Anyone else have this particular autopilot issue before?

[harcocjh]

So I'm driving home today in heavy traffic with autopilot on going about 20mph with my following distance set to 2. There's probably about 1.5 or 2 car lengths between me and the car in front. A car off to my left starts to move over into my lane in front of me pretty gradually with maybe 5 feet of space in front of me and him. So kinda close but enough space for me not to disengage as these last few updates have really improved autopilots ability to smoothly adjust to cars moving into your lane. Anyway in this case it appeared that AP didn't see this car and on the screen it was still tracking the car that was in front of me. I realized this because I began to slowly get closer instead of AP backing off like it normally does to adjust spacing. If I hadn't been paying attention I assume I would have either run into that car or maybe it would have braked hard at the last moment.

TLR... Basically a car merged in and autopilot didn't track it, it continued to track the car in front originally. Anyone else experience this?

 

[nvx1977]

what firmware version are you on?

 

[Tam]

... following distance set to 2...

Merging (your car does or others do), cars cutting you off in front... are a whole different level of competency that Autopilot will have to achieve but I don't think it is there just yet.

With this beta duration, I would place the following distance conservatively at maximum or 7 so I can still have time to brake if Autopilot doesn't.

 

[OPRCE]

what firmware version are you on?

Also, which hardware?

In any case, over 12,000km of mostly motorway in AP with latest hw and recent sw this summer, I have not experienced this effect OP describes, which I am sure would have negatively impressed me sufficiently to remember it.

An anomaly I did see once on the IC [sw 2018.28.5] was that the car I had just passed on an otherwise vacant 2-lane motorway did not show up until after it was behind me, and then it was painted as overtaking me fast on the right and disappearing off into the horizon. Weather BTW was ideal, in daytime. This caused me quite a double-take but it behaved normally on my next overtaking and I put it down to just a one-off non-hazardous display glitch. Though I would be curious to know if anyone else has ever seen it happen?

 

[Kermee]

My experience is:

#1. If the car is already being tracked in the other lane via the UI and then merges in front of me, the previous "black" car in front of me goes "gray" and the "gray" car moving into my lane turns "black" and then either TACC or EAP usually hits the brake/regen pretty hard to readjust.

#2. If the car is NOT being tracked in the other lane and then merges in front of me, sometimes TACC/EAP picks it up... Sometimes it doesn't.

In Scenario #2 above, I've always manually disengaged before I get too close to the car. I usually have a follow distance between 1 and 2 so there's not much room for reaction time if there's an error in judgement by the computer.

 

[Abstrakt1]

It seems like a lane switch by a car in front has been at the root of most the autopilot crashes. Especially if the car in front of them after the lane change was high off the ground (firetrucks!). My theory is that the AI takes a second to figure out if a higher up back end is taller or further away until it processes it and reacts. The hacker vids that show what a Tesla can see showed some weird perspective issues with height and distance. I think this is why they are bringing hardware that can process more frames per second so it has more data to work out perspective in those split second changes. All just speculation of course, I have no idea how it actually works but worked in machine learning for a few years and saw enough quirks that I focus like I am driving when autopilot is on.

 

[harcocjh]

what firmware version are you on?

Running 2018.32.2 on a LR Model 3 with AP 2.5.

Its just a reminder that even as things improve you can't let your guard down as it's far from perfect yet even just in stop and go or slow traffic going straight. Too many edge cases. Overall though it's my favorite thing about the car since I have such a long commute.

 

[harcocjh]

My experience is:

#1. If the car is already being tracked in the other lane via the UI and then merges in front of me, the previous "black" car in front of me goes "gray" and the "gray" car moving into my lane turns "black" and then either TACC or EAP usually hits the brake/regen pretty hard to readjust.

#2. If the car is NOT being tracked in the other lane and then merges in front of me, sometimes TACC/EAP picks it up... Sometimes it doesn't.

In Scenario #2 above, I've always manually disengaged before I get too close to the car. I usually have a follow distance between 1 and 2 so there's not much room for reaction time if there's an error in judgement by the computer.

Scenario 2 is I'm pretty sure what happened. Just is weird that radar wouldn't see it. Or maybe it did see it but didn't react for some reason.

 

[Abstrakt1]

Also I recommend 3 car lengths at a minimum and I prefer 4. Give yourself that reaction time just in case. It gives you the space to see if the idiot in the other lane is getting hungry to cut you off.