Autopilot improvement in "MarioKart Rainbow Road" firmware update?

[brianman]

I must have missed the announcement. When (i.e., by what date) did Tesla say all Model S development would be complete?

That would depend whether you're fixated on specific features by a specific date

Ok, now I'm confused.

Tesla hasn't given a specific date for various features, but they sold the car as having those features "soon".

Customers aren't supposed to be "Fixated on .. specific date."

I considered it exceedingly reasonable to say "Well, the feature should at least have more than zero days of use with the car under warranty."

So a customer should just give them a free pass for eternity? Somewhere there must be a point at which you think it's reasonable for a customer to say "hey, am I ever going to get the feature advertised when I bought my vehicle?"

Where is the line for you?


The isn't "someday we might do this cool snake thing" we're talking about here. This is features advertised as "part of the car" in 2014, that remain on the website as such, and have yet to be delivered to a single customer and it's now April 2016.

 

[RogerHScott]

I didn't use words like "supposed to" and "should" in my post. People should do what feels right for them.
The warranty issue is a valid concern, and one that gets complicated no matter what for a product
that's continually changing. It seems like Tesla needs to give this more thought. If an OTA the day after
your warranty expires totally scrogs your car, are you SOL?

As for lines, I'm not sure how it is productive to say "Boy, I would sure love this car overall, but I just can't
let myself because of those damned unmet promises from back before they added the teleport-over-
stopped-traffic feature that was never even contemplated at the time I bought my car". (sort of)

 

[kort677]

I see this in California as well. When {car 65, truck 55} signs are changed in some areas to {car 65} then {truck 55}, Autopilot reads both the 65 and the 55 -- and "keeps" the 55. Every firmware I've tried in Model S w/Autopilot has this bug. I hope they fix it.

that is different than the speed being limited, the sign confusion is going to be a tough one to fix.

 

[Todd Burch]

I see this in California as well. When {car 65, truck 55} signs are changed in some areas to {car 65} then {truck 55}, Autopilot reads both the 65 and the 55 -- and "keeps" the 55. Every firmware I've tried in Model S w/Autopilot has this bug. I hope they fix it.

Let's be careful about terminology here though. I believe that when RogerHScott said that autopilot should not be restricting speed on roads like I-90, he was saying that the "speed limit + 5 mph" restriction does not apply to a divided highway like an interstate. What you're describing is simply TACC setting itself to the detected speed limit + your custom offset. In that case you can knock the stalk up a few bumps to go faster.

That's different from seeing the speed limit and not letting you hold a speed more than 5 mph over the detected speed limit, which would be a speed-restricted TACC and should never occur on interstates.

 

[trils0n]

FWIW, I don't have autopilot on my car, but had a 90D loaner with autopilot for a week or so, and it updated to the "rainbow road" firmware on one of the last days I had it. It seemed to stay centered better with the rainbow road upgrade, and stayed in the lane better through curves in the freeway. Only had rainbow road for 50 or so miles, but it seemed noticeably different from the 500 or miles so I did before that update.

Overall I was really impressed with autopilot. It never mis-identified a road, or speed limit sign, and even disregarded the 55mph truck signs. Interesting that people are reporting such different experiences. The biggest issue I noticed was that autosteer was unreliable through turns/curves in the highway. Sometimes it would drift the to edge of the lane line and then suddenly correct and ping pong, other times it would go through turns no problem, sometimes it would start turning much later/sharper than I would have, other times it would go through curves smoothly. I thought the behavior was interesting, as the car could clearly see it was leaving the center of the lane, or hugging the line, but still kept drifting over. TACC seemed pretty flawless, and stop and go highway traffic performance was essentially perfect as well.

 

[brianman]

that is different than the speed being limited, the sign confusion is going to be a tough one to fix.

The sign confusion interacts with the auto-steer speed limiting, causing a hazardous condition when you drop 10mph in some zones as it's trying to be "safe".

 

[kort677]

The sign confusion interacts with the auto-steer speed limiting, causing a hazardous condition when you drop 10mph in some zones as it's trying to be "safe".

on divided highways the car should not adjust speed based on the signage except if you have the speed deviation set to absolute, undo that setting and some of your issues would go away.

 

[GlmnAlyAirCar]

green1 - stay on 7.0 - I would go back in an instant if I could.

Why? The nags are a hassle but in all other respects the AP is vastly improved. 7.0 would somewhat regularly give me the "take over now" warning and panic. I haven't see that happen since 7.1 was released, and I have over 10,000 miles on 7.1. Lose the lane lines, lose the traffic ahead, it still knows where it's safe to drive and keeps going.

 

[GlmnAlyAirCar]

Or the ability to summon the car and have it meet us at our front door on private property.

I'm surprised more people haven't complained about this. Summon has some limited usefulness but nothing close to what was promised.

 

[RogerHScott]

I'm surprised more people haven't complained about this. Summon has some limited usefulness but nothing close to what was promised.

Perhaps there are more realists among the Tesla owner community at large than some of these forums would suggest?
What is encouraging to me is that the things I want Summon to do that it can't right now are natural extensions to what it can do.
I want to add to "back out of the garage" (which I use almost every day): "do the Y-turn in the driveway, avoiding other cars
parked there, and proceed to the end of the driveway, stopping just before entering the street". That seems completely doable
extrapolating from what it can do right now.

At the Tesla dealership in Chicago the other day I had a "boy I wish Summon could do this for me" moment when I need to maneuver
down a narrow path between Teslas parked on either side. I didn't have the nerve to do it backward, as the situation really called for,
so I had to do a really awkward turn-around at the far end and then go "the wrong way" down the line. I envision a day when
Summon offers a "get me [the hell] out of here!" feature that can wiggle you out of an arbitrary parked-in situation.

 

[GlmnAlyAirCar]

What is encouraging to me is that the things I want Summon to do that it can't right now are natural extensions to what it can do.
I want to add to "back out of the garage" (which I use almost every day): "do the Y-turn in the driveway, avoiding other cars
parked there, and proceed to the end of the driveway, stopping just before entering the street". That seems completely doable
extrapolating from what it can do right now.

Believe me, I'm not a Tesla basher, but this is the one feature that I just don't think is possible with the current hardware. I hope I am proven wrong.

With summon, it is pretty clear the only sensors used are the ultrasonic parking sensors. The location of objects is determined by comparing the returns of one or more adjacent sensors. By doing this, AP can build a model of the immediate environment out to the range of the sensors. However, it is only a 2D model. It has blind spots above and below the level of the sensors, and can't distinguish the height of an object. You can verify this by pulling in toward a curb. The curb shows up on the parking sensor display until it gets too far below the level of the sensor, then it disappears.

Now, AP can keep track of objects it has seen using ded reckoning. However, it will never be able to stop when a small object moves in front of it, such as a ball, animal, or kid, if it is never picked up by the sensors. Too much can happen in a driveway while the car is maneuvering to let it run on its own.

Perhaps one day the mobile eye camera and forward facing radar will augment the parking sensors, but this would only help while moving forward.

Again, I would love for Tesla to prove me wrong but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[brianman]

on divided highways the car should not adjust speed based on the signage except if you have the speed deviation set to absolute, undo that setting and some of your issues would go away.

Should and does are two different matters. That's part of green's point. The car doesn't always "do..." because it can and does have the wrong data. The overall point again is that limiting and/or removing a previously delivered feature based on incorrect data is fail.

 

[RogerHScott]

Too much can happen in a driveway while the car is maneuvering to let it run on its own.

Of course, but I'm not asking it to run on its own, any more than I don't pay attention while it is pulling in to/out of my garage.
To me, at least, something that can do something correctly 99% of the time with my oversight is still way nicer than me having
to do that thing manually every time. I suppose that's not the "Summon dream", but I'm not overly concerned about the dream.

 

[kort677]

Should and does are two different matters. That's part of green's point. The car doesn't always "do..." because it can and does have the wrong data. The overall point again is that limiting and/or removing a previously delivered feature based on incorrect data is fail.

I discount his views, I and many others have never encountered the issues he rants about. repeat after me, it's only a beta, it's only a beta

 

[davidc18]

Should and does are two different matters. That's part of green's point. The car doesn't always "do..." because it can and does have the wrong data. The overall point again is that limiting and/or removing a previously delivered feature based on incorrect data is fail.

Someone wanted a photo of the car where
1. it has decided that I595 (south florida) is a restricted road
2. it has restricted the speed incorrectly (speed limit here is posted as 70)
3. it has captured a speed limit sign that is on an overpass above the interstate - which you can see coming up on the map.

On this road autopilot is no longer useable, which for me is a 100% failure (of a feature that previously worked). Tesla needs to create a system for reporting, investigating and fixing issues like these.

 

[davidc18]

I discount his views, I and many others have never encountered the issues he rants about. repeat after me, it's only a beta, it's only a beta

Just because you have not experienced an issue does not mean there is no issue. I am glad that your experience so far has been perfect. Here is a picture that shows several of the issues V7.1 introduced.

 

[kort677]

Just because you have not experienced an issue does not mean there is no issue. I am glad that your experience so far has been perfect. Here is a picture that shows several of the issues V7.1 introduced.

what kind of road is that happening on? I bet it wasn't a divided interstate style highway, anyway, who said anything about perfect? it's only a beta

 

[davidc18]

on divided highways the car should not adjust speed based on the signage except if you have the speed deviation set to absolute, undo that setting and some of your issues would go away.

I had it turned off but I turned it back on, set absolute (90mph) and will try it.

 

[kort677]

I had it turned off but I turned it back on, set absolute (90mph) and will try it.

I don't know what setting you are talking about, the setting is from 1-10 mph deviation over the speed limit. setting it at 90 mph on an inappropriate roadway isn't going to change the fact that you are limited to 5 mph over the posted limit.

 

[Todd Burch]

OK, so the area for which you posted the instrument cluster shot looks like this on the map:

So there are something like 13 separate roads that are all next to each other in this area. Are all roads in Florida like this, or are you just cherry-picking this one example?

I have seen the GPS think I was on a frontage road before when I was actually on the highway, but I wouldn't expect that to last for very long. Yes, it's an area for improvement, but it hardly seems like an autopilot showstopper. Just my opinion.