All Tesla Vehicles Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware (jalopnik.com) 186
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Jalopnik: All current Tesla models that will be produced in its Fremont, California factory will come with self-driving hardware built-in capable of Level 5 autonomy, including the upcoming Tesla Model 3, the company announced tonight. According to the announcement, Tesla will manufacture all of its cars with the hardware necessary for Level 5 self-driving systems going forward, including the Model S, Model X and new Model 3. At the introduction of the Model 3, it wasn't clear whether or not every Model 3 package would come standard with the hardware and software to handle Autopilot and any other self-driving features. That's been cleared up now, but there's a kicker. Just like on current Model S and Model X models, you can purchase the cars with the self-driving hardware included. But, in order to activate the software and actually use the Autopilot or upcoming advanced self-driving safety features, you will have to option it when you order the car, or pay more for it later. Elon Musk stated that the new hardware in all of Tesla's cars going forward are Tesla's own vision software, with a Tesla-developed neural net. The new hardware and software capabilities still need to undergo all of the testing required by Tesla's own standards, as well as government approval before unleashing Level 5 autonomous cars onto the streets.
This got posted quickly!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Been a long time since I've seen a story get onto Slashdot this quickly
Neural Net Processor... (Score:5, Funny)
"To make sense of all of this data, a new onboard computer with more than 40 times the computing power of the previous generation runs the new Tesla-developed neural net for vision, sonar and radar processing software."
https://www.tesla.com/blog/all... [tesla.com]
So what you're saying is... the cpu is a neural net processor, a learning computer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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"A talking car. Well, now it's my turn to be impressed. KITT, is it? What an intriguing voice. A little too much gain in your tweeter, and a slight metallic tone to your bass."
"Do you really think so?"
If TV was as explicit then as it is now, that might have been written as "just let me demonstrate some of the features of your seat and we'll see just how much gain we can get out of your tweeters"
Sans Auto (Score:2)
One seriously genuine question to Tesla corp, will they be producing models sans auto-crap, having no desire to be BSODed off a cliff, or into a bus going in the opposite direction or into a train, keep in mind purposeful hacks. That manual switch better guarantee 100% manual operation, pretty much kill the computer and allow complete manual control. Not being opposed to automated transport but I prefer star trek turbolift style auto transport, an enclosed, monitored and controlled transport route, no clif
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I think it's called "don't buy the car if you don't want it"
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The Tesla is not fully manually controllable in the sense that most cars (but by no means all, drive by wire is becoming much more common) are now. There is no 100% manual operation possible. The accelerator pedal is just an input sensor, for example.
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The idea at the very minimum is those controls should not rely on the proper functioning of the auto drive computer, you should be able to switch that computer right off and the car will react to the simple inputs from accelerator, brake, signals, steering wheel. The auto drive system should be separate and hook into the parrallel control system, otherwise it will get hacked and they will drive people off cliffs on purpose, there are bad people about and you should ensure safety protocols to protect everyon
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What I'm saying is that you're asking for something that already does not exist on the vast majority of production cars. There are very few, if any, production cars where the accelerator is actually mechanically linked to the fuel system, if you switch the computer off, you've switched the car off.
And it's even more true on any electric car, the motor control computer is absolutely critical to having a functional car.
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What needs to work in a computer crash is brakes and steering. It's not necessary to make the thing fully drivable in such a state.
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You don't say? Find me a current model car that still has a manual linkage between the accelerator pedal and the carburettor butterfly.
radar? (Score:2)
ultrasonic radar
Don't they mean ultrasonic sonar?
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No, they mean "8 cameras", "12 ultrasonic sensors" and "forward looking radar",
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If you RTFA, you'd see they used the term "ultrasonic radar", hence why I put it in <quote> tags
No biggie (Score:2)
Looks like my next car will be a Leaf.
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Looks like my next car will be a Leaf.
I love what Tesla is doing with technology, but I'm really disappointed with their marketing. If they could explain their story and their limitations clearly, without calling it "self driving" or "autopilot", they would gain so much credibility and advance the state of the art without endangering the public's acceptance of self-driving cars by needlessly pushing social limits.
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Do you seriously want to drive a car that looks like Jar Jar binks?
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In this economy, who seriously buys a car for its looks?
Appearance is waaaay down the list of considerations when buying a car, well below "will it BSOD and kill me?".
That's aesthetic appearance, by the way, not road visibility which is much higher.
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Alternatively buy a second hand Leaf from an early adopter, for 1/5 the price the rich schmuck paid for it new.
Can't be level 5 (Score:5, Informative)
Level 5 means not having any controls that a human can use. So, unless their "future upgrade" includes ripping out the steering wheel and pedals, etc, then the car is only "level 4 ready".
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Does it count if the driving controls are present, but disabled, while the car is driving autonomously?
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Yes. Chmarr doesn't know what they're talking about. The standard requires that an L5 autonomous vehicle be *capable* of fully autonomous operation anywhere and under any conditions where it's legal to drive. It says nothing whatsoever about also being capable of being driven normally, and there's no reason both systems couldn't coexist.
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Level 5 means not having any controls that a human can use. So, unless their "future upgrade" includes ripping out the steering wheel and pedals, etc, then the car is only "level 4 ready".
No, level 5 simply means fully autonomous, the system controls everything with no human interaction.
SAE definitions: http://www.sae.org/misc/pdfs/a... [sae.org]
DOT's definitions (hint: they adopted SAE's rather than NHTSA's): https://www.transportation.gov... [transportation.gov] (page 11)
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http://www.sae.org/misc/pdfs/a... [sae.org] states that level 5 is "the full-time performance by an automated driving system of all aspects of the dynamic driving task under all roadway and environmental conditions that can be managed by a human driver"
There's no requirement that the car must lack human controls, only that the car be capable of fully autonomous driving under any condition a human could drive a car.
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Level 5 means not having any controls that a human can use
Actually Level 5 is not defined in the same way across different organisations. Some say that a vehicle simply must be able to make its way from a to b without any driver assistance or consideration as to obstacles. The SAE are the only group who say that the vehicle should have no manual controls (funny comment coming from an automation group). The NHSTA doesn't even have 5 levels.
So I will give you 33% credit. You will need to resit the course.
22 cameras (Score:2)
One step back, promises 2 steps forward later (Score:2)
From https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/bl... [tesla.com] :
"Before activating the features enabled by the new hardware, we will further calibrate the system using millions of miles of real-world driving to ensure significant improvements to safety and convenience. While this is occurring, Teslas with new hardware will temporarily lack certain features currently available on Teslas with first-generation Autopilot hardware, including some standard safety features such as automatic emergency braking, collision warning, lane hold
Fault Tolerant? (Score:2)
I wonder how many of those actuators will be fault tolerant. I can't seem to find any information on the web, but if the auto industry is up to their usual tricks, they won't be. Not until a failed steering motor causes a massive fatal head-on on the Interstate.
They are probably still counting on the driver grabbing noticing there is a problem in 1/10th of a second, grabbing the steering wheel and fighting against a motor that is running at full torque because of the failure :-)
And we haven't even started
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The claim in the press release is "full class 5 driving", which means fully autonomous. I'll believe it when I see it. It seems like a strong claim to make that "we don't know how to do full class 5 driving yet, but we know this hardware is enough to meet the requirements of the thing we don't know".
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I'll believe it when I see it. It seems like a strong claim to make that "we don't know how to do full class 5 driving yet, but we know this hardware is enough to meet the requirements of the thing we don't know".
Just because something isn't done yet doesn't mean they don't know how to do it. Tesla has self-driving software under test, that mostly works with their current cars. It is not yet ready for the public, but that isn't because of any deficiencies in the sensors.
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There are a lot of people on Slashdot who don't believe L5 self-driving is possible, or that it's decades away.
I've been saying "within 5 years" for a while now, looks like not only were they wrong, I was too - it's coming sooner than that.
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5 yrs seems too soon; my guess is more than 10. Cars will probably have fair-weather driving nailed within 5-10 yrs but the Northern Hemisphere gets all kinds of crazy weather and L5 cars will have to be able to cope reliably. Nine times out of 10 won't be good enough, it'll have to be more like 995 times out of 1000.
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Well, the site only said that it would happen in 2017. Is it only during the 3 or 4 summer months? Is it all year long?
No, the site all by itself did not satisfactorily answer the question of whether crazy weather conditions would be tested.
On the other hand, global warming means that we won't have winters for much longer anywhere on the planet so I guess the manufacturers don't see the need to prepare for it.
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I'd like to see the Tesla pull over if a police officer waves it over from the side of the road. L5 requires that.
I want to see the Tesla navigate construction cones when lanes are shut down. L5 requires that too.
I want to see the Tesla go through a red light when an Ambulance comes up behind it and there is no other way to get out of the way. L5 requires that too.
And there is probably hundreds of items like that L5 requires. So remains to be seen if they are really L5.
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L5 also requires driving in the rain. They added rear cameras, but no rear radar, and no way to clear those rear cameras off, as anyone who's ever tried using a backup camera in the rain or snow knows, after driving for a few minutes you can't see a thing through them.
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Well, if you started saying "within 5 years" more than 5 years ago, then you are now a proven liar. Maybe you should use that as a learning experience about making idiotic prognostications in the future.
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I wasn't saying it more than 5 years ago. I was saying it last year, though.
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You're confusing the existing autopilot feature with the new self-driving capable cars they're building now.
It's not the same thing.
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Tesla has self-driving software under test, that mostly works with their current cars.
We've had software that mostly work since the nineties. It's still at the "mostly works, in perfect conditions" stage that it's been in for almost two decades.
It is not yet ready for the public, but that isn't because of any deficiencies in the sensors.
We've had adequate sensors for far longer than we've had software that mostly works.
Hardware isn't the problem. Software is the problem, a problem that hasn't been solved since the nineties despite the huge amounts of money thrown at it.
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The definition of "mostly" is "not fully". So, no, they are not there yet.
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i mean, with 18 cameras, the car has more sensors than a human, so I don't see really a specific issue. Sure, for a human, snow driving is really hard. For our computers, currently, probably even harder. But that's not the same as "you'll never be able to drive in snow with 18 cameras and 12 ultrasound sensors".
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The point I was making, that if a human can interpret the visual information it's given, then a car with a bigger sensor set can in theory do it too. It's all about software at that point, but there's no limitation on hardware here that a human doesn't have.
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Humans don't require that. In theory the only sensors a self driving car needs is two cameras at driver head height in the diver seat with the ability to swivel around. Everything else is 'just software'.
Even if you had a heat sensor you'd still have to educate the car. It could be a hot bag or cold animal. Sensors aren't the issue, you need EXCELLENT software.
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Unfortunately, they are planning on using neural net software, which, while it may be Excellent at being a neural net, cannot be proven to be fool-proofed, as they relies on training in such a way that the actual calculations are not determined ahead of time.
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Unfortunately, they are planning on using neural net software
The NNs are for object recognition, like the proverbial "rock vs plastic bag". They aren't using NNs to control the brakes and steering.
a neural net, cannot be proven to be fool-proofed
There are NO systems that are "fool proof" at object recognition, including human brains.
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So, each self-driving car just needs 16-18 years of training on how to determine how to interact with the world while moving around in it and then a few months of training on how to accelerate, brake, turn and when to activate the turn signals. A few lessons about what various signage means and a quick explanation about solid lines and dashed lines and the self-driving car will be good to go. I image that this 16-18 year production line will result in drastically reduced prices over what we have today and v
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Radar should easily be able to tell the difference between the two.
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The point I was making, that if a human can interpret the visual information it's given, then a car with a bigger sensor set can in theory do it too. It's all about software at that point, but there's no limitation on hardware here that a human doesn't have.
Yeah but... Tesla's claim is like saying the brain consumes about 20W, the car can deliver 20W so it's "ready to support an artifical brain". While that might be technically correct it is also grossly misleading, in that we don't have and don't really expect to have an AI working at all or so well and certainly not within the constraints of a human body in the foreseeable future. Same thing with cameras, I expect the first real SDCs to use optical and radar and lidar and every other trick in the book to ove
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"The point I was making, that if a human can interpret the visual information it's given, then a car with a bigger sensor set can in theory do it too. It's all about software at that point, but there's no limitation on hardware here that a human doesn't have."
The second half of your last sentence is at odds with the first half. Either it is all about software or it is about the limited hardware. In reality, it can be about both but your statement precludes that as a possibility. You seem to be very conflict
Re: self-driving or assisted driving ? (Score:2)
It doesn't need lane markings if it can has a good 3D representation of what's around it. If a human can do it, a car can do it better because it will have far more deep imaging, radars, GPS based spatial awareness, cameras etc to lean on. If the conditions are dangerous for a human. A human shouldn't be driving in it either.
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you're forgetting one thing - they don't have the AI to do it. they may never have. the cars electronics might never be able to. a human that was watching all that sensor information might be able to drive with just them.
why Tesla would be so stupid to make this press release right now is seriously puzzling. why they would be so stupid as to sell a vaporware pre-order prodcut they probably cannot deliver is equally puzzling and stupid.
they don't know the requirements so how they can know they can deliver? a
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You could say that any car has the hardware necessary for autonomous motoring: they just need an intelligent robot to sit at the controls and drive you around...
As the saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordin
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Accidents do happen but life goes on.
Not for everyone, sometimes life doesn't go on following a collision. Which is why we need self-driving cars, to avoid deadly auto accidents.
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The same as a human? They use visual cues such as other vehicles? Or perhaps they use Tesla's fleet learning experience to see where other vehicles have travelled in the area previously?
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The same as a human? They use visual cues such as other vehicles?
Get ready to receive your Nobel Prize, Turing Award and Fields Medal... you've managed to create AI.
Re:self-driving or assisted driving ? (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe you can explain how these work in snow when they still need to see clear lane markings.
I have a Tesla. They work fine in the snow. In fact, Tesla specifically recommends engaging Autopilot on snowy roads because that is safer than driving yourself. Tesla Autopilot has driven several million miles on snowy and icy roads.
It is funny how people trying to point out weaknesses of SDCs, often focus on areas there they are particularly strong. On snowy roads, a human has only their eyes, so if they cannot see the lane markings, they have difficulty navigating. Tesla has cameras for vision, but also has GPS and radar, and can access a database of "landmarks" such as mileage markers, traffic signs, etc. that they can use as waypoints.
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where they recommend that? a link would be appreciated.
also, I find that strange, since snow conditions and friction changes on winter roads rather abruptly in a fashion that would be pretty damn hard for a computer vision/radar system to know. like having ice in a tight turn. ..or have you just been reading musks tweets rather than what he thinks as marketing?
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I can't necessarily pick out snow conditions and friction changes, and a computer could be a lot faster at figuring out the right thing to do in the circumstances than I am.
Re:self-driving or assisted driving ? (Score:4, Interesting)
The manual for the Model S and Model X both disagree with you. They explicitly state not to use autopilot in slippery conditions. Just like every other cruise control system on the market.
That said, we also know that this new hardware is NOT enough for full AP in inclement weather, or even a light drizzle of rain, because none of the rear cameras have wipers on them, and if you've ever tried to use the backup camera in the rain you'll see the problem.
Cameras are essential for forward vision to deal with lane markings and signage, however to see cars coming behind you, you need radar, and they still haven't included rear radar.
"Level 5 autonomy" in a car that can't drive in the rain is ridiculous.
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Could be easy enough: it stops.
A car that can reliably drive itself safely under 80% of road conditions, and can safely pull over the rest of the time and require a human to take over would be a wonderful advance. Especially for something like road-obscuring snow, which is something that only a small portion of the US population has to deal with more than a few handfuls of days out of the year.
Reliable, market-worthy fully autonomous self driving doesn't necessarily have to be able to drive through *everyt
Re: self-driving or assisted driving ? (Score:2)
Re: self-driving or assisted driving ? (Score:2)
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Why being unable to see the lane markings is considered "driving blind"?
Some streets in my city are not marked at all, some have double markings (the street was widened, new markings were put in place, but the old ones are still visible) or the markings may just be under a layer of snow, but I can perfectly see other cars and the sidewalk.
I do not think that my boss would let me work from home or take the day off just because there was 1cm layer of snow on the street.
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Why would it be silly to expect a car to observe a police officer and hand signals?
Those aren't really just hand signals. They involve at least the forearm. They're designed to be visible, distinctive, and understandable. Once the car recognizes that there's an officer directing traffic, it's not going to be difficult to figure out the signals.
Maps aren't sufficient for not running into things in any case. A SDC has to have some sort of awareness of what's going on around it.no matter what, and the
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Just because they ship with the HARDWARE they'd need for "full class 5 driving" doesn't mean they'll ever get the SOFTWARE needed to actually DO it.
Re: self-driving or assisted driving ? (Score:2)
Because now it's a matter of refining the software. Anyway, if it turns out they need a fancier radar or something I am sure they can swap one in. It's mostly well known what hardware and computing power is needed for self driving. We know how much CPU power is needed to render the 3D graphics of Avatar 2 but that doesn't mean the movie is completed. And like I said if someone invents a way to make it better then let the next generation cars have it.
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You have the ability to do "full class 5 driving." We're pretty familiar withe sensors included in homo sapiens sapiens, particularly those are are used while driving.
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What we're not familiar with though, is the amount of computing power required to take that sensor input, and drive sane output.
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The new hardware is for eventual full self-driving. Not autopilot. (Autopilot in airplanes is "assisted driving," too, but is still called autopilot... That's why Tesla chose "autopilot" instead of "self-driving" as the label for their first-generation capability.)
And yeah, there is a warning that goes off if the driver takes their hands of the wheel.
Posters better learn to actually do research before posting. Oh wait, this is the Internet, that'll never happen. :P
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And yeah, there is a warning that goes off if the driver takes their hands of the wheel.
There is now. But originally, there was no warning. Tesla added the warning via a software update, because too many drivers were taking naps or watching movies.
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And yeah, there is a warning that goes off if the driver takes their hands of the wheel.
that was a retrofit. and now they are saying that the HARDWARE is capable of autonomous driving. .. of course it's not, not in the sense any consumer thinks of it.
I'm seriously skeptical because the autopilot they have shipped is just the same as other manufacturers have shipped and indeed was based on off the shelf hw/sw solution ONLY WITH THE FUCKING SAFETIES DISABLED!!!!. that's not engineering - that's marketing a
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"self driving" should not require a human at wheel. tesla requires one"
This announcement is about the hardware necessary for autonomous driving but there's a huge amount of testing & programming to get the software up to that level. And I'm reasonably certain legislators or insurers will still insist on a human behind the wheel for years after the cars are good enough.
"how about an alarm to warn driver that he has been away from wheel after a few seconds"
I believe that was implemented in a recent update
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They have a warning that triggers when the driver takes their hands off the wheel. Repeated ignored warnings disengage the auto-pilot system. It will then lock out the feature until you stop the car.
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From youtube videos of it, it takes about 4 minutes of hands-off driving for the warning to appear.
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I think you're mixing up Autopilot, which Tesla vehicles have been using for a couple of years, and today's announcement. Today's reveal is about 100% autonomous self driving cars.
Tesla won't require a human at the wheel for this. Local laws might, but I think for quite some time people will be just sitting in the driver seat doing absolutely nothing while they wait for the laws to catch up.
Worth noting that Autopilot was never advertised as 100% autonomous - this new system will be.
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"Worth noting that Autopilot was never advertised as 100% autonomous - this new system will be"
In time, not today, not this year and not next year. But this & future generations of the hardware will be capable, just awaiting the software to catch up, which will take time. Another question is just how good the earlier & existing Autopilot cars can be since they simply don't have the hardware for L5 which Elon confirmed 2 years ago.
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I'm sure most require a person to be at the wheel. But when traffic laws was first written, maybe some didn't consider it necessary to specify that a person be controlling the car, as it was assumed. Perhaps in all the different jurisdictions around the world, there is one where the wording of the law accidentally permits a self driving car to legally operate.
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They have fleet learning, where every car will share the same knowledge about a given route as all other Tesla cars. So if others have driven that same route with lane markings, your car will know where they are. And if not, it will use visual cues (paths being taken by other cars, etc) to work it out, the same as a human.
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That's when you'll get a fleet of Teslas going lemming-like off the cliff where the bridge used to be.
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that's called "fleet learning", as in, the map is updated whenever a car sees a new road sign with the presence of said road sign. if the sign is blocked, the next car will assume the presence of said sign, but maybe lower the statistical significance of said sign
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How do you react to that? The car will have more information available than you would in the same situation.
My phone currently has more information than me. Doesn't mean it can tell the difference between English and gibberish when I speak to it.
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I suspect there won't be any serious issue with overly aggressive AI drivers. They will be as aggressive as they're programmed to be, which is usually not very, for exactly the reasons you state - they have to deal with human drivers, and so they're programmed to act roughly within the norm for human drivers to avoid becoming a hazard themselves. In fact, most current experimental systems, such as Googles, are normally set to behave fairly timidly, both to avoid becoming a hazard, and to avoid frightening t
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Yeah, that's not going to contribute to (pre-)teens learning horrible driving skills...
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I'm not so sure - assuming the (pre-)teens aren't actually driving now, the "fake driving" could instill all sorts of bad habits that must be unlearned before they can learn to drive safely, and successfully unlearning something is often far more challenging than learning it in the first place.
I suppose the car could set off alarms whenever it corrects the student driver, providing constant negative feedback for poor actions, but then you're in the situation of having the car constantly second-guessing the
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Your mechanical failure can end my life.
Odds are good that in order to use level 4 or 5 autonomy you're going to have to submit to regular safety inspections. Probably they will not be German in quality except in Germany, which is what I'd like to see, but I'd imagine they will at least be a lot more serious than they are now.
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I'd use it, but it's been a long time since I could find a good job that I could get to by bus. I'll probably wind up with a volunteer gig downtown when I retire, and I can use the bus then.
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Yes, very skeptical here too, however this time we have a deadline for this impossible software. We'll see soon enough.