And lane changing. But yes, they never claimed the current system could do any more than that.
> Mercedes and BMW have been shipping that for years.
Yet, their systems on their 2017 models still isn't as good as Tesla's current system. [1]
> The other car companies have hardware to check if the driver's hands are on the wheel. Tesla not only didn't do that…
Tesla's system will indeed periodically prompt you to hold the steering wheel, and will disengage if the driver does not react to several warnings.
> … they hyped those basic functions as being an "autopilot", as if they had something comparable to what Google has
No. What Google has is called autonomous driving. You've completely misunderstood the meaning of the word "autopilot". From Wikipedia:
> An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of a vehicle without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. Autopilots do not replace a human operator, but assist them in controlling the vehicle, allowing them to focus on broader aspects of operation, such as monitoring the trajectory, weather and systems.
And that's exactly what Tesla's Autopilot does: assist the driver in controlling the vehicle, but does not replace a human operator.
[1] http://mashable.com/2016/06/16/2017-mercedes-benz-e-class-fi...
http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/automation-myths/
Those constrains could be constant like a certain heading or a direction (not the same thing by the way), a series of vectors or a single vector (like a flight-path or an approach to a runway) or constraints that depend on dynamic variables like controlling the altitude and speed according to the weight of the aircraft or automatically avoiding traffic.
Of course the pilot must be standing by because a) autopilots do not keep track of everything (and aviation control interfaces are quite complex) and b) sensors can and do malfunction.
Just because people mistakenly believe something doesn't make it right. The general public once thought the Earth was flat, and how did that turn out?
The unfortunate truth is, if I gave my mom a car with the autopilot feature, she'd end up eventually trusting it and not care about the implementation details that make Tesla's system not an automated driving feature. That's scary and dangerous to market to consumers.
Tesla promotes it as autopilot. Words matter.
If Tesla itself selectively denies that the common understanding is the meaning they intend, then they appear to be trying to have it both ways: cashing in on the PR and cachet that the common meaning confers, while disclaiming the responsibility that goes along with owners actually believing it.
Let's all hope that's how this is remembered 10 years from now (or whenever) when automatic driving is actually ready.
It's not a given that people will remember this as a Tesla-only problem. Instead it might be remembered as that time when autopilot got people killed.
And when it's actually ready... what Tesla is doing today, might delay or slow the adoption of real autopilot. And that would be a real setback for the real thing.
But that's an unfair comparison.. because humans drive in all conditions, while autopilot is more likely to be used on highways (and in good weather). Even human drivers are 3x safer on highways. So until Tesla is willing to compare like with like, we do not know how it compares.
It's also too early to waive off the damage that Tesla may cause. It's been 6 months since they rolled this thing out.
Over the next few years, they're going to give 300,000 cars to consumers with this enabled.
The few incidents that have been reported may just be the tip of the iceberg. We'll see how bad it gets when you have a few hundred thousand people driving around with what they think is autonomous driving.
This is a beta product that explicitly says not to use it without paying attention. there are alarms that are supposed to go off and the vehicle is supposed to slow down to a halt if you do not have your hands on the steering wheel.
I see it like the beginning of the airline industry. At first they weren't as comfortable and safe as they are now. any time they have an airline disaster they do a thorough investigation and if it is warranted they will issue new mandates that airlines need to follow. over time, every accident makes air travel safer from those mistakes/edge cases/etc.
This is just completely false. We've been putting them at bumper height for 10 years because that's where the system ends up working best with the greatest number of targets to see. NHTSA has been regulating these sensors for years and designing the tests for them; they are not new to this. Tesla is not going to have to do a recall on these, and spare me the idea that they are going to "retrofit a sensor at windshield height." This is just mindless speculation you made up.
[1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2025386/volvo-v40-watches-the... [2] http://www.fujitsu-ten.com/business/technicaljournal/pdf/38-...
Do you have a source for this? It was my understanding Google went with their roof-mounted approach because of the blind-spot issue. (They also went with Lidar over cameras because of the white-truck-in-bright-daylight problem.)
Who's "we"?
- tesla does have hands on wheel sensors
- tesla does not use stereo cameras (autopilot uses a single forward facing camera combined with radar and sonar)
- the second crash 'from yesterday' you linked is from May
Tesla doesn't take the absence of hands too seriously. "I'm driving down the highway at 55, and I'm not looking, and I have no hands on the wheel".[3] Hands off driving in New York City traffic.[4] "I managed to go 50 miles without a single nag"[5]
Apparently Tesla does have only one camera on currently shipping products. They must be trying to do stereo from motion. There are rumors of a revision to the Model S with multiple cameras.[5]
Yes, the van crash was in May, not yesterday.
[1] https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/how-get-rid-hold... [2] http://mbworld.org/forums/new-s-class-w222/626411-steering-w... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS7pAC0OmLI [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4BGlQoASyo [4] https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/nag-hands-wheel-... [5] http://cleantechnica.com/2016/05/04/new-tesla-model-s-2nd-tr...
This is not correct.
It is actually camera-only per comment of Mobileye's CEO.
> [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQkx-4pFjus
minor nitpick but this video is from May, this didn't happen yesterday, did you mean to link another video?
And this is the same problem mentioned elsewhere in this thread. The adaptive cruise being 99.99% effective at stopping trains the driver that it will always work. Especially because Tesla doesn't force the driver to touch the steering wheel, they seem especially susceptible to this issue - and drivers do things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fDbfy0409U&t=0s
This is not an issue until it is.
One way to do that might be that if the car successfully avoids an obstacle on its own without the driver reacting at all, after the obstacle is passed the car pulls over and stops.
Rear ending a semi is one of the most fatal types of car crashes. People should definitely not trust automatic cruise control when driving behind a trailer. And regular drivers should give themselves some extra space when driving behind a semi.
Will they? Considering that those are driver-assistance systems it's always the human in charge, no?
The driver would also have died if he had just enabled "dumb" cruise control and noticed the white trailer.
Of course more advanced automation systems should do better and tesla should improve, but from a technical perspective it's still just an assistance system.
Hopefully in the future Tesla will add some additional checks to make sure the driver is actually using it as an assistance system instead of an auto-pilot. And when their auto-pilot actually becomes an auto-pilot they can remove those checks.
And then they can call it autopilot again...
I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla get slapped for marketing it as an autonomous driving system. Musk has publicly said their autopilot is twice as safe as a human driver. That is misleading at best considering it should never be used without a human driver.
Of course they do, which is why it's such brilliant and irresponsible marketing.
> This is not a setback for automatic driving. This is just a Tesla problem.
If the general public doesn't get the distinction it can become an automatic driving problem.
You want to make a bet on that?
It's rumored that the next version will have three cameras looking forward, so camera can be used for distance calculations.
Tesla has two basic problems with their "autopilot". One is hype, and one is bad technical design.
Tesla's "autopilot" is just automatic lane keeping and automatic cruise control. Mercedes and BMW have been shipping that for years. The other car companies have hardware to check if the driver's hands are on the wheel. Tesla not only didn't do that, they hyped those basic functions as being an "autopilot", as if they had something comparable to what Google has. Tesla has significantly overhyped their technology, to a dangerous level.
Here's another Tesla crash, from yesterday.[1] This is a Tesla rear-ending the corner of a stalled van on a highway. This may be an "automation in wrong mode" error, and complicated excuses from Tesla will probably be forthcoming. That's not good enough. Airline pilots get into "wrong mode" errors, and they get extensive training, including simulator time. Drivers don't get that. This driver presumably thought the automation would do something sensible in that situation. It didn't.
The other big Tesla problem is a pure technical design error - the bumper-mounted radar is blind at windshield height. This is the immediate cause of the fatal accident involving under-running the semitrailer. It's also the cause of the parking accident with the truck with overhanging load sticking out the back.[2] Tesla's implementation has deadly blind spots. They need a radar at windshield-top height. It's quite likely, now that the NHTSA is looking into this crash, that Tesla will have to do a recall and retrofit one. (Along with hands-on-wheel sensors.)
Tesla was relying on stereo cameras too much. Depth from stereo is always iffy; there needs to be some detail on the target to get range. You can't range a uniform surface with stereo vision. (Human flyers have the same problem flying over ice.) A big white truck under some lighting conditions has that property. Cameras are useful, but backed only by today's algorithms, not enough. Teslas come with a sensor suite inadequate for the job.
From a software perspective, Tesla's software seems to be overoptimistic that there's no problem ahead. 3D vision systems know when they don't have range info for a large area. Tesla's software was willing to drive into that. It didn't note the absence of range info for the road surface; it may not even be profiling the road ahead. (We all had to do that in the DARPA Grand Challenge because we were operating off-road. That's a solved problem. Google does it with their roof-mounted LIDAR.) Tesla owners have asked for "pothole detection" as a feature. Lack of this may eventually take someone off a cliff.
The press is gradually picking up on this. Until recently, Tesla's autopilot was treated as a magic black box in the press. Now some automotive writers are starting to ask the right questions.
This is not a setback for automatic driving. This is just a Tesla problem.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQkx-4pFjus [2] http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car-technology/news/a29...