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I'm a roboticist who had learned from researchers involved in the 2007 DARPA urban challenge. The key takeaway from that event was that every single car that fi

I'm a roboticist who had learned from researchers involved in the 2007 DARPA urban challenge. The key takeaway from that event was that every single car that finished the race was equipped with the 3D velodyne LIDAR. It was that technology that enabled driverless cars to work as a concept. Why? Because it provided information that people had to infer, and that you couldn't easily get from camera. So absent the human inference engine that allowed human drivers to work, we would have to rely on highly-precise measurement instruments like LiDAR instead. Musk's huge error was in thinking "Well humans have eyes and those are kind of like cameras, therefore all you need are cameras to drive" But no! Eyes are not cameras, they are extensions of our brains. And we use more than our eyes to navigate roads, in fact there's a huge social aspect to driving. It's not just an engineering challenge but a social one. So from the get-go he's solving the wrong problem. I knew this guy was full of it when he started talking about driverless cars being 5 years out in 2015. Just utter nonsense to anyone who was actually in that field, especially if he thought he could do it without LiDAR. He called his system "autopilot" which was deceptive, but I was completely off him when he released "full self driving - beta" onto public streets. Reckless insanity. What made me believe he is criminally insane is this particular timeline (these are headlines, you can search them if you want to read the stories): 2016 - Self-Driving Tesla Was Involved in Fatal Crash, U.S. Says 2016 - Tesla working on Autopilot radar changes after crash 2017 - NTSB Issues Final Report and Comments on Fatal Tesla Autopilot Crash 2019 - Tesla didn’t fix an Autopilot problem for three years, and now another person is dead 2021 - Inside Tesla as Elon Musk Pushed an Unflinching Vision for Self-Driving Cars Tesla announces transition to ‘Tesla Vision’ without radar, warns of limitations at first 2022 - Former Head Of Tesla AI Explains Why They’ve Removed Sensors; Others Differ 2022 - Tesla Dropping Radar Was a Mistake, Here is Why 2023 - Tesla reportedly saw an uptick in crashes and mistakes after Elon Musk removed radar from its cars 2023 - Elon Musk Overruled Tesla Engineers Who Said Removing Radar Would Be Problematic: Report 2023 - How Elon Musk knocked Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ off course 2023 - The final 11 seconds of a fatal Tesla Autopilot crash Now I get to add TFA to the chronical. The man and his cars are a menace to society. Tesla would be so much further along on driverless cars without Musk.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
I mean what does lidar do but tell you distance? A rangefinder optic from 1940 can also tell you distance with two little offset windows purely optically and accurately. Millions of rolls of films shot on this principle of optical distance finding. And yet, this is no good now, because IMO its musks idea and thats enough to poison it among the armchair engineers than any other reason. Telling to this point is how everyone just parrots the same comment that optical self driving is bad without actually providing evidence to support their point. Just arguing on precedent established in forums and social media.
- ModernMech 2y ago
  What poisons the idea among engineers is not that Musk came up with it (he didn't), but that he can't justify it using the language we speak, either by theory or by practice. Instead what we get from him is marketing, stunts, keynotes, sleights of hand, bravado, exaggerations, unfulfilled promises, premature rollouts of untested tech... the man is an anti-engineer, it's hard to trust him. What made cars successful at the DUC was omnidirectional 3D distances to everything around you provided by the Velodyne LiDAR. So if we have a way to get that kind of data without a LiDAR, that would be fine. Moreover, what a LIDAR gives you is an honest-to-god measurement. This whole idea of using deep learning to get range data from camera data is not measuring anything, it's making an inference. Which is why it's fooled by a looney tunes wall. And like I said, we lack any inference engine that is better than the human brain. So betting your entire strategy on an inference engine that doesn't exist, bucking industry practice and the consensus of the engineering community, gets the following results: - The NHTSA’s self-driving crash data reveals that Tesla’s self-driving technology is, by far, the most dangerous for motorcyclists, with five fatal crashes that we know of. - This issue is unique to Tesla. Other self-driving manufacturers have logged zero motorcycle fatalities in the same time frame. - The crashes are overwhelmingly Teslas rear-ending motorcyclists. If this problem is unique to Tesla, and Tesla is unique in relying solely on optical sensory input, then we can conclude relying solely on optical sensory input is bad. Nothing to do with the fact that Musk is the champion.
- crote 2y ago
  There is a huge difference between measuring the distance to a single target a few miles away, and measuring the distance to dozens of moving, accelerating, and overlapping objects in close proximity to each other and to the reference point. Besides, rangefinding optics weren't exactly amazing in the 1940s either. It's why the introduction of radar made such a massive difference in naval warfare.

kjkjadksj 2y ago

I mean what does lidar do but tell you distance? A rangefinder optic from 1940 can also tell you distance with two little offset windows purely optically and accurately. Millions of rolls of films shot on this principle of optical distance finding. And yet, this is no good now, because IMO its musks idea and thats enough to poison it among the armchair engineers than any other reason. Telling to this point is how everyone just parrots the same comment that optical self driving is bad without actually providing evidence to support their point. Just arguing on precedent established in forums and social media.

ModernMech 2y ago
What poisons the idea among engineers is not that Musk came up with it (he didn't), but that he can't justify it using the language we speak, either by theory or by practice. Instead what we get from him is marketing, stunts, keynotes, sleights of hand, bravado, exaggerations, unfulfilled promises, premature rollouts of untested tech... the man is an anti-engineer, it's hard to trust him. What made cars successful at the DUC was omnidirectional 3D distances to everything around you provided by the Velodyne LiDAR. So if we have a way to get that kind of data without a LiDAR, that would be fine. Moreover, what a LIDAR gives you is an honest-to-god measurement. This whole idea of using deep learning to get range data from camera data is not measuring anything, it's making an inference. Which is why it's fooled by a looney tunes wall. And like I said, we lack any inference engine that is better than the human brain. So betting your entire strategy on an inference engine that doesn't exist, bucking industry practice and the consensus of the engineering community, gets the following results: - The NHTSA’s self-driving crash data reveals that Tesla’s self-driving technology is, by far, the most dangerous for motorcyclists, with five fatal crashes that we know of. - This issue is unique to Tesla. Other self-driving manufacturers have logged zero motorcycle fatalities in the same time frame. - The crashes are overwhelmingly Teslas rear-ending motorcyclists. If this problem is unique to Tesla, and Tesla is unique in relying solely on optical sensory input, then we can conclude relying solely on optical sensory input is bad. Nothing to do with the fact that Musk is the champion.
crote 2y ago
There is a huge difference between measuring the distance to a single target a few miles away, and measuring the distance to dozens of moving, accelerating, and overlapping objects in close proximity to each other and to the reference point. Besides, rangefinding optics weren't exactly amazing in the 1940s either. It's why the introduction of radar made such a massive difference in naval warfare.