without proprioception is probably almost impossible. That's how you know where your hands are, how the steering wheel is turned, where your feet are, how to move your hand to the indicator lever, etc.
- schneems 2y agoAlternatively: it’s a cost cutting measure and the “humans can do it with vision” is essentially a marketing spin.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dawnerd 2y agoVision would make sense... if the cameras were placed back where the driver actually sits.
- threeseed 2y agoAnd if you could rapidly move the cameras in multiple dimensions.
- _yb2s 2y agoThat is a reasonable argument that it is likely to be theoretically possible. It’s absolute madness to jump from “theoretically possible” to production without actually inventing and testing the technology. What is going on over there at Tesla? I suspect an emperors new clothes type of situation where employees are too terrified to state basic facts, like “we tested 20 ideas out but none worked, we haven’t figured out how to get this to work yet.” Not the kind of culture I want designing a 2 ton vehicle I’m trusting my families lives to.
- selcuka 2y ago> I suspect an emperors new clothes type of situation where employees are too terrified to state basic facts, like “we tested 20 ideas out but none worked Or maybe the emperor is a "idea #16 is good enough for me" type of person?
- fastball 2y agoGiving Musk the benefit of the doubt, probably his thinking is more along the lines of: "I'd like to solve this with vision. Sure, we can ship a $5 part to do it the tried-and-true way, but if we do that then we're probably never gonna solve it with vision, because there will no longer be a pressing need to do so. So I'm gonna force us to not ship our cars with a proper rain sensor in the hope that it will continually push my teams to get this shit done and do the improbable".
- lucianbr 2y agoThat sounds so cool when a billionaire vision-guy says it. Too bad reality is that "pressing need" isn't magic, and sometimes just isn't enough. Like this time.
- _yb2s 2y agoThere’s no doubt to give him the benefit of… even in your version they still decided to ship a basic feature that doesn’t work in a production automobile. Other car manufacturers push teams hard to develop new tech also, but they also test the heck out of them so they’re 100% functional before they would put it into production. Piech was famous for outlandish demands on engineers at VW, but his demands took the form of the desired test results: the Phaeton had to be capable of being driven all day at 186 mph with an exterior temperature of 122 °F whilst maintaining the interior temperature at 72 °F. And they did it…
- bryanlarsen 2y agoHumans do it with variable focus vision. The Tesla cameras are permanently focused at infinity.
- nradov 2y agoNormal human eyes also have more dynamic range than the cheap cameras used in Teslas. This matters in some difficult lighting conditions.
- cma 2y agoFor seeing rain it's mostly that they are offset back from the windshield more. People over 50 barely have variable focus vision and it isn't really important in driving.
- tedunangst 2y agoThis is true in a sense, but humans incorporate so much more information. Like if I drive past a sprinkler, I know there will be a short burst of water hitting the window. But this requires a fairly complex assessment of the surrounding environment.
- snailmailman 2y agoBut it can be done better with more sensors. Why handicap the technology? It seems to me like the compromise isn’t worth it here. My phone can take my face scan in a room that’s pitch black, because it uses infrared sensors and a projection of dots. It’s able to check who I am, regardless of the natural light in the environment. If that technology was limited to “only a camera” it would be way worse. A camera is cheaper than LiDAR. But it’s also less capable. As best I can tell. Other cars just use a dedicated infrared sensor to detect the water? Seems like a weird corner to cut. Seems like tesla cut those in favor of just having other cameras attempt to fill in? But seems like that isn’t working.
- heavyset_go 2y agoI think that's more of justification and excuse than a legitimate belief.
- dontreact 2y agoI know a few people who work/worked there. I don’t agree with it but it is a genuinely held belief
- heavyset_go 2y agoThat's terrifying
- CamperBob2 2y agoIt's cheap.
- debatem1 2y agoGuessing, but the cheapest sensor is the one you already have installed.
- ghostcluster 2y agoIt feels to me like another one of Elon's stubborn whims. Sometimes these result in great innovations, like Tesla's giant car part 'gigacasting'. Other times, they result in deciding to rename Twitter "X" and forcing a team of engineers to spend over a year combing meticulously through the codebase to remove all references to "twitter.com"
- sho_hn 2y agoRegarding the gigacasting: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-retreats-next-generation-gigacasting-manufacturing-process-2024-05-01/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...
- fbdab103 2y agoArticle really would have helped if I could have understood how much cheaper/faster it is to make one piece instead of three.
- yreg 2y agoThat article states that they are retracting to their previous method of gigacasting. The one that other carmakers are starting to use too, inspired by Tesla.
- fastball 2y agoIt actually says that they were attempting to gigacast their new vehicle as a single piece rather than three pieces, but that proved difficult so they are going back to gigacasting three separate pieces. But your point stands: they are still gigacasting, just for now they are not doing the very ambitious "gigacast in a single bound" plan.
- abracadaniel 2y agoProbably related to them dumping the model 2 project.
- 2y ago
- hanief 2y agoI think they falsely believe human only needs one sense to navigate: sight. But we actually use our hearing, smell, and touch too. So, multiple type sensors is actually better than only one.
- jimberlage 2y agoFully agree - also it’s a bit weird on Tesla’s part to think that there could be no possible way to make things better than a human in some regards. If humans had radar, it would probably make us more capable, not less.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- binkHN 2y agoI imagine smell and touch are less valuable when driving a vehicle.
- ASalazarMX 2y agoTouch is probably only needed to feel when you bump into something you didn't see, hopefully at low speed... but taste, yuck!
- ohmyiv 2y ago>Touch is probably only needed to feel when you bump into something you didn't see I think you're underestimating the importance of touch, especially when it comes to steering and pedal control.
- ASalazarMX 2y agoThat's a limitation of us. We need touch and indicators to gauge how effective we are, but a machine can precisely throttle 23% or keep the steering wheel at 19 degrees without need to gauge how hard it is pushing the actuators. Touch is nice, but hardly crucial for driving.
- ajcp 2y agoFrom the article: > Tesla likes to avoid solutions that only solve a single problem – such as adding a rain sensor. It is an additional manufacturing complication, adds additional cost to vehicles, and segments Tesla’s vehicles between model years.
- ra7 2y agoCombination of cost savings and “first principles” thinking. They tried to save $5 per car by not including a rain sensor. It’s a few million dollars in savings at their scale. At the same time, they spend time and resources engineering a “smart” solution to auto wipers using cameras. And they continue to spend effort on that because it still doesn’t work. Penny wise, pound foolish.
- selcuka 2y agoObviously it's not the $5, but the research that matters. We are beta-testing their vision based rain detection algorithm for them, for free (in fact we are paying $5 to test it).
- benhurmarcel 2y agoThat data would be a lot more valuable to them if it was paired with an actual rain sensor though.
- SkyPuncher 2y agoThe rain sensor is the one component that I’m shocked they would just spend the $5. It works so freaking well.
- makeitdouble 2y agoThe weirdest part from the outside: reliably detecting it's raining should have obvious positive impact on the driving side as well. For instance to better interpret the tires slipping, or even anticipate worse precision from some of the sensors.
- relaxing 2y agoYou do not want to start making handling adjustments based on rain on the windshield, when the road could already be slick from prior rainfall or other conditions.
- infecto 2y agoI like this take a lot and think its spot on. It feels very much like one of those decisions within a startup where the team decides to build their own tool that does the same thing as an equivalent commercial offering and consider it cheaper without thinking about the time to develop, maintain and improve.
- LeoPanthera 2y ago> successfully I don't know anyone who thinks the vision-based parking "radar" actually works well. Indeed, I've heard of several incidents of people bumping into things.
- thebruce87m 2y agoIt’s… ok. Much better since the update. Normal parking sensors aren’t infallible either. My colleague scraped his BMW i4 last week and it has proper sensors.
- devwastaken 2y agoThere's multiple videos demonstrating Tesla's that self drive themselves into obstacles, including trains, because video cannot properly figure out obstacles.
- rgmerk 2y agoBecause they think they can build a cheaper car that way. Same reason they haven’t even offered an instrument display in front of the driver as an option, and replaced the indicator stalks with buttons (which from reports works acceptably well in California, not so much in, say, the UK). Underlying it all is Tesla’s belief that the driver is a legacy feature that is going away Real Soon Now. Frankly, it seems like they’re 90% of the way there (with all that implies about how long it will take to get the rest of the way).
- ikiris 2y agoBecause if they had something in addition, that might cost another dollar that wouldn't be going to his Twitter debt.