• Tesla announce major update to Autopilot: point cloud radar, 2-car ahead tracking & more
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[QUOTE]While there are dozens of small refinements with Version 8 of our software, described in addendum below, the most significant upgrade to Autopilot will be the use of more advanced signal processing to create a picture of the world using the onboard radar. The radar was added to all Tesla vehicles in October 2014 as part of the Autopilot hardware suite, but was only meant to be a supplementary sensor to the primary camera and image processing system. After careful consideration, we now believe it can be used as a primary control sensor without requiring the camera to confirm visual image recognition. This is a non-trivial and counter-intuitive problem, because of how strange the world looks in radar. Photons of that wavelength travel easily through fog, dust, rain and snow, but anything metallic looks like a mirror. The radar can see people, but they appear partially translucent. Something made of wood or painted plastic, though opaque to a person, is almost as transparent as glass to radar. ... Therefore, the big problem in using radar to stop the car is avoiding false alarms. Slamming on the brakes is critical if you are about to hit something large and solid, but not if you are merely about to run over a soda can. Having lots of unnecessary braking events would at best be very annoying and at worst cause injury. The first part of solving that problem is having a more detailed point cloud. Software 8.0 unlocks access to six times as many radar objects with the same hardware with a lot more information per object. ... The net effect of this, combined with the fact that radar sees through most visual obscuration, is that the car should almost always hit the brakes correctly even if a UFO were to land on the freeway in zero visibility conditions. Taking this one step further, a Tesla will also be able to bounce the radar signal under a vehicle in front - using the radar pulse signature and photon time of flight to distinguish the signal - and still brake even when trailing a car that is opaque to both vision and radar. The car in front might hit the UFO in dense fog, but the Tesla will not. Additional Autopilot Release Notes TACC braking max ramp rate increased and latency reduced by a factor of five Now controls for two cars ahead using radar echo, improving cut-out response and reaction time to otherwise-invisible heavy braking events Will take highway exit if indicator on (8.0) or if nav system active (8.1). Available in the United States initially Car offsets in lane when overtaking a slower vehicle driving close to its lane edge Interface alerts are much more prominent, including flashing white border on instrument panel Improved cut-in detection using blinker on vehicle ahead Reduced likelihood of overtaking in right lane in Europe Improved auto lane change availability Car will not allow reengagement of Autosteer until parked if user ignores repeated warnings Automatic braking will now amplify user braking in emergencies In manual mode, alerts driver if about to leave the road and no torque on steering wheel has been detected since Autosteer was deactivated With further data gathering, car will activate Autosteer to avoid collision when probability ~100% Curve speed adaptation now uses fleet-learned roadway curvature Approximately 200 small enhancements that aren't worth a bullet point [/QUOTE] [URL="https://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-world-radar"]Source[/URL] [QUOTE]Musk said that Tesla took advantaged of upgraded drivers from Bosch, its radar supplier, and managed to reinvent the processing of the input to make the radar the primary sensor within the Autopilot hardware suite. [/QUOTE] [URL="https://electrek.co/2016/09/11/tesla-autopilot-radar-processing-v8-update/"]Source[/URL] More to come from the Q&A probably.
[QUOTE] the car should almost always hit the brakes correctly even if a UFO were to land on the freeway in zero visibility conditions.[/QUOTE] How did they test this? do they have connections with Area 51? perhaps this is all alien technology
[QUOTE=da space core;51034991]How did they test this? do they have connections with Area 51? perhaps this is all alien technology[/QUOTE] Elon is actually a Martian [media]https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/774154956739743750[/media] [editline]11th September 2016[/editline] Musk claims that this could result in a 3x increase in safety, and that it would of prevented the fatal Autopilot crash a few months ago: [QUOTE]With the upcoming Autopilot improvements through radar processing in Tesla software v8.0 update, CEO Elon Musk sees a 3x potential increase in safety. Musk said that the data already suggests a 50% reduction in the probability of having an accident when using Autopilot versus manual driving, but the new radar processing technology could do much better over time with Tesla’s fleet learning capability. ... The conversation came back to the fatal accident on Autopilot in Florida back in May. Musk added that he believes the new update would have prevented the death of Joshua Brown. The current version of the Autopilot, the one Brown had in his Model S, was using the radar only has a supplement to the front-facing camera and image processing because Tesla wasn’t confident in the radar processing capability in detecting false positive – primarily triggered by overpasses and large over-the-road signs. [/QUOTE] [URL="https://electrek.co/2016/09/11/elon-musk-sees-3x-potential-increase-in-safety-with-teslas-new-autopilot-update/"]Source[/URL]
This is now being pushed out to cars as of today. Full change log album here: [url]http://imgur.com/a/TUoFF[/url] [video=youtube;S5Boj11jEZw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5Boj11jEZw[/video]
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