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Tesla drives into Wile E. Coyote fake road wall in camera vs. Lidar test
- Mo3 2y agoAside of all the other obvious reasons to not get a Tesla these days this is #1 imo. Camera feeds and a neural network are not enough for self driving, no matter how much they're training. Never ever.
- nickthegreek 2y agoAt the very least they seem to have downsides that the can be easily overcame with a lidar system/combination of them. That alone is enough to help me decide when its my family that would be the passengers.
- crooked-v 2y agoAnd every other modern auto-braking safety system, except for Subaru for some reason, incorporates at least basic proximity radar.
- bpodgursky 2y agoI am not claiming that Tesla FSD is at this point, but it is obviously possible to use cameras and neural networks to drive a car, because that is literally how humans drive.
- beepbooptheory 2y agoHubert Dreyfus rolling in his grave..
- vel0city 2y agoHumans have more senses than just vision. Also a few cameras aren't completely covering the range of human vision.
- bpodgursky 2y ago? Do you use your sense of smell to drive a car? Are deaf people allowed to drive cars? No, the cameras we have now, or at least the data processing, is probably not there yet, but it's absurd to claim it's "never" possible. It's obviously either possible in a year or fifteen years, all basic hardware is advancing fast.
- tredre3 2y ago> it's absurd to claim it's "never" possible Absolutely correct. The problem is that Elon has been saying that for ten years and we're not really closer to it being true. So, in the meantime, would it kill him to admit that he was wrong about lidar?
- vel0city 2y ago> but it's absurd to claim it's "never" possible. I've never made such a claim. I use self driving features in my car a good bit. They use more than just cameras though. > Are deaf people allowed to drive cars? Sure, but I'd say someone unable to hear things would be disadvanted at driving and potentially less safe. But you've also completely ignored the sense of feeling, understanding the feedback you're feeling on the wheel. Ignoring the feeling of the wheels on the road. Ignoring the feeling of the g forces as the car moves. Ignoring the feeling of body sway when it's windy. You're also ignoring as others have mentioned the theory of mind of how other things actually behave around the streets. We're still not 100% sure these automated systems can actually comprehend these things. All things a computer could sense, no doubt. But it's far more than just a few cameras.
- bpodgursky 2y ago> Camera feeds and a neural network are not enough for self driving, no matter how much they're training. Never ever. This is the OP claim I am saying is absurd.
- intrasight 2y agoYes, but I don't think you could argue the point that the visual sense is probably 95% of it. But even so, it could be decades before computers achieve the sensory capabilities of the human visual system. Why not, during those hundred years, add some lidar to the sensory mix. Just because it didn't evolve in humans doesn't mean it's not a good thing. Bats and dolphins use the biological analogue very effectively.
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- seszett 2y agoDo Tesla cars have stereo vision, though? I don't think they build a 3D model of the world around them at all, while humans do (not only based on our stereo vision) and largely rely on that to drive.
- andsoitis 2y agoApparently, Tesla has stated that they do not use paired cameras for ranging or depth perception, which is the standard approach for stereoscopic vision. Instead of stereoscopic vision, Tesla's neural net processes the data from the cameras to create a 3D view of the surroundings. https://electrek.co/2021/07/07/hacker-tesla-full-self-drivings-vision-depth-perception-neural-net-can-see/ https://electrek.co/2021/07/07/hacker-tesla-full-self-drivin...
- iknowstuff 2y agoThey do have 2-3 front facing cameras and their e2ee does necessarily get the same understanding of the world around it.
- sorenjan 2y agoThey do build a 3D model: https://youtu.be/6x-Xb_uT7ts?t=129 https://youtu.be/6x-Xb_uT7ts?t=129 Although I think it's interesting that even in his demo there are cars popping in and out of existence in the 3D visualization of the environment. I don't think that makes much sense, if a car is observed and then occluded the logical conclusion should be that it's probably still there, maybe add an increasing uncertainty to its location, instead of assuming it disappeared.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoTesla switched from a 3D model that with the popping glitchiness you describe to a 4D model without the popping several months ago.
- SR2Z 2y agoSure, but during the entire time of Autopilot/FSD so far, Teslas have been crashing in ridiculous ways and killing their drivers. The "but they've patched that failure!" excuse has ALSO been around, and while the cars are definitely getting better, they're still also definitely killing people in ridiculous ways.
- manquer 2y agoThe actual problem statement is can such a system do so safely. If it is just to drive a car all you need are some stepper motors and a raspberry pi. The goal is to reduce accident and fatalities not eliminate jobs . If LiDAR has 1/10th the fatality rate of camera setup and is less costlier than 10x the value of human life(as used in legal proceedings) then it still the only viable option
- Aloisius 2y agoI think artificial neural networks was implied and there is a world of difference between how biological and artificial neural networks function. That said, I'm not sure that's what the barrier is. I think humans would have trouble driving with a fixed low resolution camera too.
- Detrytus 2y ago1. Human "neural network" is few orders of magnitude more powerful than the best neural network available right now. 2. This might be obvious question but: Humans have two eyes and they are few centimeters apart so that we could use stereoscopic vision to estimate the distance. Does Tesla FSD even attempt to do something similar?
- bpodgursky 2y agoIt is legal and safe to drive with 1 working eye. Humans have many ways of modeling distances in the real world that do not rely on stereoscopic depth.
- jayd16 2y agoA human is not just a NN, but I do wonder how well a human could drive given the Tesla camera feed. Seems like it would surely be worse than behind the wheel.
- rtkwe 2y agoNeural nets generally don't have the same level of interconnections and neurons as the human brain because it's tougher to train. I agree in principal that the human brain should be possible to replicate in a computer but I'm not sure we can do it with the current design of single direction connections between nodes. I highly doubt we'll be able to scale it down to a machine that's reasonable to fit in a car any time soon though and that's what Tesla is promising they can do with the current hardware package installed in cars (never mind that they also promised it'd be possible with the last major revision and had to walk that back and will have to install upgraded electronics in people's vehicles, unless they're just going to strand all HW3 owners who paid of FSD but the hardware is to wimpy to handle it unless that's changed since the robotaxi event).
- nickthegreek 2y agoDon’t we want it to be like way better than humans at driving? The dream pitch was that we wouldn’t have tens of thousands of preventable deaths every year. So install the damn lidar. At some point it is coming down to penny pinching and that means that preventable deaths number will not sink to the promise.
- ryandvm 2y agoThe problem with that argument is that a Tesla isn't nearly as clever as a human. I have never thought a white tractor trailer disappeared as it crossed in front of me against a bright sky. I know that I should drive a little bit slower on Halloween evening because there are kids running around. I know that I need to be a little more cautious driving past the playground or dog park. I have object permanence. As it is, AI just isn't smart enough to rely on only vision and they ought to be taking advantage of every economically viable sensor to make up for the difference. Hell, I thought the goal was to do better than humans?
- stnmtn 2y agoI get your point, but do you think, over the course of a decade, the average human driver or the average car with tesla FSD is more likely to have an accident where the the fault is their own?
- ModernMech 2y agoEyes are not cameras and brains are not neural networks. Until we have artificial techniques that can match the performance and functionality of this amazing biological equipment we have, our cars must rely on other sensors like LiDAR to make up for the deficiencies in our artificial perception networks that are not overcome by current techniques.
- consumer451 2y agoMusk himself said during the last Tesla AI Day: ~"FSD will basically require AGI." I would add that it would require not only AGI, but real-time AGI!
- sMarsIntruder 2y agoYou started with a bias and ended with another one.
- desixavryn 2y agoHave you used latest FSD on HW4 recently? If not, please try it out for a few days and then come back to correct your comment :-)
- Hamuko 2y agoHave they managed to fix the "parking sensors"?
- desixavryn 2y agoUsing vision only on my HW4-Model-Y it seems to work fine.
- windward 2y agoHonest question: why does the HW4 matter? Hasn't FSD been sold as a service all cars with older hardware can use?
- dist-epoch 2y ago> Camera feeds and a neural network are not enough for self driving I guess we should ban humans driving then.
- sMarsIntruder 2y agoI’m noticing how comments with common sense gets easily downvoted.
- lowmagnet 2y agoI do wonder if this is provable via information theory.
- hnburnsy 2y agoAgreed, but I believe that camera feeds and infrastructure changes could be enough.
- FeloniousHam 2y agoHave you actually used FSD for, say, a week? I'm a fan and everyday user of FSD. It's not perfect, but it's immensely useful, and frankly amazing. It works. It drives me to work and back everyday, with maybe 1 or 2 interventions each way. I've never met any actual Tesla driver who was confused by the marketing (they're all tech guys). Some like it, some don't think it's worth the money, but everyone understands what it is. (I'm not arguing against more detection hardware, but engineering is about trade offs.)
- bingofuel 2y agoBut not every Tesla owner is a tech guy. Not every Tesla driver lives in perfect sunny conditions. And in this case, a misinformed (or not informed at all) buyer's "engineering trade off" is death.
- thefourthchime 2y agoIt drives at night and in pretty heavy rain just fine.
- FeloniousHam 2y agoIt is not fully autonomous. It quits when blinded by the rising sun. It does drive in the rain. I just drove for an hour through a torrential downpour on a road trip, way less stressful than without it.
- mordymoop 2y agoI don’t live near a lot of Wild E. Coyote fake road walls. I get the sense it’s more of a Midwest thing.
- viraptor 2y agoBut that wall may come to you. There's a few large truck trailers I've seen completely covered on a side with a picture which could be interpreted as a road / sidewalk / smaller car / whatever.
- crooked-v 2y agoAlso, any wall at a T-intersection with a mural that looks vaguely landscape-y.
- taneq 2y agoI dunno, I generally try to avoid driving off the road into a landscape. That said, I very well might drive into a high-res billboard of the exact scenery behind the billboard, if I wasn’t expecting it on a long straight country road. The in-car view in that video looks pretty damn convincing, sure you’d know something was off but I wouldn’t bet on 100% of drivers spotting the deception. Maybe next video he can show that Autopilot won’t detect a land mine, or an excavation just after the crest of a hill.
- crooked-v 2y agoThe point of driver assistance systems is to be better at this stuff than humans, and most actually are because they don't leave it up to just cameras and "we'll figure out how to make it work as good as radar/lidar eventually, I promise".
- bryanlarsen 2y ago> and most actually are From the testing I've seen, there are no Automatic Emergency Braking systems on the market that are anywhere close to being as good as a human that's paying attention.
- anotherboffin 2y agoOh but no worries, FSD is a “solved problem” and should be done in 18 months or so…
- ravenstine 2y agoRemember, you gotta break some eggs to make an omelette; every time something crashes, explodes, or kills – that's a good thing! /s
- sMarsIntruder 2y agoIn fact, he didn’t use FSD.
- timeon 2y agoNot one the other car either but that one have not failed.
- devnullbrain 2y agoOh dear, your timeline casts doubts on the ability for a Tesla to self-drive from LA to New York before the end of 2017
- eldaisfish 2y agoHere is the original Mark Rober video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQJL3htsDyQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQJL3htsDyQ I dislike the fact that Mark's videos appear to increasingly borrow from the Mr Beast style, which is very distracting. There's also the fact that half the video has nothing to do with cars in the first place. The main result here is not surprising - Tesla's vehicles are plagued by a litany of poor engineering decisions, many at a fundamental level. Not using Lidar for depth detection is beyond stupid.
- nickthegreek 2y agoI found the disney side video extremely interesting and entertaining. It would have been nice to just pad each of them out individually with enough content to have them stand on their own while meeting the criteria he needs to appease the algorithm.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoThe first half explains lidar in laymen's terms
- pavel_lishin 2y ago> I dislike the fact that Mark's videos appear to increasingly borrow from the Mr Beast style, which is very distracting. Yeah. My daughter likes him, but this latest thumbnail made me roll my eyes.
- jnwatson 2y agoDon't hate the player, hate the game. This is what attracts the eye balls.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoI think I'm allowed to dislike the game, and to stop watching his videos.
- jbaber 2y agoI know what you mean. But he's trying his best to be the new Mr. Wizard and youtube has a very long list of demands.
- sitkack 2y agoWe already knew this to be true by the clusters of Tesla fatalities around certain bay area off ramps.
- sMarsIntruder 2y agoThis statement goes against any report and analysis on basic autopilot, not even FSD. Just like the video, that if you’d take some time to watch l, you’d see that’s just basic autopilot. Data is saying other things, but if we want to deny gravity, I’m ok with it.
- sitkack 2y agoChill bro, you can have FSD when it comes out.
- sumeno 2y agoWhat data? If you link to Tesla statements that's marketing not data.
- sMarsIntruder 2y agohttps://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport Ok, this is marketing.
- sumeno 2y agoYes, it is, and it is a misleading comparison. It's is comparing Tesla autopilot, which can only be used in certain circumstances, to the US average which includes scenarios where autopilot wouldn't be used.
- 93po 2y agothis is factually just not true, at all. like outrageously not true. why would you just completely make something up like this?
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- desixavryn 2y agoI am a massive fan of Mark Roeper. Unfortunately he completely f**d up this one. He tested using Autopilot, not the latest FSD on HW4, which is worlds apart in capabilities. It is possible that the latest FSD would also crash, but that would be a valid test of FSD capabilities. Testing using Autopilot and calling it "FSD crashes" is a HUGE misrepresentation of facts. I am hoping Mark will post an update to the video.
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- sschueller 2y agoIf he doesn't know the difference how is the average car buyer that sees Elon sell such features supposed to know?
- bryanlarsen 2y agoIt's $8000 for FSD. You're going to know whether you bought it or not.
- zaptrem 2y agoTo be clear, this is like buying a car that has traffic aware cruise control available as an option, but turning it down, then insisting the TACC is broken and dangerous because it doesn’t work on your car.
- tredre3 2y ago
- deedubaya 2y agoWhere can I buy the alternative lidar based car?
- crooked-v 2y agoGM is working on it, but no indication yet when the lidwr version will be released. Currently their Super Cruise uses radar and cameras, plus pre-scanned lidar maps of roads that it compares everything against in real time.
- chvid 2y agoIn China.
- randerson 2y agoThat looked like a Lexus with its insignia blacked out, so I'm guessing it was a custom build. But if you want a car that comes with LIDAR, look at the Volvo EX90.
- hnburnsy 2y agoNot in use yet on the EX90, just collecting data... https://www.volvocars.com/us/cars/ex90-electric/features/ https://www.volvocars.com/us/cars/ex90-electric/features/ >Lidar equipped on early production vehicles will begin in data collection mode and over time the technological capabilities of the lidar will expand to include additional sensing scenarios as part of our Safe Space Technology, including the ability to detect objects in darkness at highway speeds up to 820 feet ahead.
- jayd16 2y agoIf you get a 2020(19?) model 3 you get the proximity radar as well.
- bspinner 2y agoSince it could be misleading without this info: radar has been removed from newer model years.
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- wnevets 2y agoTesla also drives into tractor trailers because they think they're clouds
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- TrackerFF 2y agoBut seriously, how much more would Tesla have to spend on each unit, if they were to include a LIDAR sensor? why not optical and LIDAR?
- bspinner 2y agoOr reintroduce proximity radar at least.
- rocauc 2y agoI wonder how long until techniques like Depth Anything (https://depth-anything-v2.github.io/ https://depth-anything-v2.github.io/) provide parity with human depth perception. In Mark Rober's tests, I'm not sure even a human would have passed the fog scenario, however.
- ricardobeat 2y agoShouldn’t they have tested a human driver too? I have the feeling a majority of drivers would also go right through it if unaware of the setup, as it’s such an inconceivable scenario.
- crooked-v 2y agoThe whole point of driver assistance systems is to be better at this stuff than humans drivers, and most of them, with much less grandiose marketing, would have "seen" the wall in time to emergency brake.
- riehwvfbk 2y agoAnd the whole point of this "test" was to go "hurrrr Elon is dumb" and get the "smart" people to click.
- nickthegreek 2y agoThe thing that made Elon look dumb was his car not doing what his competition cars can while dismissing and removing the tech that enabled this safety.
- ricardobeat 2y agoThere are barely any Lidar equipped cars in the market, so the competition doesn’t really have an advantage. The one in the video, and Waymo, are not models you can buy. Nio is one of the few actually selling them but not available in the US and still basically unknown outside China. I’m not convinced it would pass the Coyote test either, and the car manual warns that a flat wall or barrier, animals etc will not trigger AEB. As far as I understand, LiDAR data can be quite noisy so it’s not commonly used for emergency breaking at speed. The NCAP tests are all focused on car, bicycle and pedestrian detection (all camera based). Most cars on the market fail on AEB for other tests [2] even when the obstacle is another car sideways for example. I’m not rooting for Tesla at this point, but there is a reason they did not add any other production cars to this test… it’s 100% a media stunt. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9G8vrz7bMM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9G8vrz7bMM (German) [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dCHFHhGB8c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dCHFHhGB8c
- modeless 2y agoAdding to the weirdness of this video, it appears Mark Rober faked his footage to make it look like he was using a Google Pixel to record screen video, but he was actually using an iPhone as can be seen in the screen reflection. And he put the "G" logo in the wrong orientation in the faked shot. Also it's weird that he's acting like he's so special for having seen the inside of Space Mountain as if it's some kind of secret. Millions have seen it all lit up. Back when the PeopleMover/Rocket Rods attractions were running it was a common sight, as the track ran through Space Mountain and sometimes it would be under maintenance with the lights on. And of course in emergency situations they turn the lights on as well. Another one: he claims they use thin curtains to project ghosts on in the Haunted Mansion which is true, but while he's talking about it he shows footage of a part of the ride that uses Pepper's ghost which is a completely different (and more interesting) technique. Some of the ghosts he shows while talking about it could not be achieved with the curtain method. Come to think of it, Pepper's ghost could fool lidar. Maybe that's why he didn't talk about it even though it would have been more interesting. It would have been inconvenient for his sponsor. Someone setting up a reflective surface across a road is probably about as likely in the real world as a Wile E. Coyote-style fake road wall.
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- riehwvfbk 2y ago> The last scenario of a Wile E. Coyote-style wall with a fake road painted on it was obviously not realistic ...shows a photorealistic road on said wall. Last I checked, human drivers didn't have organs capable of LIDAR. Most would have crashed into this ridiculous obstacle.
- silok 2y agoI think this is a valid point, the tesla is not necessarily worse than humans. This whole test setup is built around the advantages of lidar which of course will detect the obstacle. Human driving through painted wall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NRerHC7g-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NRerHC7g-0
- dgrin91 2y agoI watched the video, the Wile E. Coyote fake wall stuff is a gimmick meant to draw kids in. That, however, par for the course of his videos; they are designed to hook kids into engineering with silly things and secretly teach real engineering before getting to the punch line. In this case the real engineering is that Tesla's choice of relying on only visual camera has fundamental issues that can not be solved with cameras only. Namely, visually blocking elements, such as heavy rain, fog, or even blinding lights just pretty much can not be solved by camera-only sensors. (though I guess one "solution" would be for the system to say I can't see enough to drive, so I'm not going to, but then no one would buy the system)
- nashashmi 2y agoIt is also a promotion for Lidar tech, Telling future engineers to be cautious of camera vision-only driving systems. I agree with Mark. But not because of the tests he intentionally created to make Lidar look better. I really do hope camera only tech will do better than this. But I also hope that lidar technology will eventually make it better. Right now , LIDAR needs much heavier computing power to be reasonably powerful.
- _aavaa_ 2y agoFog and heavy rain are not “tests he intentionally created to make Lidar look better.”
- nashashmi 2y agoThe extreme fog and heavy rain are dramatic conditions that no existing driver can navigate within. These conditions make a strong case for involving advanced tech, i.e. a better LiDAR. And that is what happened here: a scenario that no driver without assisted tools can pass, and neither can a Tesla. Do you remember when Tesla had radar? The idea was brilliant at a time when LiDAR tech was difficult to get en masse. Radar plus camera does what LiDAR could do at lower computing powers.
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- CaffeineLD50 2y agoNothing new hear in this well produced video championing LIDAR. Tesla now suffers from a toxic brand way worse for its future than missing lidar.
- sMarsIntruder 2y agoThis is probably the right answer to all the other arguments I read above and below. Just an easy target for haters now and then.
- dzhiurgis 2y agoHe actually disabled the autopilot, you can clearly see the system is off: https://youtu.be/IQJL3htsDyQ?t=942 https://youtu.be/IQJL3htsDyQ?t=942
- hnburnsy 2y agoMark posted a video on X showing him getting up to speed, engaging autopilot 4 seconds before the wall, and autopilot disengaging 1 second before hitting the wall. https://x.com/MarkRober/status/1901449395327094898 https://x.com/MarkRober/status/1901449395327094898 Did he do the same with LiDAR only turning it on 4 seconds before an impact?
- tzs 2y agoThe test would have been more interesting if it had included a couple more or so production cars. From what I've read only a couple of cars are available with that expensive Luminar LiDAR. I'd like to see how more ordinary automating braking systems would fare, which I think usually use radar and camera.
- hnburnsy 2y ago>The test would have been more interesting if it had included a couple more or so production cars. From what I've read only a couple of cars are available with that expensive Luminar LiDAR There are none you can buy in the US that have LiDAR active, but certainly Luminar could have gotten one from its partner Volvo and had Mark driven that instead of the professionally driven test rig that was used.
- hnburnsy 2y agoMark posted a video on X showing him getting up to speed, engaging autopilot 4 seconds before the wall, and autopilot disengaging 1 second before hitting the wall. https://x.com/MarkRober/status/1901449395327094898 https://x.com/MarkRober/status/1901449395327094898 >Here is the raw footage of my Tesla going through the wall. Not sure why it disengages 17 frames before hitting the wall but my feet weren’t touching the brake or gas. The playing field level here was significantly slanted comparing a production Tesla, driven by Mark, engaging 10 year old autopilot technology, against a non-production test vehicle, not driven by Mark, using I would assume the latest in LiDAR technology from Luminar. Volvo sells the EX90 with a Luminar LiDAR sensor (not active it looks like). Why wasn't it used with Mark driving?
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- hnburnsy 2y agoFair questions from a Tesla Fan Boy... https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1901481711789109259 https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1901481711789109259 >I have some questions: 1) Your video "Can You Fool a Self-Driving Car?" uses Luminar’s latest tech but not Tesla’s latest FSD software. Why? 2) Autopilot was turned on at 42 MPH in your YouTube video but you turned it on at 39/40 MPH in your clip above. Why? Multiple takes? 3) In the clip above, Autopilot was activated MUCH closer to the wall than in the YouTube video clip. Why? 4) In your video above, you turned on Autopilot 3.8 seconds before hitting the wall, but it appears you gave Luminar a much longer head start with their tech "activated." Why? Am I wrong in my assumption? 5) Why was putting a child dummy/doll behind the wall a useful thing to do? What car would possibly see or react to a kid through a wall after crashing into that wall?