Autopilot's Performance Without Lane Markers

[Todd Burch]

When lane markings are not present, you can almost never get the gray steering wheel on the dash in order to activate autopilot.

However, I discovered today that if it's already active, in v7.1's autopilot it tries really hard to keep steering, even when lane markings disappear. In fact, since v7.1 came out I don't think I've ever seen the "Take Over Immediately!" warning in the car.

To demonstrate, here's some video I took earlier today when I was driving on a rural road. Note that for 100% of the duration of this video, the car is on autopilot (my hands are close to the wheel, ready to take over):

(Sorry for the video quality, that's the best you can get out of a Blackvue, then recompressing to YouTube).

Notice that when the lane markings disappear, there's a lot more ping-ponging, but the car was still able to stay on the road! I wasn't expecting this, so I thought I'd share.

So two observations:
-The car will stay on autopilot in places where you wouldn't be able to initiate autopilot, even if it's lost the lane markings for a considerable amount of time, and
-I never got the "Take over immediately" warning. In fact, I didn't even get a "Hold Steering Wheel" warning!

Anyone else notice this?

 

[cytranic]

Holistic path prediction!

 

[docherf]

That's pretty cool. Would have thought it'd need lane lines or a vehicle to follow.

 

[wk057]

Yup, I've been able to get this to work with all of the restrictions disabled... however I was not aware that it would work on a unmodified car. Neat.

The car uses several things to determine the path. One of those is listed as "HPP." In your case, I'll bet this road was in the navigation database.

When I was first messing with the autopilot dev stuff, I found that I could make it try to follow the path in the navigation database, with no lane markings or anything. The effect was that the car would mostly center up on the street, but would follow a very jagged path, since the map segments are not smooth functions or anything, they're just low relatively resolution lines.

I also found that in places like my development where there are no lane markings or anything that the internal data still knew where the road edge was and labeled it as such, "ROAD_EDGE." Although the accuracy of that data seemed a little off as the numeric values looked a little noisy.

Pretty cool, though overall. Glad Tesla is letting the car do it's thing more.

 

[retinaguy]

I got nervous on the curves. I think I would've taken over!

 

[Todd Burch]

In my case I think it was seeing the contrast of the road edge vs using a nav database, since I saw the curves appear on the dash display. As I recall I never saw more than one at a time (without lane markings), and often saw none for a bit.

 

[Super_Popular]

I got nervous on the curves. I think I would've taken over!

Me too, Todd's not the best with curves :tongue:

 

[wk057]

Me too, Todd's not the best with curves :tongue:

Ouch... that burns... :scared:

 

[Todd Burch]

Wow, we're gonna bring that up? Have some humanity! Haha

 

[SomeJoe7777]

Sorry for the video quality, that's the best you can get out of a Blackvue, then recompressing to YouTube.

If you're running firmware v2.000 on your BlackVue, consider downgrading to v1.009. In v1.009 you can go into the options and select highest video quality which will record at about 9 Mbps. In v2.000, the video quality control has been removed and the video bitrate is fixed at 6 Mbps.

 

[Todd Burch]

If you're running firmware v2.000 on your BlackVue, consider downgrading to v1.009. In v1.009 you can go into the options and select highest video quality which will record at about 9 Mbps. In v2.000, the video quality control has been removed and the video bitrate is fixed at 6 Mbps.

I'm on latest for compatibility with their latest app and cloud stuff. But would prefer higher bitrate over that stuff. I thought my footage looked worse than I'd seen from others.

What a bonehead move on Pittasoft's part...

 

[MikeBur]

Neat video, thanks for sharing.

Confirming this is only for continuing Auto-steering, and unable to initiate - eg if you disable auto-steering this wouldn't re-engage? I ask as I've seen this behavior pretty often here with Botts' dots, particularly yellow ones. The weaving correction can be pretty significant when combined with cresting a slight hill (and there's no "Hold steering Wheel"). Thankfully this is a non-issue on freeways.
I'm still awed by the relaxing nature of driving a few hundred miles now using Autopilot and see this as interesting, though not an issue.

Btw I have seen the "take over immediately" a few times, though this is when over-riding Autopilot speed a little too much ;-)

 

[wk057]

Neat video, thanks for sharing.

Confirming this is only for continuing Auto-steering, and unable to initiate - eg if you disable auto-steering this wouldn't re-engage? I ask as I've seen this behavior pretty often here with Botts' dots, particularly yellow ones. The weaving correction can be pretty significant when combined with cresting a slight hill (and there's no "Hold steering Wheel"). Thankfully this is a non-issue on freeways.
I'm still awed by the relaxing nature of driving a few hundred miles now using Autopilot and see this as interesting, though not an issue.

Btw I have seen the "take over immediately" a few times, though this is when over-riding Autopilot speed a little too much ;-)

If you want to see the car freak out...... reboot the instrument cluster while using autopilot. (Not dangerous) (Hint: TAKE OVER IMMEDIATELY!)

But no, you can't re-engage in this situation. If Todd had canceled it would not have let him re-engage autosteer without either lane markings or a lead vehicle... not without some firmware tricks.

 

[Todd Burch]

That's correct. Right when the video ended I disengaged but could not reengage. The threshold for engaging is higher than it is for maintaining autosteer.

 

[Pinarello]

I noticed with 7.1 that there seems to be more ping-ponging than I recall with 7.0, especially in curves. I do believe that 7.1 is much better overall, but in situations where lane markings disappear and then reappear, it doesn't seem to be as smooth as 7.0.

I do love my AP and use it almost every time I'm able to turn it on. I drive primarily in urban areas in the Chicago suburbs. Doesn't perform as well in these areas as it does on the open highway, but it is absolutely amazing how well it does in urban conditions. I can certainly see 99% autonomous driving in 2 or 3 years, but believe the last 1% of the fringe cases (e.g., ambulance coming down the road, messy construction zones, etc.) will take another 5 years to work out.