Autopilot Impressive City Driving

[Pilot7478]

Sometimes I'm really impressed with how well autopilot is driving in poor city conditions.
In such conditions autopilot is normally not available, but if there is even a small stretch of the road where you can turn it on, then it will drive no matter what without disengagement!

In my video below I drive 3.9 miles (6.3 km) on autopilot on city streets without a single disengagement.

Construction zones, barely visible lane separator lines or sometimes they are completely missing, driving through intersection, lane changes... No disengagements!

Smooth, boring (which is good!) driving. I'm pretty sure a person who's not aware of autopilot would not notice that it's not a human who's driving the car.

Firmware 2018.49.12.1
1:20 Construction zone
3:23 Tight lane, car cut-in
3:43 Autopilot Lane Change. No lane lines after.
4:13 No lane lines.
5:23 Autopilot Lane Change.

 

[dukedarkside]

I have to say that the driving around the 4 minute mark really was the first time where the system seemed superhuman to me in making out lane lines and driving space. Very impressive.

 

[strangecosmos]

So, a lot of city driving is moving forward in a lane... Hm. Well, we already know Autopilot is pretty good at that.

Plus, occasionally making lane changes. Well, Autopilot is pretty good at that too.

Once Autopilot learns to stop for stop signs and red lights, and learns to make right and left turns, well, it will be able to be activated for a lot of urban driving.

 

[Matias]

I have AP1 and my car would not be able to do 3:23 part where the lead car turns right and there are no lines to follow. Otherwise it would be able to do the same by following the lead car. But that 3:23 situation shows, that AP 2.X has better situational awareness. Nice.

AP1 can handle pretty difficult situations by simply following the lead car, but in that situation it would try to follow the car making that right turn. As it doesn’t do that tight turns by following, it would try to follow, but then it would disengage.

 

[ewoodrick]

If anyone has driven in Orlando from Ocala at the Interstate, I suspect you may remember how hard it is to transition from the toll to 4 and then to Kirkman.

You come off a multilane road, to a two lane exit, through the Sunpass toll station into construction with a 360 ramp exit followed by a nort south split and then through another 360 spin, again,all in construction , to I-4 and a horrendous merge on to a busy Interstate.

My wife hates driving it.

The car smoothly navigated the entire route.

I was very impressed!

 

[g1000x]

Pretty amazing that a car is doing this all by itself.

Can't wait to see what HW3 is capable of.

 

[Pilot7478]

Some additional thoughts: the driving in this video is boring. But if you think about it - this is exactly what makes it impressive.
No sudden acceleration, no sudden braking or stops, no scary steering or anything. Just smooth and boring driving through all this "uncertainty" like no lane lines, lane shifts, traffic move in and out, etc.
I would say that this boringness is exactly what self-driving cars technology is trying to achive. Or you can call it "predictability".

 

[chillaban]

Some additional thoughts: the driving in this video is boring. But if you think about it - this is exactly what makes it impressive.
No sudden acceleration, no sudden braking or stops, no scary steering or anything. Just smooth and boring driving through all this "uncertainty" like no lane lines, lane shifts, traffic move in and out, etc.
I would say that this boringness is exactly what self-driving cars technology is trying to achive. Or you can call it "predictability".

I think also this tends to be more exciting for AP owners since most of us went through previous periods of ownership where it could not handle these situations.

AP2’s progress has been marvelous in 2018. Gradual progress really added up.

 

[strangecosmos]

Would love to see more vlogs of urban driving! @Pilot7478 do you have any filming tips?

 

[Pilot7478]

Would love to see more vlogs of urban driving! @Pilot7478 do you have any filming tips?

Well, not really. That was my first video...

 

[Wol747]

I am reminded of the old saying about the dog walking on its hind legs: it's not the fact that it does it so well but that it does it at all.
Ignoring that the car does not obey the 40 mph temporary speed limit, the route is very straightforward and the traffic very light.
Outside the US there are roundabouts everywhere, much greater concentration of traffic, missing and confusing road markings, erratic GPS digitising, many maniac drivers and so on.
I assume the OP is a 747 driver from his moniker, so will know that pressing a few buttons to make his airplane land itself is trivial - the real challenge is the huge amount of training required to cope with all the variety of failure modes under different conditions: I think vehicle automatics, while impressive, have a very long way to go - autoland is in many ways far simpler than driving in traffic from the computing point of view.