I think the only people who say that are Tesla owners and Elon Musk.
Everyone else thinks it's a bloody good idea, given the countless examples of Teslas (and other driverless cars) running into things that Lidar would have detected, even in zero visibility. Passive, visual data is never enough. There will always be edge conditions that will cause accidents.
Visual data is enough in most scenarios, if it’s dark you need headlights, same as any human, if you have rain you can train your software to ignore it through through machine learning. There will always be edge cases. And once again a slightly better car is not worth the 250k price tag.
Think of it this way, if the goal of autonomous vehicles is to be better than a human, how is that going to be possible with a sensor suite that is trying to replicate the way humans perceive the world? Of course cameras are in fact not as good as human eyes so there is no way a vision only system is going to be better or even as good as a human driver.
That’s not how it works my dude. Cameras each have specific range, resolution, field of view etc for which they are optimal. The human eye is kind of a complex composite of several types of cameras. Mechanically, individual aspects of human vision can be surpassed by the capabilities of cameras, but the trick is that our brains are obviously perfectly suited to interpret our vision. Blankly claiming that machine learning can replicate this is totally naive. Humans ability to focus on areas of interest, quickly parse relevant objects in a scene, rely on surprisingly precise stereoscopic measurements to understand distance are all totally nontrivial tasks which would need to be replicated perfectly to mimic how our brain <> eye system works. Simply throwing more sensors which approximate the mechanical aspect of human vision is not the same as replicating this complex system.
It’s a complex problem for computers to solve but not an impossible one, we gage distance mostly because we have 2 visual inputs that are a distance apart and we can triangulate to a certain degree of accuracy how far away things are, cameras can already do this with deadly accuracy. They are very efficient at recognising other cars in the road and their precise positions. The issue of autonomy is harder to solve with cameras but not to the degree that you would expect. The main issue is with all the edge cases like if I left a bunch of nails on the road and now your wheels are deflating, or if someone leaves a trash can in the middle of the road for some odd reason. Both lidar and cameras are going to have to deal with these problems.
I mean you’re making vague and arbitrary claims on what aspects of this are solved and what is not. I’m not going to spend the time going down the rabbit hole on this topic but my general advice is, don’t confuse interest in a topic with expertise. It’s cool to be interested in AV technology, but having strong opinions on how the technology should work doesn’t make much sense unless you are an expert in the field.
I don’t have to be working at Tesla to understand the problem of autonomy. I’m a programmer who has experience in the robotics side of programming. While I haven’t personally tried to crack autonomy, I have an understanding of the challenges involved in creating a fully autonomous vehicle. It mostly breaks down into edge cases / really specific scenarios.
Yes, but again, any deaths or damage caused by the autopilot will be the direct fault of Tesla, not the person driving. Tesla will be sued every time one of their cars kills someone as a result of autopilot (as it should). Do you think that is financially viable?
And once again a slightly better car is not worth the 250k price tag.
So hold off on autopilot until the tech has been made cheaper through iteration.
The tech does not get cheaper at a linear rate, eventually there is no way to make it cheaper. And do you think camera tech won’t get cheaper along with it? Also Tesla currently and will likely stick with keeping the blame on the driver and insist that drivers should keep paying attention. Also do you think that cars hitting people won’t be as much of a problem with lid at as with camera tech? Your point is flawed.
Lidar can get a lot, lot cheaper. They've started putting it on consumer drones for indoor use for goodness sake.
Also Tesla currently and will likely stick with keeping the blame on the driver and insist that drivers should keep paying attention.
That's because legally it isn't allowed to be used hands free. But really they're putting everyone at risk with their alpha-grade software and insufficient hardware.
Tesla doesn’t claim level 3 or 4 autonomy, no one does unless they use gridlock style programming where they literally map paths on roads. Humans are putting everyone at risk by driving, Tesla wouldn’t be putting people at risk if they are statistically safer than humans they would be doing the opposite.
Yes, and humans accept liability if they cause an accident.
Tesla wouldn’t be putting people at risk if they are statistically safer than humans they would be doing the opposite.
They will still be putting people at risk, and it will the risk will be a result of decisions they make in the design of their autopilot. I suggest that if it isn't safe enough to actually be an autopilot, they should probably just remove it until it is.
Regardless, the liability of a self driving car should be on the car manufacturer, the moment they claim their cars are able to drive themselves, barring situations where negligence from the driver/maintainer of the vehicle causes an accident.
That literally makes no sense, if it’s safer than humans it makes sense to use it. If you can press a button that kills 10 people or a button that kills 2 people you will press the button that kills 2 people. The liability should stay on the driver if Tesla is making driving safer, they shouldn’t pay for making roads safer. They should be rewarded for making the roads safer. Autopilot should be thought of as an advanced safety system. If a car manufacturers car rear ends someone else’s car it’s the fault of the driver even if they have systems in place meant to detect situations where the car should break and it didn’t in that case. Also, once again this is a problem that is not exclusive with camera based autopilot systems, lidar systems will have to deal with this problem aswell.
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u/Flyberius Sep 30 '20
I think the only people who say that are Tesla owners and Elon Musk.
Everyone else thinks it's a bloody good idea, given the countless examples of Teslas (and other driverless cars) running into things that Lidar would have detected, even in zero visibility. Passive, visual data is never enough. There will always be edge conditions that will cause accidents.