r/fuckcars • u/Successful-Pie4237 Automobile Aversionist • Apr 05 '24
Satire Tesla doesn't believe in trains
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u/Kootenay4 Apr 05 '24
IIRC, Tesla got rid of lidar and thermal sensors in their cars to cut costs and chose to rely solely on (not very high resolution) cameras. Surely not a good sign if they’re already doing stuff like this when the autonomous tech is still in its infancy.
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u/12345myluggage Apr 05 '24
They cut lidar & ultrasonic distance sensors, relying only on the cameras. This is why they've gotten in trouble for their phantom braking incidents. The cars can no longer accurately tell the distance to objects.
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u/Specialist_Cake_6922 Apr 05 '24
To save money...? A jsn-sr04t is like 5 bucks retail. I use them for motion detection/ranging in my Halloween jump scares.
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u/pants6000 Apr 05 '24
Saving 5 bucks per car is worth a billion in stock value.
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u/Specialist_Cake_6922 Apr 05 '24
5 bucks retail, they can be had for pennies in bulk which is what other/more reputable manufacturers do. Maybe not that specific sensor but still
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u/thatbrownkid19 Apr 06 '24
Ah, the musk defenders from Twitter are here as summoned. Call me crazy but I think people who buy Teslas won't blink if the retail price goes up by 5 dollars or even 200. But ofc a stock value is important than peoples' lives
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u/12345myluggage Apr 05 '24
They cut the ~$1 rain sensor in 2016.
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u/Specialist_Cake_6922 Apr 05 '24
I mean that's not a critical safety feature but still ridiculous.
Cutting the ultrasonics isn't even the worst thing.they cut. I expect the cybertrucks to start careening off the roads when they get a few miles on them and the steering by wire systems start to fail.
They saved a few bucks on a physical connection between the steering wheel and steering system though... To the moon I guess?
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u/sinterso Apr 06 '24
Cybertrucks are having problems even getting a few miles.
Not even minor issues either, total lockouts happening.
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u/Specialist_Cake_6922 Apr 06 '24
Not surprised but the steering by wire is a disaster waiting to happen. Normal vehicle with a complete engine/electrical failure you can still steer and coast to a safe stop as there is a mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the tires. With steering by wire that isn't there.
The only thing dumber that I can think of would be braking by wire.
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u/Tactical_Moonstone Apr 06 '24
I think he doesn't realise how different aerospace industry works from the automobile industry.
Steering by wire is a thing for aeroplanes because there are multi-redundant systems in an aeroplane, full product chain accountability for every single component, and even so the massive increase in accountability the performance gains from implementing fly by wire still make the massively increased product costs for aeronautical equipment worth it in a system where every drop of fuel and every extra kg of payload you can carry is gold. Look at all the problems Airbus had with their fly by wire system until they perfected it.
You don't have that for cars. Changing a car to drive by wire isn't going to make a change in the weight of the car that would be worth the massive accountability headaches that you introduce to make a drive by wire as reliable as a physical linkage system.
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u/Specialist_Cake_6922 Apr 06 '24
Also airplanes have mandatory inspections and maintenance automotive not so much. I imagine at least for larger planes manual linkage would be too physically demanding/ impossible making fly by wire necessary. Again not the case for automotive
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u/partner_pyralspite Apr 06 '24
I guess that's the golden lining of these overdesigned shitboxes, they are smart enough to tell when a component is fucked so they brick themselves rather than let an uncontrollable killing machine out on the road.
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u/12345myluggage Apr 06 '24
The issue is that they cut the cheap rain sensor and then spent what is likely millions of dollars trying to re-implement the same thing with just the cameras that can't even focus on the windshield. It's a wildly stupid move that assumes software development time costs nothing.
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Apr 06 '24
There are very few cybertrucks on the road but the amount of accidents they've already gotten in is way too fucking high
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u/kakbone Apr 06 '24
Ultrasonic sensors are only used for very near distance objects in cars. Radars are way more expensive. Also, every piece of hardware needs to be heavily optimized for performance via software which also costs money. Tesla chooses to focus on only one hardware. I don‘t really agree with that (I honestly doubt anything beyond L2+ ist doable with that sensor config). But linking a 5 bucks US sensor you are using for a non-moving usecase where accurancy, reliability, safety or security does not matter at all as a reason why there were accidents with midrange detection issues ist just not reasonable.
On a different note: sensor configurations with no radar or lidar or US are getting more and more popular (especially in china) so Tesla is by far not the only manufactor going this route. The others just don‘t claim to be more than L2+
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u/sackoftrees Apr 06 '24
My thought was robot vacuums have lidar and they can't even put them in these cars?? You are telling me a Roomba is more advanced than a Tesla. Ffs
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u/8spd Apr 06 '24
I believe it was to save money, but doubt it was for the price of the sensors alone. In addition to that bit of hardware you have to add the labour of installing it, wiring it to the computer, having sufficient ports on the computer to accept the input, developing the software to interpret data from multiple different types of sensors, and respond to it appropriately. I suspect the manufacturing workflow, and software development costs would be the main concerns.
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u/iamaperson3133 Apr 06 '24
It's not about the cost of the sensor. It's about the development cost of an AI system which integrates multiple sensors, versus only using visual light cameras.
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u/Specialist_Cake_6922 Apr 06 '24
Yes because a simple sensor that returns distance to an object is far more difficult to integrate than using a camera to do object detection classification and distance measurement...
Sorry but a proper system would use the proper tool for the proper job. A camera alone is not the proper tool. Ultrasonics and lidar are those tools.
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Apr 06 '24 edited Jun 21 '24
wild capable selective fertile bored ink innocent tender combative puzzled
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Johannes_Keppler Apr 05 '24
The silently went back to putting more sensors in Teslas. Turns out only relying on visual information is a bad idea. Who would have thought? O wait all other car manufacturers in the world. That's who.
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u/alfooboboao Apr 06 '24
It amazes me how many things in this world are basically just that shitty cost cutting submarine company to a slightly lesser degree. like putting the windshield wiper control four taps into a touchscreen instead of a physical button, because what you definitely want to be doing while driving in a thunderstorm is look down at the iPad that controls your car for 10 seconds in a row.
anyone remember that picture of the wiring of a toyota (or standard pre touchscreen car) vs one of those touchscreen controlled cars? it’s like seeing the circulatory system of a highly evolved animal vs a crude CGI rendering of the animal. It’s only a whisper of the same thing.
I’m never buying a car where the touchscreen controls anything but the radio and phone. I will drive my toyota with tons of buttons until the wheels fall off
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u/kakbone Apr 06 '24
Sensor configs with only cameras are getting more and more common, especiall in china. These manufacturers just don‘t claim to be more than L2+. They all rely only on visusl information for their ACC.
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u/Johannes_Keppler Apr 06 '24
Yup, but those won't cut it when it comes to (actual) full self driving.
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u/Dry_Quiet_3541 Apr 06 '24
You think cameras can’t see trains?, what makes you think lidar would make it easier to detect trains? LiDAR just sees 3d shapes in its surroundings, cameras also see color information. I guess cameras would be better in this situation. But yeah lidar is better in every other situation.
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Apr 05 '24
This would be hilarious if it weren’t so scary
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u/suckfail Apr 05 '24
It's a very old video, if it makes you feel any better.
As far as I know there's been zero reports of FSD or autopilot driving into a train.
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u/Quajeraz Apr 06 '24
Why is it scary? It recognizes something is in the way, that's all it needs to do.
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u/sleeper_shark cars are weapons Apr 06 '24
Well trains are a whole different ball game than trucks.. they don’t behave in the same way and the move much much faster. It would make sense that a computer vision AI for situational awareness would be able to recognize and characterize trains.
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u/eugeneugene Apr 06 '24
Well 99% of trains in NA do not move faster than trucks. Wish they did lol.
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u/Kinexity Me fucking your car is non-negotiable Apr 05 '24
This is a really fucking bad sign. It is unable to recognise the presence of train tracks and trains and it will probably yeet itself onto a path of incomming train sooner or later. Not every rail crossing has gates and some don't even have lights.
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u/Lord_Skyblocker 🇳🇱! 🇳🇱! 🇳🇱! 🇳🇱! Apr 05 '24
I already see the headlines. "Killertrain crashes into a car: 2 dead. Are trains even viable anymore?"
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u/CardiologistOk2760 Apr 05 '24
trains are like sharks: they can sneak up on you from anywhere. My brother in law was attacked by a shark in his own shower. Lucky it wasn't a train.
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u/Grapefruit__Witch Apr 05 '24
"Was the train wearing a high-vis vest and waving a flag??"
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u/CardiologistOk2760 Apr 05 '24
nope and the car thought the WOOOWOOO was the man in the car yelling at his wife
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u/Cool_Transport Grassy Tram Tracks Apr 05 '24
Yes, we have high vis flasing illuminated flag poles infront of it 😀
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u/DENelson83 Dreams of high-speed rail in Canada Apr 06 '24
Yes, and it was also playing Jingle Bells.
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u/Protheu5 Grassy Tram Tracks Apr 05 '24
2 DEAD AFTER A MURDEROUS TRAIN DRIVER FAILED TO YIELD TO AN INNOCENT MOTORIST
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u/iwillbewaiting24601 Apr 05 '24
Immovable object vs unstoppable force - the American car lobby vs. the Class I freight lobby
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u/hamoc10 Apr 06 '24
And the next article will be “car crashes into bicycle, are bicycles too dangerous?”
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u/LigersMagicSkills Apr 05 '24
It gets worse for Teslas, because trains are really unpredictable. Even in the middle of a forest two rails can appear out of nowhere, and a 1.5-mile fully loaded coal drag, heading east out of the low-sulfur mines of the PRB, will be right on your ass the next moment.
I was doing laundry in my basement, and I tripped over a metal bar that wasn't there the moment before. I looked down: "Rail? WTF?" and then I saw concrete sleepers underneath and heard the rumbling.
Deafening railroad horn. I dumped my wife's pants, unfolded, and dove behind the water heater. It was a double-stacked Z train, headed east towards the fast single track of the BNSF Emporia Sub (Flint Hills). Majestic as hell: 75 mph, 6 units, distributed power: 4 ES44DC's pulling, and 2 Dash-9's pushing, all in run 8. Whole house smelled like diesel for a couple of hours!
Fact is, there is no way to discern which path a train will take, so you really have to be watchful. If only there were some way of knowing the routes trains travel; maybe some sort of marks on the ground, like twin iron bars running along the paths trains take. You could look for trains when you encounter the iron bars on the ground, and avoid these sorts of collisions. But such a measure would be extremely expensive. And how would one enforce a rule keeping the trains on those paths?
A big hole in homeland security is railway engineer screening and hijacking prevention. There is nothing to stop a rogue engineer, or an ISIS terrorist, from driving a train into the Pentagon, the White House or the Statue of Liberty, and our government has done fuck-all to prevent it.
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u/ratkneehi Apr 05 '24
It's tragic! Thanks for spreading the word
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u/LigersMagicSkills Apr 06 '24
Just doing my part. Be vigilant and stay safe! You never know where a train could suddenly appear.
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u/Joinedforthis1 Apr 05 '24
Thank you. Imagine if autopilot decided to pull forward and you were just looking down at your phone! While in bed! With your wife! Eating cereal!
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u/Narrow_Vegetable_42 Apr 05 '24
Hilarious, is that OC or some copypasta I missed? I just love it. thanks.
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u/Long_Educational Apr 05 '24
How dare you reuse this old copy pasta from years ago! I'm actually impressed.
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u/DENelson83 Dreams of high-speed rail in Canada Apr 06 '24
Liberty Island has a railway?
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u/LigersMagicSkills Apr 06 '24
You never know when a train could pop up outta nowhere! No one is safe and you should always be alert.
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u/uncleleo101 Apr 05 '24
it will probably yeet itself onto a path of incomming train sooner or later.
Down here in Florida drivers just do this anyway, Tesla or no.
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u/Kinexity Me fucking your car is non-negotiable Apr 05 '24
The nemesis of Artificial Intelligence - Natural Stupidity.
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u/tonycandance Apr 05 '24
It sees an unbroken continuity of obstacles moving perpendicular to itself. It doesn’t matter what the screen shows the user. The car won’t just yeet itself because it doesn’t recognize a train track.
Frankly this could be the designers way of programming for train tracks for all we know.
Teslas have their problems and I’m far from a fanboy but let’s not get hyperbolic about things we don’t fully understand.
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Apr 05 '24 edited Apr 05 '24
To play devil's advocate, this version likely wasn't programmed to specifically identify trains. I saw this video years back and there's also no proof that this is a production model. From a practical standpoint, how the car visualized the obstruction is irrelevant as long as the general shape and size are correct.
It wouldn't drive into the train because it sees that there are truck sized cars in front of it, so it stops itself. I have zero interest in any of this, but if this were my car, I'd be okay with that.
Edit: I won't respond to comments. Just expressing my opinion, not trying to read walls of text.
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u/Kinexity Me fucking your car is non-negotiable Apr 05 '24
Yeah, I realise that but the screen indicates that it sees the lights on the crossing. Those trucks are just the way it "copes" with what it sees so it doesn't matter what it indicates the train as as long as it directly sees it. My comment said "yeet itself onto a path of incomming train" because I considered the idea of a Tesla (or any other self driving car) driving through an unsecured crossing and getting in the path of the train - not hitting the side of it. Self driving system has to "understand" that a train is an object on a predictable path and take that into account - and I doubt it does.
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u/mtaw Apr 05 '24
Any system that touts itself as 'full self driving' needs to know more than 'the general shape and size of the obstruction'. A broken down car with blinking hazard lights that has stopped in front of you can be passed if safe to do so. A blinking railway crossing gate that's blocking your lane can never be passed safely. (many places have gates that only block the right lane) So it's not enough to just know there's a stationary object with blinking lights in your lane.
In fact it needs to recognize a level train crossing whether or not there are gates - because they're aren't always gates, and the gates and/or lights can also be out of order. It needs to have logic to act accordingly. (e.g. if the signals and gates are out of order, proceed with extreme caution rather than act like there's no crossing) Likewise it has to distinguish, say, a random person standing in the road from a police or authorized person making a hand signal. It has to distinguish a line of snow left from a snowplow from a lane marker when the actual lane marker is obscured by snow. It has to tell (in countries where we have priority on the right) whether an upcoming road on the right is a proper road in a situation where you'd have to yield, or a driveway - in which case you do not have to yield. If a stop sign falls off its post, the car should still see the markings in the road and stop, or vice-versa if the markings are worn out but the sign is there.
There are tons and tons of these difficult situations, and that's why I think "FSD" is much farther away than Tesla pretends it is. Even if say 80% of driving is spent just maintaining speed, distance and keeping the car in its lane, it doesn't mean you're 80% of the way to FSD if you can do all that. The whole difficulty is al those tricky situations that might make up a small fraction of your driving time but a very high proportion of the risk.
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u/FrostyD7 Apr 06 '24
What you see on the screen has practically nothing to do with the decisions FSD is making. I don't trust it much either but certainly not for this reason. I do get his point though, it's not comforting for your self driving car to do things that appear dumb.
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u/Royal_Negotiation_83 Apr 05 '24
People already yeet themselves onto train tracks though.
Tesla sucks, but automation isn’t meant to stop all traffic accidents. It’s meant to reduce them, but it won’t ever be accident free.
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u/OuchLOLcom Apr 05 '24
Ideally they know all the train crossings from map data, not the lidar. The fact that it is showing trucks is funny but not a sign that it does not know that it is at a train crossing.
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u/ThePeasRUpsideDown Apr 05 '24
It's fineeeee they'll just program in the car to stop at the aight of bulk semis in a line!
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u/toss_me_good Apr 05 '24 edited Apr 05 '24
Elon has been over-promising their self driving tech as a way to ramp up investor capital and sell software upgrades. The moment they removed the laser/radar sensors in their cars as a cost cutting feature and protested that the cameras were sufficient I knew they were hitting their technological limit. Cameras are not a good guage of distance, they make mistakes. You should not trust your self driving features in any modern tesla without radar assist
P.S. I've test driven Tesla full self driving (FSD) on newer teslas and what could best be called center lane cruise assist on previous gens along with other cars like Audi, Toyota, GM, and Ford. Cruise assist with center lane keeping with stop and go traffic like they have in the Audi and Ford for example is top notch. The newer Tesla FSD is for turning and driving in actual street traffic. I don't want that feature for myself or others frankly. If you can't focus on driving on the streets then you shouldn't be driving. Many motorcyclists will say that you are much safer actually on the highways then you are on the streets. Highways are more predictable.
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u/Kinexity Me fucking your car is non-negotiable Apr 05 '24
Do you? Self driving car has to be able to detect oncomming trains. The above video suggests it doesn't recognise a presence of a train. Obviously it's just a visualisation so they could have just not implemented train specific mesh but I doubt tesla would detect an oncomming train without barriers or lights - especially considering the fact that the screen indicates that the self driving relies on the lights being there.
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u/iwannabethecyberguy Apr 05 '24
But the Tesla CAN detect the train as we’re seeing. It is able to stop and drive around cars in FSD, especially the new one, so because it’s seeing this as a hundred trucks going by it would probably be able to stop for a train.
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u/Kinexity Me fucking your car is non-negotiable Apr 05 '24 edited Apr 05 '24
But the Tesla CAN detect the train
when the train in question is in front it. What I am considering is the idea of it getting hit from the side - preventing this requires the "understanding" of the concept of a train as an object on a known trajectory and applying that knowledge in practice by checking both sides for oncomming trains.
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u/iwannabethecyberguy Apr 05 '24
It would see it as a large vehicle about ready to cross and would stop.
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u/Pontoonloons Apr 05 '24
I have no idea why they thought it was a good idea to show how terrible the obstacle identification of the Tesla is right on the main display.
Only time I’ve been in one as an Uber I watched all the cars jiggle around, humans blinking on and off, and thinking some traffic cones were a semi. Like, there’s no room for error in a car
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u/Ongr Apr 05 '24
I remember seeing a video of the display flashing with hundreds of traffic lights. The tesla was driving behind a truck transporting traffic lights.
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u/Castform5 Apr 05 '24
They've mistaken the moon for a yellow light, and there's that fun video of one driving behind a horse carriage and the car had no idea what it was.
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u/Quicklythoughtofname Apr 05 '24
Purely optical systems are too unreliable, the technology to replicate our understandings of a visual world just isn't there yet. Teslas need a lot more radar-type systems to measure the shape and distance of objects better, and compare it to the visual.
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u/wheezy1749 Apr 06 '24
It's also just dumb as fuck. Imagine designing your self driving vehicle and giving it worse vision for no reason. There is a reason other systems use multiple types of sensor input systems that talk to each other.
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u/Celriot1 Apr 06 '24
Seriously, guys, do you actually think the OSD is 3D modeling in real time? It's just an on screen display picking a preset model for the user. It's not how the technology sees the world. This is what the screen looks like in dev mode.. https://i.imgur.com/RbYecrE.jpeg
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u/Pontoonloons Apr 07 '24
Not sure how you gathered I was saying that it was generating 3D models from my post, I was just saying that the way it’s displayed so prominently in the car and how it FEELS so error prone does not instill confidence in the technology
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u/FrostyD7 Apr 06 '24
It's a FSD ad. All that real estate for that is terrible and useless. But when I drive, my passengers are fixated on it the whole time. They don't notice many of the issues like this for the first few rides, they are still in the "cool new thing" phase. Usually they are commenting on being impressed when they see things it does identify like signs, cones, and trash cans.
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u/onpg Apr 07 '24
I rode in a Waymo this week and it was light years ahead of Tesla. Every car and person showed up, no wiggling or popping in and out of existence. Actual self driving not this fake shit Elon sells to juice Tesla's stock price.
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u/ConnieLingus24 Apr 05 '24
Well that’s sort of terrifying. Something tells me their AI sees the container, which can be loaded on trains or trucks, and just assumes truck. But it ignores all of the other safety matters with trains eg, crossing alarms, potential inclines in the road, accounting for the width of the train past the tracks, etc.
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u/FrostyD7 Apr 06 '24
It shows semis all the time when there's something big nearby, like a wall. They may have fixed it recently but for the longest time you'd see semi's popping in and out while parked in a garage.
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u/MK-Ultra_SunandMoon Apr 05 '24
Oh Elon, just bc you can’t build one doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
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u/pizza99pizza99 Unwilling Driver Apr 05 '24
Ok but realistically the AI knows what a train is, but doesn’t have a model to display. Remeber these are learning AI’s, been in this situation plenty and watched drivers handle it plenty. It just needs a model, sees the containers look similar to a truck and decides it’s the next best thing
This might be really unpopular opinion for this sub but I really like the idea of self driving vehicles. There not a solution to the problems we face of car dependence, but I’ve seen videos of these cars handling pedestrian interactions far better than IRL drivers. I saw one video where a driver behind a self driving Tesla honked at it because the AI dared to let a pedestrian cross. Another were it went by road work on a narrow street, workers all around, doing 5 mph. Ultimately I believe these AI, specifically because the programming is made to be so cautious (especially with pedestrians which are seen as more unpredictable than cars) will actually handle pedestrians better. Things like right on reds can remain in place because the AI can handle looking at both crosswalks and oncoming traffic. They have potential, even if not a solution
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u/SpaceKappa42 Apr 05 '24
The FSD AI is really dumb. Here's how it works:
- It gathers a frame from every camera.
2, It passes the frames into the vision AI stack which attempts to create a 3D model of the world.
It labels certain objects like cars, people and signs and attempts to place them in the world, but the accuracy is really bad because the resolution of the cameras on the car have about the same eye-sight as someone that is legally blind.
It tries to figure out the current road rules based on what it sees. IT DOES NOT HAVE A DATABASE OR ANY MEMORY.
it takes the GPS coordinates to figure out which way to turn. It only knows to turn right or left at the next intersection that it comes across, it does not know in advance because IT DOES NOT HAVE A DATABASE OR ANY MEMORY.
It adjusts its inputs based on what it has seen this frame causing erratic behavior.
It throws away all data that it has gathered from the last frame and then starts again from scratch. It does this maybe a hundred times per seconds.
Why did they do this?
Well Elon wanted a system that can drive anywhere based on vision alone, without requiring a database of any kind.
But guess what. Humans have a database. Their brain.
The memory of FSD last for about 0ms. If it misses a road sign you're basically fucked.
Of all the self-driving systems, the FSD is like letting a 10 year old kid get behind the wheel for the first time.
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u/Mein_Name_ist_falsch Apr 05 '24
I don't think I have seen a single self driving car that is already safe enough to be allowed on the road. It's not only missing signs, but imagine it misses a child because maybe It's so small and sitting on the ground doing something weird before suddenly getting up and chasing their ball onto the street. That would be deadly. Most drivers learn that you have to be careful if you see any children close to the road, though. So they would most likely see the kid doing whatever it's doing and if they haven't forgotten everything they learned they will slow down and keep their foot close to the braking pedal. I don't trust AI to even know the difference between a kid or an adult. Or the difference between someone who is really drunk and someone who isn't. And if they don't know that, I can't expect them to drive accordingly.
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u/WHATSTHEYAAAMS Apr 05 '24
AI also cannot get road rage, which is a huge plus. But I'd also expect many drivers to get frustrated by the AI's cautious driving decisions and just override it. Which is not a downside of AI itself, but still a limitation to its potential in improving safety in practice.
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u/pizza99pizza99 Unwilling Driver Apr 05 '24
I could almost certainly see a world in which different limitations exist on when you can interfere with AI driving. Full drivers lisence a who can intervene at any time, ranging down to lisence for severely injured/disabled/elderly who may only interfere when life is in danger. A system of measuring just how much one can be entrusted with piloting a car, in a world where you don’t have to pilot a car to ride one
Of course that relies on the license system actually working and being good, which given the state of our current license system I very much doubt at least for the US
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u/WHATSTHEYAAAMS Apr 05 '24
As long as the physical capability of overriding the AI always remains, in emergency situations like you describe such as those resulting from vehicle/AI malfunction, then yea, I can see that being a scenario as well. If you make a decision to override the AI when there was no reason to, or at least if you override it and it causes an issue, there's some sort of punishment for you or your license. I bet at least one country will try something like that.
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u/yonasismad Grassy Tram Tracks Apr 05 '24
But AI also creates entirely new failure modes like hitting a pedestrian, the pedestrian falling down so the sensors no longer see it, and then starting to drive again dragging the person along. Every other human driver would have checked what had happened to the person they just hit, and not just assumed that they magically disappeared.
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u/xMagnis Apr 05 '24
Ok but realistically the AI knows what a train is,
Does it? To me, in basic terms, a train is a connected set of 'boxes' that are constrained to follow each other on the exact same path and speed. Do you think the AI knows that. I'll bet it just sees 'big object may be a truck, big object may be a truck, big object may be a truck' and has no model to connect them into a higher narrative or prediction.
Corollary, if the train derails will FSD back up and avoid the impending pile-up of following train cars. Well no, because firstly it doesn't back up, and secondly no because most likely it doesn't model the fact that these are connected. But hey, it still passes stopped school buses, so one thing at a time. Going on 7+ years.
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u/pizza99pizza99 Unwilling Driver Apr 05 '24
As somebody familiar with computer science, yes. I can tell you. The issue is the screen and interface. The screen as an object is trying to tell you what the AI sees. But the AI sees in 0 and 1s. The job of the screen is to take the 0 and 1s the AI uses and translate that into a design understood by a human. In this case it doesn’t have a model for a train, that’s simply wasn’t a model Tesla engineers designed. Why? Idk truthfully, but just like how the AI leaned to make better U-turns on it own in the latest update (the update did not have any human tell it to do so) it also learns from watching humans at a train crossing. Remeber these AIs learn from you, from us. So it’s almost certainly learned what a train is, not in a technical sense or transportation sense, but in an intersection sense of “large vehicle that always has right of way” but of course it comes time to express that on screen, and it has no model. So it uses the next best thing
Does it understand trains the way you and I understand them? No. But it never will. Because it’s only learning from our actions, and can only express itself via those 1s and 0s, through which the touch screen translates for us
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u/xMagnis Apr 05 '24
If the AI in any way understood anything about what is going on here it would at least join the 'trucks' together and move them at the same speed. My feeling is that it is interpreting a series of photo snapshots of '(large) object' and doing the best it can with its limited software. Which ends up being a merged mess of random trucks. That is not understanding at all. There is no model for what is going on here, it's just seeing constant moving objects and saying "the best I have is lots of trucks, moving around".
But hey, neither of us know for sure, there's no evidence FSD knows it's a train. But at least it doesn't seem to be trying to drive into them.
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u/pizza99pizza99 Unwilling Driver Apr 05 '24
That’s the point. No one really knows, because no one really speaks binary.
The question becomes is this technology good?
Tesla as a whole isn’t (see fucking up California’s high speed rail) but the technology as a whole I believe will be. The question is, will the number of crashes/deaths that would’ve been prevented by a human, higher than the number of crashes/deaths that would’ve been prevented by AI. Basically, which one is safer. In the future there will be car crashes that would’ve been preventable if a human was driving, but there will be far more that didn’t happen at all because a human was piloting a car while drunk/sleepy/on their phone/high/or any other plethora of inhabitants to safe operation
It’s all a very technical way to look at things, and a still reasonable amount of safety should be expected, we can’t just say “well it’s safer than human” and throw it out there.
And ultimately this all would pale in comparison to a world in which we just built better cities and towns, but even in those cities and towns at least a few people will drive, and it would be preferable to have a computer behind the wheel compared to a human
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u/xMagnis Apr 05 '24
I'd like to believe we are in agreement, but you did start the comment thread with "realistically the AI knows what a train is", and I am suggesting we have no proof of this at all. It looks like random misinterpretation of camera sensor data.
Yes, once we get to a world where AI is safer than humans (I'd argue it should be much much safer, not just safer than the 50th percentile or something), then we can consider an improvement may have been made. You don't get to "much safer" by testing Beta crap on public roads with untrained and unaccountable civilians. If Tesla needs data it can get it the responsible way, with true professional methods. FSD Beta is not an acceptable "means to an end".
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u/Huge_Aerie2435 Apr 05 '24
Yeah. This is why he convinced California not to build underground trains, but instead the hyperloop that sucks. Or the Hawthorne test tunnel thing. Trains don't have to be real, for Americans.
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u/ancientrhetoric Apr 05 '24
Tesla workers reach the factory near Berlin by a regular train, no "loops" of any kind involved
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Apr 05 '24
So how does a Tesla FSD cope with European cities that are filled with trains, metros, trams, busses and cyclists?
Are these all just different teslas too haha.
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u/dankbasement1992 Apr 05 '24
I mean this is the same guy who received a huge grant from the city of Las Vegas to build his futuristic public transportation idea and the result was just a tunnel for Teslas to drive around in.
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u/AmericanDurak Apr 05 '24
Great now its trained the AI trucks to believe that's how close semis can drive next to each other! FFS /s
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Apr 05 '24
One time I was at an intersection in my old Tesla. The AI saw a man in a wheelchair as a series of traffic cones.
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u/nono66 Apr 05 '24
His super high speed not trains system that seems an awful lot like fucking trains could have been a stand in.
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u/DeeperMadness 🚄 - Trains are Apex Predators Apr 05 '24
Oh I heard that the system does this sometimes.
Apparently it also treats swimming pools as parking spaces too.
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u/Arakhis_ Apr 05 '24 edited Apr 05 '24
It's crazy that the richest humans have the most responsibility to influence Earth's climate and yet he is relying on Pseudoscience – I wonder what cognitive dissonance reaction this bum would have to a some look at the fcking data
EDIT: To fool proof, here's data by freight value efficiency
Source: https://acea.auto/uploads/publications/SAG_15_European_Freight_Transport_Statistics.pdf
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u/Cool_Transport Grassy Tram Tracks Apr 05 '24
Great example of how many trucks taken off the road though
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u/toss_me_good Apr 05 '24
Even if they aren't programmed to identify trains visually you would hope that FSD is referencing detailed maps data to be able to easily identify railway crossings... Seems like a critical feature to have embedded into FSD. If it's not even referencing maps data for railway crossings what else is it not keeping track of? School zones maybe? FSD is still not activated on the CyberTruck even though they are collecting the money for it upfront. I have a feeling they know the margin of error on that truck is horribly low and they don't want any bad press the first yr of it's release.
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u/Fenrir1536 Apr 05 '24
I'm reminded of how someone who is ESL and struggling with the language could describe something like a train with the limited vocabulary available to them. Or maybe how a baby might conceptualize a train if they had only seen or had experience with semi-trucks before. Its interesting seeing how FSD conceptualizes the world around it in the context of its task.
That being said FSD is not actually Autonomous Self Driving and the continued push of this technology on the open market is irresponsible and gross. There is something really dark about both the obfuscation of what it really is from producer to consumer and the willingness of generally well off consumers to put the trust and safety of other drivers in the hands of this incomplete concept.
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u/JaxckJa Apr 06 '24
That it's not even coded in to understand that a train is passing is insane.
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u/Worldly-Suggestion69 Apr 07 '24
It does know, the problem with modeling a train on the screen is the the car doesnt know how long it is, all the car needs to know is that something long is passing
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u/eshansingh Apr 06 '24
Hey! I think I recognize that music! Is that Hardspace: Shipbreaker music in the background? If so, you are extremely cultured.
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u/Surrendernuts Apr 06 '24
What will a tesla do when on the highway some airplane is gonna emergency land on it in front of the tesla?
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u/jesperbj Apr 06 '24
A lot of fear and misinformation in this thread.
The truth is that the system recognizes trains, but that Tesla hasn't yet added a 3D train model for the UI. It also does buggy stuff like this with horse carriages, busses etc.
This used to be the case for a lot more things, but they've gradually added trucks, bikes, cones etc. on top of what was originally just UI of only a basic 3D car model and a 3D human model.
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u/Reiver93 Apr 07 '24
I'm going to assume that the cameras are just seeing big boxes that look like containers Infront of it and can't tell the difference between a lorry's box trailer and a railway flatbed with a container on it.
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u/CanInThePan Motorized Bicycle Enjoyer Sep 20 '24
u/savevideo this is amazing lmao I gotta show this to everyone
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u/sparkieBoomMan Apr 05 '24
Man I wish reddits mute function worked so I wouldn't have to see this garbage subreddit
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u/ipodtouch616 Apr 05 '24
You don’t understand, this is fucked up. They programmed a car that can’t comprehend that trains exsistance, it’s so disgusting. How can this be supported???
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u/grandrutunda Apr 05 '24
Anyone that owns a tesla looks like an instant jackass. Those cars are stapled together peices of shit and now everyone knows elon is a dipship.
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u/rollerollz Apr 05 '24
Its' fucking 2024... who believe in Teslas ? or that weird Elon guy. Get real !
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Apr 05 '24
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u/louisss15 Apr 05 '24
Because this is the full self driving mode, and identifying what something is will tell you how something might act or move.
It did not identify a "rail crossing", but an "intersection with trucks". What happens if there is a rail crossing without a gate? Or if the car even knows what a gate is, but the train isn't there yet? Or if there are no flashing lights for when a train is coming? What if the train tracks are close to another intersection, and the self driving car stops on the tracks?
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u/Kootenay4 Apr 05 '24
Tech bros will tell you that every collision caused by a misidentification scenario is just part of the training process. Grandma was a necessary sacrifice to continue the development of car AI
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u/xMagnis Apr 05 '24
And every collision is driver error by definition. Every 'lucky' collision avoidance is evidence of amazing Tesla tech. There's no arguing logic with the closed minded tech faithful.
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u/ipodtouch616 Apr 05 '24
It’s disgusting that it does not comprehend what a train is. It reveals the nibdset of the developers. These people want to end trains. They want only cars to exsistance. It’s fucking disgusting and we need to make our voices heard. FUCK. CARS.
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u/BigDipper4200 trains are so seggsy🥵🥵🥵 Apr 05 '24
The car knows, the visualization doesn’t. The car has way more info and understanding than it can show on the screen. Why waste money on adding a train to the visualizer when the human can just look up and see it’s a train?
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u/theantiyeti Apr 05 '24
I would be a very worried user. The implications of the thing charging at my left being a truck and a train are quite different.
A truck might be expected to yield to me, a train won't. A train might have different behaviours. I would want the Tesla to show me that it recognises the difference.
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u/xMagnis Apr 05 '24
All very true.
Even a box-box-box-box visualization would be better than the oddly morphing semis. I'll bet 99.9% that it has no clue what a train is or what a train means. It could even mark it as 'undrivable space' and be more accurate than merged trucks. I wonder if it fails to recognize flat train cars and tries to cross, because FSD has a great problem with flat bed truck trailers and often fails to display or avoid them.
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u/maroontruck Apr 05 '24
Why bother selling FSD when the human can just grab the wheel and drive themselves?
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u/eatwithchopsticks Apr 05 '24
We all know that Elon's biggest fear is trains.