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0 pointsMarkMc9y ago0 comments

> It's probably enough for freeway driving under good conditions.

It might rule out driving in fog or snow, but if the weather is OK then the sensor suite is probably enough for driving on any paved road.

I think you are underestimating how quickly Tesla's AI software can improve. The AI will always be running and checking to see if the driver does anything unexpected. For example if you brake or swerve suddenly when the AI did not expect you to do so, all the sensor data and state of the AI will be sent back to Tesla headquarters. Tesla will amass millions of these 'significant events' and be able to back-test updates to their AI logic against every single event. It will be test-driven development on steroids, allowing rapid software improvement while maintaining high quality.

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7 comments · 1 top-level

irq119y ago· 6 in thread

"I think you're underestimating how quickly Tesla'a AI software can improve"

Do you have any basis for that statement, other than that you like Elon Musk, and read an article about "big data" once?

I have actual experience in this field. The parent is right: the sensors matter more than hypothetical gains from "big data". Because right now, sensors suck. There's a reason every serious player in this game is plopping pairs of $10,000 lidar units on their test cars (and still failing to work in the rain). You can't distinguish signal from noise by collecting more noise, and until you have a decent sensor suite, "big data" is just garbage-in, garbage-out.

Reading this discussion, you'd almost forget that the reason Tesla is doing this is because its existing sensor suite was proven to be a total joke in actual use...but hey, here's to the emperor's new outfit! One hundred percent less naked than the old one!

emp_zealoth9y ago

I feel sad that actual sensible responses on HN are now downvoted mercilessly because they are not aboard the hype train/zeitgeist

What irq11 has said is valid and important. You cannot just handwave actual engineering problems with some buzzwords

MarkMcOP9y ago

Perhaps irq11 was downvoted because of his/her belittling tone rather than the substance of his/her argument.

It's valid and important to say, "I have experience in this field and sensor quality will always be more important than a suite of regression tests, no matter how large".

It's not valid and important to say, "You're just saying that because you like Elon Musk, and read an article about 'big data' once"

2 more replies

Animats9y ago

Those are good points. Here's some backup.

Here's Mobileeye's CTO talking in detail about their technology.[1] They use a a deep neural network that recognizes cars. Just cars. Look at this point in the video.[2] There's a stationary obstacle on the left, and it doesn't recognize that. Maybe this is why Tesla, using Mobileye hardware, plowed into three different stationary vehicles at the left of a highway. They were all trucks (one was a street sweeper), and seen from the back while stationary, may not have matched the trained model of "car".

Mobileeye's algorithms are good at recognizing moving cars from most angles, and that's valuable for feeding into the model of "what's the other player doing". But it's not enough for the "where are all the obstacles" and "where is the road surface" questions. Those questions have objective answers, which can be answered with a LIDAR, and maybe millimeter radar if it has the angular resolution.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCMXXXmxG-I [2] https://youtu.be/GCMXXXmxG-I?t=1758

Diederich9y ago

> existing sensor suite was proven to be a total joke in actual use

The existing sensor suite was is sufficient for the existing driving assist functions. The existing suite was never expected to be sufficient to provide the predicted, future levels of autodrive.

What do human sensors cover? Primarily our eyes. Have we had sensors that provide about the same dynamic range as our human vision?

I am NOT a part of this field, so please excuse my presumption.

I believe that most/all(?) current/previous 'automated control' systems used sensors that were lower resolution than our eyes, but that also provided some indication of range data.

Do our eyes provide distance data? I think that data is calculated with quite a bit of accuracy in our brains.

Again, I'm not part of this field, so this is just speculation.

In theory, given a fast enough computer and advanced enough algorithm, given nothing but visual input streams no more advanced than are available with existing optics, could a car autopilot not be just as good a driver as a human?

Matthias2479y ago

Agree on that. Would however love to read about some confirmed info whether AI/NeuronalNets/BigData really plays a significant role for any of the current automatized drive developments. And how this fits together with safety regulations (ISO26262, ASIL) and the required deterministic behavior.

pault9y ago

This would be a high quality comment if you removed the first and last sentences.

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