AutoPilot Bug

[S4WRXTTCS]

It isn't? I must have missed this - has Tesla told us that this specific function is not active yet? Is it being saved for 8.1? I thought that 8.0's new radar software was in fact able to see stopped objects reliably.

My interpretation of Elon's blog post was that the initial role out of 8.0 would enhance the radar software to generate a lot more data including the ability to see stopped objects. But, that this (the stopped object detected by radar) wouldn't activate braking by itself until the white listing had taken place.

Here is a direct quote from the page.

"Initially, the vehicle fleet will take no action except to note the position of road signs, bridges and other stationary objects, mapping the world according to radar."

There is no indication of when it will be turned on. Some people believe it will start doing it fairly quickly, but I'm of the firm belief that it won't happen till an update activates it at the very least.

 

[Vitold]

My car has a serious issue with Autopilot. I reported the issue to Tesla over a month ago and till date they haven't given me an explanation on why the car crashed on autopilot. The director of autopilot called few weeks ago and said it is only the 2nd instance of this issue. I was hesitant to post the video online but now I feel that Tesla is not taking this seriously and hence I am sharing it over here. Here's what happened.
I was stuck in traffic and I decided to do a video on autopilot to share with my friends to let them know what a blessing it is to have autopilot and within 10 seconds of filming, the car crashes into a pickup truck. See the instrument cluster, the car lost focus of the pickup truck in front even though the parking sensor detects obstruction. Suddenly it sped and crashed into the pickup truck. I was lucky since it was a stop and go traffic and there wasn't any damage or scratches to the car because of xpel protection.
Then I dropped off my car to the local service center to have them review the autopilot issue along with couple of minor issues on 09/27. I get a call from the service center a week later to inform me that they were trying to offload one of the cars from the towing truck and it accidentally ran into my car and scratched the bumper. As of now, they have send the car to a body shop for replacing the bumper and it has been sitting there for a week. This is so frustrating. I haven't driven my brand new 110k car in 3 weeks. Nothing against people at the service center. They are really nice. But Tesla needs to do better than this.
Tesla, if you are listening. Please have someone look into the autopilot issue.

Which version of software?

 

[siraj]

Which version of software?

7.1

 

[jspayneii]

Perhaps the issue has already been addressed with the new radar update in 8.0. I notice my car pauses when the car in front of me changes lanes, or turns off. I generally hit the accelerator to push through it.

 

[frebay]

Hi
The exact same thing happened to me today, see the dashcam footage below. There was a bus, and 2 cars behind it. AP detected both cars, but once both cars were gone, it started to lurch forward, you can hear me saying in the video that it probably won't detect bus since I read this thread this morning. Also the Bus didn't show up on the dash just like your video. Thanks for the heads up!

 

[calisnow]

Hi
The exact same thing happened to me today, see the dashcam footage below. There was a bus, and 2 cars behind it. AP detected both cars, but once both cars were gone, it started to lurch forward, you can hear me saying in the video that it probably won't detect bus since I read this thread this morning. Thanks for the heads up!

Thanks for the video - which version (7.1 or 8.0) and which build are you on?

 

[frebay]

8.0

 

[calisnow]

8.0

Damn. This is exactly the situation I thought 8.0 was supposed to fix.

 

[Electroman]

In fact I don't recall anyone mentioning this problem prior to 8.0, or did they?

 

[Apricot]

In fact I don't recall anyone mentioning this problem prior to 8.0, or did they?

Not sure of this exact issue, but I believe AP has a longstanding issue with blindness to stationary objects. Makes sense that this exact situation would confuse it (cars move out of way to reveal still object).

 

[rscott0]

My interpretation of Elon's blog post was that the initial role out of 8.0 would enhance the radar software to generate a lot more data including the ability to see stopped objects. But, that this (the stopped object detected by radar) wouldn't activate braking by itself until the white listing had taken place.

I believe that is different, and is used to detect things that are always there (road signs, bridges, etc.), not cars. The whitelist is referred to as a "geocoded whitelist", so "if you are at coordinates X,Y going northbound, and the radar detects a big object in front of you, it is something that many other Teslas have seen but nobody has braked for it and nobody hit, so you can ignore it."

 

[calisnow]

In fact I don't recall anyone mentioning this problem prior to 8.0, or did they?

Yes it did - this bus video is just like the famous accident in Europe from a few months back where a delivery van was stationary, stuck in lanes. A Tesla using a dash cam was behind traffic. When the traffic moved out of the lane to avoid the stationary delivery van the Tesla did not see it and hit the van. It's been extensively discussed here and if you search for it you'll find it. I forget which country though - maybe somebody else can bring up the link to the thread.

Very disappointing to see this still happening in 8.0 with the new radar software.

 

[u00mem9]

8.0 doesn't fix sh*t. Elon knew this which is why he was super unclear about 8.0 and 8.1 improvements.

Anyway, unfortunately for the OP this is a well known issue in cases where the car in front changes lanes.

Also, very sorry for the OP having to reveal that music. Ugh.

 

[jmsurpri]

I know this is considered a 'well known issue,' but I have encountered AP performing flawlessly every time I am in a similar situation. On my way home from work, a single lane turns into 3 lanes at a stop light. When the car in front me moves over to another lane and there is a stationary car in front in the same lane as me, AP always sees the new car and slows to a stop.

 

[No2DinosaurFuel]

Yeah i have seen a few cars disappear on my radar after 8.0 update. Kind of wished I didn't update. 7.1 was so much more stable and reliable. Always detected the cars. With 8.0, it seems to be a lot more unreliable. Trucks being classified as cars, and cars disappearing and reappearing. And this is when I don't have autopilot on. I am starting to wonder when they will actually improve autopilot. It definitely seems more beta now with 8.0 update.

I guess it's true with all SW. it's better to stay behind the curve a bit. Kind of sucks that I can't use the autopilot like i use to.

 

[frebay]

I only had the car since 8.0, but this is crazy. You figure in stop and go traffic, when a car changes lane it should just speed forward.

 

[Doug_G]

Couple of posts moved to snippiness due to personal attacks.

 

[AWDtsla]

After today's drive on 8.0 I no longer trust TACC. It got extremely close to two cars in front of me in the left lane who were braking hard at highway speed, and as is known to happen when cars are that close and that fast, could have went to full braking/tried to pull off onto the median depending on what was going on in front of them. I doubt the Tesla had the distance to stop without a collision had that happened, and I started braking hard manually. 8.0 was supposed to explicitly fix this problem by looking one car ahead???? Nope. After driving about 200 miles on the highway today I can't seem to find any evidence of lane biasing away from slower moving traffic, in fact many times it's on the wrong side of the lane.

Basically other than the graphics and nags, I see no good change in AP. Oh and the cars being angled is just a graphics trick, it's not anything substantive.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

I believe that is different, and is used to detect things that are always there (road signs, bridges, etc.), not cars. The whitelist is referred to as a "geocoded whitelist", so "if you are at coordinates X,Y going northbound, and the radar detects a big object in front of you, it is something that many other Teslas have seen but nobody has braked for it and nobody hit, so you can ignore it."

Wait, what? How's that different than what I said?

The question isn't how it's going to work since it's spelled out on Tesla's blog post.

The question is at what point is the car going to REACT to that additional data. We know it's after the whitelisting process, but we have no idea when this will happen.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Yeah i have seen a few cars disappear on my radar after 8.0 update. Kind of wished I didn't update. 7.1 was so much more stable and reliable. Always detected the cars. With 8.0, it seems to be a lot more unreliable. Trucks being classified as cars, and cars disappearing and reappearing. And this is when I don't have autopilot on. I am starting to wonder when they will actually improve autopilot. It definitely seems more beta now with 8.0 update.

I guess it's true with all SW. it's better to stay behind the curve a bit. Kind of sucks that I can't use the autopilot like i use to.

The truck versus car is all done in a DNN (on the MobileEye chip), and maybe the performance was degraded for one type of classification type or another. But, that kind of thing is never really 100% anyways. Plus any contamination in front of the camera is going to tremendously impact the recognition capability.

Real AP improvements will require three main components

Tesla Vision - the MobileEye system sucks.
Tri-Camera - Part of Tesla Vision
Improved Side Monitoring - Better detection of cars to the side.

What the OP reported (and the video beneath it) are definitely bugs to me. The car should never accelerate when it loses sight of something. It should only accelerate when it detects the car in front is accelerating. Cars with radar based ACC are not new, and I've never heard of one accelerating into a car that it stopped for. It did stop for the truck so WTF?

The car not detecting stopped objects (or losing them) aren't bugs, but limitations of the system. Hopefully that can be fixed, but I'm not all that optimistic about it.