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Tesla Releases Self-Driving Demonstration With Recognition Feed – Video
NOV 20 2016 BY ERIC LOVEDAY 35
Tesla Model X Self-Driving Video
Tesla previously revealed it was adding self-driving hardware to all new vehicles. At that time, the automaker released a short video showing the capabilities of the system.
Now, Tesla has released a longer demonstration of the tech (see above).
Almost immediately after the long version came up, an adept YouTuber slowed down the video to “real-speed” so that we can more accurately see what’s going on (real-speed video below).
Check out both videos (the real-speed version shows us that there are definitely still some quirks in the system…let us know in Comments how many you spot) to see self-driving in action. Note that the driver is there for legal reasons only.
Oh…there’s this too if you’d rather have a different background audio track.
Tesla self-driving AI with the Benny Hill option package https://t.co/gJAwzys7vV
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2016
Source: Tesla
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35 Comments on "Tesla Releases Self-Driving Demonstration With Recognition Feed – Video"
So does this mean “look ma, no hands!” is now officially sanctioned by Tesla?
What it means is it’s learning and it will get better with time.
No point in drawing any conclusions just yet.
The driver in the video didn’t have his hands on the wheel throughout the video. What conclusion do you draw from that?
This certainly makes it hopeful that I can take a nap in my commute by the time I get Tesla 3. Sooner the better since there will be more beta testers!
In the most recent official Tesla Autopilot video before this one, the driver was seen with his hands open, underneath the wheel, not holding on but in a position to grab it instantly if necessary.
I do find it notable that the (non-)driver’s hands in this video are flat in his lap. That certainly suggests Tesla’s level of confidence in the reliability of autonomous driving has increased, at least under the carefully selected conditions of this demonstration.
So yeah, it does look like “Look Ma, no hands!” will soon be officially sanctioned by Tesla. But then, you can say the same about an actual airplane’s autopilot; it’s hands-off once activated. However, I think the official line from Tesla will still be that you need to keep your eyes on the road, in the way that pilots using an autopilot are admonished to “Keep watching the skies!”*
*Fans of ’50’s science fiction movies will no doubt recognize the reference. 🙂
Hi Pushi,
I agree that the way the non-driver holds his hands suggests a high degree of confidence in the system.
Furthermore I really enjoyed to see that the software seems to set to be more defensive than most human drivers would drive in the presence of pedestrians on the level sidewalk.
I hope that this feature will not vanish once the software engineers get more confident with the detection rate of the sensor system. Safety first has to be the rule.
Hopefully the system will classify children as a subgroup of pedestrians/cyclists as they obey a different behaviour than adults.
Meanwhile at a major automaker:
“What the hell! Have u guys seen this Tesla self driving demo video? Fronz, you told me last month there is no fu**en way Tesla can pull this off within next 3 years….look here…the fu**ers doing it now and shoving this video in our face just for the fun of it….what the fu**! …Explain to me again why we can’t today also be doing this…”
You missed about 5+ meetings of top-mid management 🙂
Not much drama there… upper management quickly talked themselves into agreeing the video is not a “real world” demo…that it’s just standard Tesla marketing hype & Elon over reaching what can be done.
It’s the smart front-line dev & engineer guys that are starting to get spooked. They updating their LinkedIn in hopes of getting picked up by Tesla…that’s what the video is really about…a recruitment tool for Tesla.
is not a “real world” demo….
and in case it is, by the time Tesla has autonomous driving on the market, those managers have already sacked their boni, there is no way they can lose money.
The first artificial sentient being, will likely be a car…
Thanks Elon! 😉
Pretty impressive. But this is daytime, good weather, and the roads markings are all well painted. Also, the environment is quite uniform.
I’ll be convinced when this thing works in the snow, driving into New York City at night from the north, as I did just this past winter.
Heck even driving in the rain at night would be really impressive. How do the cameras fare when the glass is wet? How do they handle seeing reflected headlights on the road instead of lane markings?
Maybe this is ready for prime time, but this video doesn’t prove it at all.
Even Google’s team says their self-driving cars can’t handle a road covered with snow.
I don’t agree with those who say that self-driving cars will have to wait until they can handle all conditions of traffic and weather. I think we’ll start seeing other auto makers do what Tesla has done; start rolling out semi-autonomous driving controls that will work only under certain conditions, and will turn over control of the car to a human driver in other conditions.
I found it strange to read a report that Google’s self-driving cars can’t cross bridges! But according to the article linked below, that means only certain types of bridges. Surely they can handle a typical freeway overpass?
http://www.businessinsider.com/autonomous-cars-bridges-2016-8
That’s a Uber only problem.
No it’s not, unless my autonomous car can’t drive by it’s own all the time, that is only 30% helpfull.
Imagine i drank some beer in the afternoon/evening with colleges since my car can drive me home. Half an hour before we leave it starts to rain. –> My car can’t drive, i can’t drive.
What about sending my car to home (to get my wife to shopping) after it put me to work. Somewher on the way the car encounters a situation it can’t handle and safely stops on the side. How is a human supposed to overtake the car controll if there is no one inside. The car is standing in the middle of nowhere and i have to walk 8km to get it back? No very comfortable.
A car that can only handle some situations is only good for the long vacation travel, where there are all people inside and someone can overtake if needed.
For me a autonomous car is either autonomous where it can handle 99.997%* of a conditions or it can not be considered autonomous.
*Only snowstorms where the wheels get stuck because of 1m snowfall and simmilar hard scearios are excluded.
I think a 70% solution, or so, is fine. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing.
However, in terms of business models it changes nothing. You still need drivers (since weather conditions change). You still can’t send the car off by itself reliably.
In effect it’s like a greatly enhanced cruise control; a convenience. Possibly also a safety feature. But not a self-driving car in the true sense.
There are large sections of the USA, and many countries, where “Can’t drive when there is a blanket of snow on the roads” won’t be any real obstacle to selling and using self-driving cars. For example, most of California, much or most of Texas, and Florida will all be just fine. Snow happens so rarely in those places, and disappears so quickly when it does, that the brief periods when self-driving cars can’t move won’t be anything more than a minor inconvenience.
Plug-in EVs aren’t for everyone in this “early adopter” stage of the EV revolution. The same will be true in the early years of self-driving cars.
Good to see that Tesla is rapidly improving its self-driving tech.
But I note a large number of objects to the side of the road which were incorrectly, if briefly, identified as “in-path” when they were definitely off the path the car was following. I presume that shows the limitation of using video camera images and optical object recognition software, rather than more reliable active scanning using radar or lidar.
And of course, what Tesla is showing in this video is the best-case scenario. And even here, correct me if I’m wrong, the car never encounters a traffic light. Clearly it can recognize and obey stop lights, but perhaps traffic lights are something Tesla cars still can’t deal with. If that’s true, then Tesla still has a way to go before their semi-autonomous car tech is as good as what Google has developed.
There are traffic lights at 50 seconds and 1 minute in the longer video.
Oops! Right you are, darth. Thank you for the correction.
I wouldn’t call active scanning more reliable in general… All sensor systems have their pro and contra. I bet you are well informed enough to know the setbacks of lidar so I can spare me the details 😉
The of course well chosen situation in the video contain quite a lot of “nightmares” for the lidar-people.
Don’t get me wrong. My opinion is clear. We should put as many different types of sensors as viable from a tech and money standpoint. I guess (hope) the Tesla sensor suite will improve maybe every two or three years.
There is so much more to come…
If I wasn’t so afraid of robocalypse I would be really happy 😉
It’s important to distinguish between object recognition and obstacle recognition.
I love gadgets but I ENJOY driving a car. If I want to be driven somewhere, I’ll hire a cab or Uber. Frankly, this stuff scares the s**t out of me. Even if I wanted the autopilot feature to stretch or shake out muscles, why not just pull off the road, get out, and really stretch? Just because something is possible, doesn’t make it the right thing to do.
You enjoy being stuck in traffic and crawling along at 5 MPH and stop-and-go? Most people hate that. Driving on “interesting road” is great, but most driving for most people are boring tedium. If self driving cars have been available, I would’ve got my PhD just by using commute time!
Besides, you can still pull over the road to stretch. But with self driving cars, you can even take a nap in the car. I guess I still probably wouldn’t have got PhD since I’d be napping in the car instead of studying. 😉
Waiting said:
“Frankly, this stuff scares the s**t out of me… Just because something is possible, doesn’t make it the right thing to do.”
It’s human nature to find giving up control to be scary. Some reporters allowed to “drive” a Google self-driving car experienced the same thing; anxiety over giving up control. But at least some of them said it took only a few minutes to get used to the experience, and after that it was surprisingly relaxing.
So be aware your reaction has more to do with human psychology than with the technology involved.
I can asure you, most drivers on this planet (it’s Earth to make sure we are talking about the same issue) will love this feature.
Self driving isn’t fun when u have to deal with 1.2 bilion cars on the road worldwide.
Haters will embrace the technology very soon, just like they did with smart phone in the early years.
Good progress. Notable dislikes:
1) Stopped way before a stop sign.
2) Stopped because it falsely identified the jogging ladies as in-path objects.
If I was behind that slow Tesla, I’d be very pissed. Will it know to speed up a bit in the 35mph zone if the road ahead is totally clear and if there’s another car behind it getting real close?
Totally agree. The Driver behind the Tesla would’ve probably hit the car in the rear for this sudden and random stops. This is a no go.
Impressive demo, but the fine tune still needs to be done. Unfortunately the general agreement is that the first 99% of cases are easy to work out, but from then on it’s a case of diminishing returns. Don’t expect anything soon.
Stimpacker said:
“Notable dislikes:
[…]
2) Stopped because it falsely identified the jogging ladies as in-path objects.”
Wow. The car slowing when it detected pedestrians so close to the road that there was a real danger of them wandering into it, was absolutely what every responsible person would want a self-driving car to do.
People with your rather cavalier attitude toward safe driving shouldn’t be allowed to drive. So that is a pretty strong argument in favor of fully autonomous vehicles!
I saw quite a few instances where the car did not behave like a human driver:
1) The two incidents Stimpacker identified.
2) Vehicle did not seem to recognize traffic cones, what if one was laying in the path?
3) Dog walker with small white dog: dog was not recognized even though it was on edge of road.
4) Right turn where car stopped in middle of turn apparently recognized parked car as in-road obstacle.
I agree with Pushmi-pullyu that you want the car to be cautious, however the Tesla is at risk of being hit from behind by a human driver. No fun even though the human would be at fault. Also as a cyclist/jogger it seemed the car passed joggers/cyclist/dogwalker very close with chance the side mirror could clip them. A human driver (almost always) would edge over into the oncoming lane (if safe) to leave a safety margin.
I’m a big proponent of autonomous driving, however after watching that video I would not use the feature in the demo scenario, at the very least I’d always have my hands on the wheel.
Well done Tesla! The AutoPilot system is getting better and better.
I noticed a few instances where the system did not behave like the ‘typical’ drive, but that’s a good thing, because it took safer, less risky options. Slowed for pedestrians, cautions when making turns, letting pedestrians cross the roadway instead of trying to get by them.
One thing to keep in mind when watching the video, is that everything is at a faster pace, so the stops and starts are not as quick/abrupt as they appear. And looking at the narrow, winding roadways the Tesla was traveling, lots of slow downs and stops could be the norm for a human driver as well.