6 ms·
Multiple independent sensor streams is like having multiple pilots fly a plane instead of just one pilot. The chance of a fatal error (false negative identifica
by energy123 2y ago
Multiple independent sensor streams is like having multiple pilots fly a plane instead of just one pilot. The chance of a fatal error (false negative identification of an object near the car) decreases from p to p^n. The size of that decrease is not intuitive: if p=0.0001 it now becomes a much smaller number with the introduction of a second pilot or second independent sensor stream (0.0001^2).
Now the errors are not all independent so it's not as good as that, but many classes of errors are independent (e.g. two pilots getting a heart attack versus just one) so you can get pretty close to that p^n. Musk did not understand this. He's just not as smart as he's made out to be.
- Gud 2y agoNot at all. The car should be smart enough to figure out which sensor is faulty. Otherwise, the car should not be driving itself at all. It's more like, a pilot has access to multiple sensors. Which they do.
- swid 2y agoThe comment you are replying to is saying the chance of error decreases with more pilots since there is redundancy. They are not saying it’s like too many chefs in a kitchen.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Volundr 2y agoI think you and GP are in agreement. If you have a sensor with a really bad .5 chance of failure, by having to your chance of failure decreases to 0.5^2=0.25.
- throwaway31131 2y agoif fails are independent...
- Volundr 2y agoRight, that was also discussed in the comment.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- timschmidt 2y agoI thought it was consensus that the move away from lidar was driven by a lack of supply compared to desired EV production numbers, and the things said about making vision only work have all been about coping with that reality.
- artursapek 2y agoThey didn't let lack of battery supply stop them.
- timschmidt 2y agoI can imagine a useful EV without lidar (my ICE vehicles certainly don't have one). I cannot imagine a useful EV without a battery.
- catlikesshrimp 2y agoI can't imagine a "full self driving" car that performs worse than humans be allowed in the streets. In medicine, the ethics commitee would shot the project early. Edit: Comparing "ev vehicle" with "autonomous vehicle"
- timschmidt 2y agoI wouldn't use medicine as an example in this case. Medicine does all kinds of ill advised things because they're worse for the disease than the patient. And all kinds of things they know will kill the patient if there's opportunity to learn and improve other lives. It seems like Tesla's been pretty clear with drivers who've opted in to FSD that they're helping to test and develop a system which isn't perfect. Just off the top of the head, look up Henrietta Lacks for a notable example of how medicine has handled informed consent.
- catlikesshrimp 2y ago> "It seems like Tesla's been pretty clear with drivers who've opted in to FSD that they're helping to test and develop a system which isn't perfect." Strawman No matter how many contracts and disclaimers they get in their favor. The "Full self driving" system is causing accidents (and deaths) Turn lights, rearview cameras, safety belts, all exist and are regulated to prevent the manufacturer dumping responsibility on the drivers. I emphasize "Full self driving" Tesla brand because the name was declared unlawful in California. https://www.govtech.com/policy/new-california-law-bans-tesla-from-advertising-as-fully-self-driving https://www.govtech.com/policy/new-california-law-bans-tesla...
- NoTeslaThrow 2y agoI'm not really following the attempt at logic here but under this logic surely you'd WANT multiple types of sensors for all the same reasons.
- monktastic1 2y agoYes, that's what it's saying.
- Havoc 2y ago>Multiple independent sensor streams is like having multiple pilots fly a plane. Don't think that's the right analogy. Realistically you'd aim to combine them meaningfully. A bit like two eyes gives you depth perception. You assume 1+1 is less than two, when really you'd aim for >2
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dawnerd 2y agoThat’s the thing, they’re already merging multiple data streams (cameras) and dealing with visual anomalies. Pretty nonsense they can’t figure out different sensors when other companies are doing it just fine.
- Izkata 2y agoI remember this being his reasoning for it, that the lidar should be unnecessary if they could get multi-camera depth perception to work like it does in humans.
- sudosysgen 2y agoBut it won't with current camera technology. The mix of high acuity at the center, moveable camera, wide peripheral vision, object tracking and non-frame-based sensing that allows human eyes to sense the depth of moving objects in low light is not commercially available with camera systems under ~10000$. It's cheaper to install LIDAR than to install cameras which are uniformly as good as the human eye. To get the acuity of a human eye at the center you'd need ~400MPx, or have a gimbaled camera to point towards an object of interest, and tracking small fast objects with such a camera (and at night!) is very very expensive in hardware.
- ravenstine 2y agoI dunno because I'm pretty sure that each sense a person loses increases their risk of mortality. If what you are saying is true, then shouldn't we all be better off wearing blinders, a clothespin over our noses, and rely on echolocation?
- jfengel 2y agoI misread your first sentence, in that having multiple pilots is not necessarily a good thing, like multiple cooks. You have a main and a backup pilot, but either one must be 100% capable of doing it on their own. The backup is silently double checking, but their assignments are more about ensuring that the copilot doesn't just check out because they're human. If the copilot ever has to say "don't do that it's going to kill us all" it's a crisis. Lidar is a good backup but the car must be able to with without it. You can't drive just with lidar; it's like driving by Braille. Lidar can't even read a stop light. If they cannot handle it with just the visuals, the car should be not be allowed on the road. I concur that is terrifying that he was allowed to go without the backup that stops it from killing people. Human co drivers are not a good enough backup. But he's also not wrong that the visual system must be practically perfect -- if it's possible at all. Which it surely isn't yet.
- Retric 2y agoCars unlike aircraft don’t need to move forward to maintain safety. If the lidar normally has very good uptime but happens to break, you need to safely come to a complete stop and that’s basically it. Trusting vision systems for 30 seconds or even 30 minutes over the lifetime of a car is very different than trusting them for 30,000 hours. So for edge cases sure, add a “this is an emergency drive to a hospital without LiDAR” mode but you don’t need to handle normal driving without them.
- larvaetron 2y ago> Cars unlike aircraft don’t need to move forward to maintain safety. They do if they're crossing railroad tracks.
- david38 2y agoA narrow case easily accounted for
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dathinab 2y ago> Musk did not understand this. more likely he is a ruthless ** who doesn't care about people dying and slightly increasing the profit margin is for him worth more then a some people dying regulators/law allowing self driving companies to wriggle out of responsibility didn't help either lidar was interesting for him as long as it seemed light Tesla could maybe dominate the self driving marked through technological excellency the moment it was clear it won't work he abandoned technological excellence in favor of micro optimizing profit at the cost of read safety which shouldn't be surprising for anyone I mean he also micro optimized workplace safety in SpaceX away not only until it killed someone but even after it did (stuff like this is why there where multiple investigations against his companies until Trump magiced them away) the thing is he has intelligent people informing him about stuff, including how removing lidar will statistically seen kill people, so it's not that he doesn't know, it's that he doesn't care
- FireBeyond 2y agoRight, he despises environmental regulations because he’s “trying to get us to a new home”, so who cares what happens to this one? Especially if it delays him doing so. Someone said in an interview “Elon desperately wants the world saved. But only if by him.”
- janice1999 2y ago> “Elon desperately wants the world saved. But only if by him.” I believe that's also Lex Luthor's motivation in All Star (?) Superman.
- ddq 2y agoEarth is the only home, any other planetary body would be akin to homelessness. Words cannot adequately express the sheer small-minded ignorance of these feckless technocrats, the unadulterated hubris to presume themselves remotely capable of surpassing eons of biospheric development with their fucking spaghetti code that can't even drive a car properly. With such a level of dangerous stupidity posing an existential threat to all life in this solar system, it is nothing short of the gravest immorality to allow such a dim-witted, mean-spirited, drugged-out, misguided moron to remain in a position of power and control. There is no planet B.
- vitus 2y agoI think that's an oversimplification, and helps mainly in the case where one sensor is totally offline. If you have two sensors, one says everything's fine but the other says you're about to crash, which one do you trust? What if the one that says you're about to crash is feeding you bad data? And what if the resulting course correction leads to a different failure? I'd hope that we've learned these lessons from the 737 Max crashes. In both cases, one sensor thought that the plane was at imminent risk of stalling, and so it forced the nose of the plane down, thereby leading to an entirely different failure mode. Now, of course, having two sensors is better than just having the one faulty sensor. But it's worth emphasizing that not all sensor failures are created equal. And of course, it's important to monitor your monitoring.
- breadwinner 2y ago> If you have two sensors, one says everything's fine but the other says you're about to crash, which one do you trust? Neither. You stop the car and tow it to the nearest repair facility. (Or have a human driver take over until the fault is repaired.)
- Spooky23 2y agoThe Elon magic is getting people to bikeshed bullshit like this and ignore the bigger issues. You don’t gouge out your ears because you hear something walking around at night that doesn’t appear to be accurate. As a human, your executive function makes judgements based on context and what you know. Your eyesight is degraded in the dark, so your brain pays more attention to unexpected sound. The argument for lidar, sonar or radar isn’t that cameras are “bad”, it’s that they perform very well in circumstances where visual input may not. As an engineer, you have an ethical obligation to consider the use case of the product. It’s not at all like the 737max issue - many companies have been able to successfully implement these features I have a almost decade old Honda that uses camera and radar sensors to manage adaptive cruise and lane keeping features flawlessly. In the case of Tesla and their dear leader, they tend to make dogmatic engineering decisions based on personal priorities. They then spackle in legal and astroturf marketing bullshit to dodge accountability. The folly of relying on cameras or putting your headlights inside of a narrow cavity in the car body (cybertruck) is pretty obvious if you live in a place that has winter weather and road salt.
- treis 2y agoHe's just saying whatever will let him sell cars.
- throwaway31131 2y agoDoes that mean a Tesla only has one camera? If not, you're dealing with "multiple independent sensor streams" regardless.