Dancing Cars

[daniel]

I have commented before that the screen often shows the car next to me positioned way over the line into my lane, when the actual car is right where it belongs, in the center of its lane.

So yesterday I was stopped at a light and watching the screen image of the car behind me in the lane adjacent to the left. It was dancing around, and then it suddenly moved hard, directly sideways and smashed right into the car behind me. Except of course that the actual cars never moved and never smashed into each other.

I'm a strong believer in the autonomous future of cars, but Tesla has a ways to go, because a self-driving car is going to have to know where the surrounding cars are, and right now, mine does not.

 

[4EVar]

I have commented before that the screen often shows the car next to me positioned way over the line into my lane, when the actual car is right where it belongs, in the center of its lane.

So yesterday I was stopped at a light and watching the screen image of the car behind me in the lane adjacent to the left. It was dancing around, and then it suddenly moved hard, directly sideways and smashed right into the car behind me. Except of course that the actual cars never moved and never smashed into each other.

I'm a strong believer in the autonomous future of cars, but Tesla has a ways to go, because a self-driving car is going to have to know where the surrounding cars are, and right now, mine does not.

I've noticed the same. But you don't need to know what the stopped car behind you is doing in order for autonomous driving to work. Lol.

 

[ewoodrick]

Yep, done it as long as the car's have been shown.
Remember, this is a displayed version, not what the nav computer uses

 

[daniel]

Remember, this is a displayed version, not what the nav computer uses

Do we know this for a fact? Why would the screen show something other than what the computer sees?

I've noticed the same. But you don't need to know what the stopped car behind you is doing in order for autonomous driving to work. Lol.

No, you don't. But the car has to know where the surrounding cars actually are. One thing I found this summer (admittedly many firmware versions ago) is that when cars are approaching from the opposite direction on a two-lane road, and a car, or especially a semi truck, is very close to the center line, mine will not give an inch to allow more passing space. This was one of the conditions when I disengaged EAP, to move farther over in my lane. Not a complaint, because this is a beta feature and a driver-assist feature, and I have to be ready to take over. But it tells me that they have a long way to go before the system is ready for Level 3, eyes off the road operation.

The car seems to have a very good knowledge of where my lane edges are, but a very poor knowledge of where surrounding cars are. This is also evidenced by the phantom braking we've all encountered, and by some other members who've posted about having to abort a lane change the car was starting to make, because the car seemed unaware of a car in the other lane. This was in one of the NoAP threads.

My guess about when we'll have Level 4 autonomy has moved out some years from what I thought a year ago.

The dancing cars on the screen are amusing, anyway. Cha... cha... cha cha cha.

 

[M3Denver]

my kid loves the dancing cars & trucks, but what i have noticed is that car distance seems off, example.. car to lane in right will show that it is a few feet in front of me , if i went ny the screen looks as if i have room to get over, but in reality it is next to my front fender if i moved over would hit it.

 

[WileyTheMan]

Amusing when put to music.

 

[tkc9789]

Amusing when put to music.

I had similar experience yesterday. Came to a red light. Monitor showed that cars around me were dancing sideways!

 

[phigment]

I think of it this way. The neural nets were programmed to come to choices about when to make lane changes and how to stay in lanes and avoid other cars.

The net may come to these conclusion without ever generating intermediary values such as position, orientation. The display of these cars were an afterthought, a nice to have. The programmers have come up with a way of estimating this based on NN values.

This may be way off, but imagine trying to stick probes in a brain and reading out specific values for positions of objects that a human recognises. Then do this over and over again many times a second. Will the values be the same every time you get a reading?

 

[C141medic]

I also experienced this last week with FW 19.8.5. I was stopped at a light and was in the middle lane and had a car to my immediate left and right. All of a sudden both cars to my left and right started to, in synchrony, move from left to right. It was hilarious. Wish I would’ve taped it.

 

[Kilotango74]

Amusing when put to music.

LOL That car being you ain't feeling that music I guess.

 

[Fernand]

FSD? The criterion is: would you send it to pick up your kids downtown and drive them home.

 

[favo]

I got the oscillating car recently on 19.8.5. Hadn't seen that before. Funny and disturbing at the same time. Overall, much less dancing on 18.5 than previous versions, though.

 

[Fernand]

Dancing or not, I don't think it's showing anywhere near as much of the surrounding traffic with 2019.8.5. Virtually nothing behind the car, it didn't use to be like that that I can recall.

 

[aronth5]

My favorite is still when a bicycle passed me on the highway doing 65!!. The bicycle was on the car's bike hitch in the left hand lane and EAP displayed the bike 2-3 feet behind the car. That's what I call serious tailgating

 

[daniel]

On my long drive to Seattle the other day all the semis that passed me showed up as two separate trucks.

 

[4EVar]

I get these dancing cars quite a lot now. 2019.8.5

 

[Timothyj999]

I think of it this way. The neural nets were programmed to come to choices about when to make lane changes and how to stay in lanes and avoid other cars.

The net may come to these conclusion without ever generating intermediary values such as position, orientation. The display of these cars were an afterthought, a nice to have. The programmers have come up with a way of estimating this based on NN values.

This may be way off, but imagine trying to stick probes in a brain and reading out specific values for positions of objects that a human recognises. Then do this over and over again many times a second. Will the values be the same every time you get a reading?

I agree it’s probably just a consequence of noise in the measurements being displayed. But it seems like a trivial thing to fix—just display a smoothed moving average of the last 5 positions or something like that. First world problem I guess.

 

[C141medic]

Enjoying a little bit of Foreigner Double Vision on FW 2019.32.2.2

 

[AdamMacDon]

Do we know this for a fact? Why would the screen show something other than what the computer sees?



No, you don't. But the car has to know where the surrounding cars actually are. One thing I found this summer (admittedly many firmware versions ago) is that when cars are approaching from the opposite direction on a two-lane road, and a car, or especially a semi truck, is very close to the center line, mine will not give an inch to allow more passing space. This was one of the conditions when I disengaged EAP, to move farther over in my lane. Not a complaint, because this is a beta feature and a driver-assist feature, and I have to be ready to take over. But it tells me that they have a long way to go before the system is ready for Level 3, eyes off the road operation.

The car seems to have a very good knowledge of where my lane edges are, but a very poor knowledge of where surrounding cars are. This is also evidenced by the phantom braking we've all encountered, and by some other members who've posted about having to abort a lane change the car was starting to make, because the car seemed unaware of a car in the other lane. This was in one of the NoAP threads.

My guess about when we'll have Level 4 autonomy has moved out some years from what I thought a year ago.

The dancing cars on the screen are amusing, anyway. Cha... cha... cha cha cha.

The screen only shows the driving GUI for your benefit, the actual autopilot system doesn't rely on that info. As a software developer what the end user sees versus what is actually going on behind the scenes are too very different things. As far as I can tell, the GUI that displays car positions relies on movement to extrapolate the other cars directions. Without movement it exhibits the "dancing car". Welcome to beta software

 

[arbr2]

The screen only shows the driving GUI for your benefit, the actual autopilot system doesn't rely on that info.

While this might be true, it doesn't inspire a lot of confidence for the driver. Similar behaviour will happen in situations where vehicles are at an angle to Model 3 (driving past parking spaces in a parking garage for example). The good news seems to be that this will apparently be addressed in V10. It should smooth out the dancing cars, show oncoming traffic and better display vehicles that are at an angle.