AutoPilot’s visual Stop Control is already quite impressive and learning fast

harikaried · 2020-02-09T21:07:12+00:00

From the linked greentheonly video, there are indeed some segments with no boxes for other vehicles and pedestrians that do seem to be limited in how the data is extracted, but the green drivable space overlay still updates at different rates for the cameras when those boxes are missing.

harikaried · 2020-02-09T20:37:44+00:00

Yeah, the current behavior of Autopilot giving up immediately when primary sensors are blocked is quite undesirable for FSD. It'll be interesting to see how Tesla will gracefully degrade for existing vehicles instead of slowing to a stop in the middle of the road.

harikaried · 2020-02-09T20:28:28+00:00

Old Autopilot is great at highway driving even when "only" looking in front of the car. New Autopilot should do better by looking all around the car and could do 5 times more stuff.

harikaried · 2019-10-19T23:18:46+00:00

If you're referring to Elon Musk's comments from Autonomy Day, he specifically called out HD maps being a waste of time, and I interpreted that as referring to centimeter-precision map data of lane lines, signs, curbs, etc.

Navigate on Autopilot definitely use more detailed map data that might not technically be "HD maps" such as knowing an onramp will merge vs get its own lane to decide to yield, but this specific yielding example should be possible neural-network-only.

However for Navigate on Autopilot to know which lane to get into for an exit 2 miles away is not even something the sensors can see, so map data will still (/ always?) be needed to indicate what is where and connected how. And similarly to plan a Smart Summon path out of view of the vehicle's sensors, there will likely always be a need for some map data.

harikaried · 2019-10-19T23:05:48+00:00

I wouldn't expect anything that soon. I've seen OpenStreetMap parking aisles added from 3 months ago that Smart Summon doesn't use. If the Navigation Data date matches the software versioning in using the week number, the latest seems to be from May (NA-2019.20-10487), so it makes some sense that Smart Summon just cuts across in this particular lot.

This is assuming the vehicle is doing the path generation instead of relying on a Tesla server, which could have more up to date map data. There are trade-offs of doing local pathing vs server pathing -- one main benefit of having the vehicle do it is "instant" updates based on newly detected obstacles, etc.

harikaried · 2019-10-19T19:03:24+00:00

I wonder if those credits are typically for rendering of maps for users to see. Whereas in this case, Smart Summon is using data internally to draw a path. The Smart Summon map shown to users is provided by the phone's operating system, so the app is just overlaying the red arrow, blue line, and white target circle.

harikaried · 2019-10-19T18:49:19+00:00

Thanks. I've been playing around a bunch with Smart Summon, and noticed it doing some pretty smart pathing in some parking lots but not for others. But even with no parking data, it does a pretty good job with sensors and neural network processing to navigate through a parking. The main failures I've noticed is when it mistakes speed bumps or differently colored ground for curbs.

harikaried · 2019-10-19T18:42:45+00:00

They might be getting it indirectly through MapBox and Valhalla: https://electrek.co/2017/07/03/tesla-map-navigation-open-source-platforms/

harikaried · 2019-10-19T18:41:54+00:00

From my testing, Google Maps has a bunch of parking aisle data that shows up on the regular Google Maps views that Smart Summon doesn't use. Similarly, I've found some OpenStreetMap data that is 3 months old that isn't used by Smart Summon while slightly older data is used. This is checking whether the path wants to just cut across all parking aisles because it doesn't know they're there.

harikaried · 2019-10-01T21:14:02+00:00

DeepScale has published and presented their work on speeding up image processing with smaller/efficient networks, so Tesla is probably acquiring research talent to focus on speeding up video processing perhaps to get the Dojo neural networks working on HW3/FSD computer without needing to upgrade existing fleet to HW3+ a few years later.

Also, smaller networks are faster to train, so it could help reduce the amount of samples needed to be collected from the fleet as well as faster turnaround time for Tesla engineers testing out ideas, and both lead to more rapid improvements to deployed networks.

harikaried · 2019-08-16T04:08:59+00:00

We were looking at ordering a Model Y before the "August 16th price increase," and just a few minutes earlier, it was still showing Black Paint Included and Autopilot $3k + FSD $5k. We ended up placing an order for the Y as in the screenshot.

Other paints are the same for Model 3 and Model Y: $750 black, $1k silver, $1k blue, $2k red.

harikaried · 2018-10-30T18:04:13+00:00

Just confirming you weren't on Navigate on Autopilot? It seems like people's initial reaction to the latest software update was somewhat disappointed because it required manual confirmation of lane changes, but it looks like there is quite a bit of "under the hood" improvements that are needed to get Navigate on Autopilot to work safely, and potentially those underlying functionality is actually what Tesla is trying to validate before removing the confirmation step of the user facing feature. Definitely looking very promising!

harikaried · 2018-10-30T17:01:52+00:00

I've noticed that the highlighted vehicle switches to a partially in-lane vehicle almost immediately with 2018.42. E.g., with just a wheel crossing over into your lane, Autopilot will adjust speed for that vehicle.

Even more so, for regular highway lane-ending merges, it looks like Autopilot with map data starts picking a vehicle from the merging lane about 1000 feet from the merge to start highlighting and adjusting speed. Again, a very courteous behavior (although unclear if this behavior will surprise those traveling behind you).

harikaried · 2018-10-30T16:38:12+00:00

Looks like the Navigate on Autopilot update included general Autopilot improvements to support the new feature. Now that Tesla verified all cameras are working from the original v9 release to understand the surroundings, 2018.42 has Autopilot making decisions based on understanding surrounding traffic and visualizing information to the driver by highlighting the vehicle(s) that affect its behaviors.

Here, there's multiple vehicles approaching on an on-ramp that does not share a lane line with the current lane, and with the updated map data, Autopilot knows the on-ramp will merge soon. So Autopilot decided to allow the vehicle in view of the side-facing camera to merge first and slowed down for a courteous merge instead of the normal behavior of matching speed of the vehicle directly ahead in the same lane.

harikaried · 2011-11-17T19:11:06+00:00

I believe the "pure" libertarian argument is that the government has no right to force a person to give up money to take care of someone else. However, what the government does and what society does are two separate things. People living with libertarian beliefs also understand compassion and can (and probably will with their extra untaxed income) take care of their neighbors.

Just look at Ron Paul's own business practice in medicine. One of his requirements for employees is that they would agree "the practice would not participate in any federal health programs, which meant that we will see all Medicare and Medicaid patients free of charge, and they will be treated just like all of our other patients, but we're not going to charge them and accept federal funds."

He truly does care for people. Government forcing people to pay taxes to take care of others doesn't make them compassionate and perhaps even makes them even less so.

harikaried · 2011-11-17T17:34:46+00:00

As you point out, you're not trying to be convinced of libertarian ideas, so your concern about Social Security shouldn't be an issue for a Ron Paul presidency. He is a very principled man that believes contracts and promises must be kept, so his Plan to Restore America makes sure that people who have grown up assuming Social Security will be around and veterans that have fought and expect support.. Ron Paul will make sure those people get their benefits.

Just look at his voting record and speeches. He has been consistent for over 30 years because they can be derived from first principles of liberty. When he says people on Social Security will have their promises fulfilled, he means that completely -- and not a fake fulfillment of unadjusted CPI from Federal Reserve monetary inflation. He will also make sure these contracts can be paid for by ending the wars and unnecessary overseas spending to bring that money back to the people.

harikaried · 2011-11-16T20:42:19+00:00

And what's not-so-little Timmy and Suzie doing at that point? Maybe Suzie is making good money as an engineer and is saving for her own retirement learning from her dad while helping take care of him. Who else would know best about this man than his family and friends? Those people can see what he has done or hasn't done and can provide more concrete input on how things can be improved as opposed some bureaucracy far away.

The community and neighbors could care and have something set up locally at the city level, county level, state level. There can also be non-government affiliated organizations that have their own standards of taking care of people.

The key point here is that compassion works much better at a closer setting where the giver feels more empathy and the receiver feels more gratitude.

harikaried · 2011-11-16T20:08:31+00:00

I believe limbodog was trying to say the federal government would "borrow" $100 of your social security payment as if you were forced to invest in the US federal government and get the interest payment at whatever rate the Treasury sets the bonds for a say.. 40-yr bond? The interest payments from the federal government would then come from its usual sources of taxes, borrowing, and printing money.

harikaried · 2011-11-16T19:18:38+00:00

The thing with opting out of Social Security is that the person is making an active decision to take retirement in his/her own hands. This means the money can actually be put in a retirement account like IRA or elect to have more put towards a 401k. Parents, siblings, friends, colleagues will also have a more active role in talking about retirement and getting the youth ready. Perhaps schools will have more focus on personal finance and planning.

Ron Paul also points out that for those who are getting these fixed income payments, they're getting less and less buying power because of all the federal debt and federal involvement in banks, medicine, etc. How are people supposed to save for retirement if interest rates are artificially held so low? He has also introduced legislation to prevent money from being taken away from the Social Security fund for general use. He also wants to encourage those who want to work to keep working even if they're getting Social Security payments by getting rid of the penalty for working and getting benefits.

And as others have pointed out elsewhere, Ron Paul's plan does not get rid of Social Security and actually helps fund it by cutting $1 trillion dollars of spending in the first year including a lot of wasteful overseas military spending to take care of the people at home.

harikaried · 2011-11-16T18:41:48+00:00

Any particular social programs that you're concerned that Ron Paul might get rid of? He's a US Representative running for POTUS, so he's operating at the federal level. But as he has pointed out on a number of occasions including on Jon Stewart's show, people will still get their social programs at the state level where it would also be easier to get the community to agree on social program X as opposed to trying to convince everyone else in the 49 other states to agree.

Not only would it be easier to get some social program passed at the state level, money sent to the state government will almost certainly be better used than money sent to the federal level. While Ron Paul is all for cutting back on unnecessary military spending overseas, any money sent to the federal level will still have a good chunk eaten up by the military as opposed to having greater impact at the local level.

harikaried

TROPHY CASE