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Firmware 8.1 - Autopilot HW1

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WSJ casts negative light on Tesla’s Autopilot ambitions

The publication claims that CEO Elon Musk’s ambitious goals for the program have led to some employees resignations and doubts about the company’s ability to deliver on those goals. Based on unnamed sources, WSJ claims that the decision to say that Autopilot 2.0 will enable full self-driving capability wasn’t well received: “In a meeting after the announcement, someone asked Autopilot director Sterling Anderson how Tesla could brand the product “Full Self-Driving,” several employees recall. “This was Elon’s decision,” they said he responded. Two months later, Mr. Anderson resigned.”
The rest of the report revolved more around the first generation of the Autopilot and hurdles to bring the technology to market. They claim that the Autopilot team lost “at least 10 engineers and four top managers” in recent months. We reported on several computer vision experts leaving the group in June and software executive Chris Lattner left a month before.
 
So, I received 17.32.6 over a WiFi yesterday, and I've noticed a new AP behavior since then.

Since AP's early days, it was possible to enable "overtake acceleration" when passing a slower-than-AP-speed-limit vehicle on the left lane, meaning if AP was set to a certain speed (say 65mph) but following a car at a slower speed (say 55mph) in a middle lane, fully engaging or holding the turn signal down toward the left lane caused AP to accelerate while changing lanes to pass said slower vehicle.

This wasn't the case when passing the slower vehicle to the right - until now. I thought it was a fluke at first, but was able to reproduce it several times during my commute over the last 24 hours (yes, that's easy to do up here in NorCal with slow drivers sticking to the left lanes all the time..)

Has anyone else noticed this?

Did some tests yesterday. Yes, this is a new behavior for me too. Now, passing to the left or right result in the same kind to acceleration starting during the lane change. But, I don't know why, sometimes, the car will only start accelerating when the lane change is fully completed (left or right passing).

Christian
 
I haven't tried to see how my car performs the passing maneuver but I can offer a very simple work around if the car fails to maintain the speed that you want, you are always able to press the accelerator to get it back to the speed that you've set.

Yes, I used to do this all the time when passing on the right. That's how I observed the new behavior - my car started doing it by itself!! :)
 
I had a weird incident tonight. I was driving on a 45 mph, 4 lane, non divided highway. No traffic in front of me for at least 1/2 mile. All of sudden, I got the auto emergency braking alarm and the car braked hard. I glanced down at the display, and I had a red "ghost car" immediately in front of me on the display.

After a second or two, it all went away and the cruise control resumed my preset speed. Strange.
 
I had a weird incident tonight. I was driving on a 45 mph, 4 lane, non divided highway. No traffic in front of me for at least 1/2 mile. All of sudden, I got the auto emergency braking alarm and the car braked hard. I glanced down at the display, and I had a red "ghost car" immediately in front of me on the display.

After a second or two, it all went away and the cruise control resumed my preset speed. Strange.
what happened was the infamous ghosting, do a search here on TMC and there are a few threads that discuss this all too common anomaly, I call it the red screen of death and many of us get it and get used to it. it's just another of the growing pains.
 
I had a weird incident tonight. I was driving on a 45 mph, 4 lane, non divided highway. No traffic in front of me for at least 1/2 mile. All of sudden, I got the auto emergency braking alarm and the car braked hard. I glanced down at the display, and I had a red "ghost car" immediately in front of me on the display.

After a second or two, it all went away and the cruise control resumed my preset speed. Strange.
Agree with @kort677. This is likely related to the issue of falsely detecting overhead signs/overpasses as stopped vehicles, and the "whitelisting" of these obstacles. This feature was supposed to have been implemented sometime over the past six months or so but very little has been said about it, so who knows the current status of this feature.

Also, what you experienced was NOT emergency braking. AEB only occurs when a collision is unavoidable and will brake regardless of whether TACC/Autosteer is enabled. Yours was forward collision warning which sounded the alert. TACC braking was separate.
 
what happened was the infamous ghosting, do a search here on TMC and there are a few threads that discuss this all too common anomaly, I call it the red screen of death and many of us get it and get used to it. it's just another of the growing pains.
I've had one or two of these "phantom braking" events, but I've never glanced down to see the red "ghost car." One I remember happened while driving through a construction zone, so I was focusing on not pinballing off the jersey barriers and barrels.

Agree with @kort677. This is likely related to the issue of falsely detecting overhead signs/overpasses as stopped vehicles, and the "whitelisting" of these obstacles. This feature was supposed to have been implemented sometime over the past six months or so but very little has been said about it, so who knows the current status of this feature.
The thing that surprised me is there was nothing around to trigger the alert - no cars for at least a half mile, no overpasses/signs, nothing. Completely open road. Too bad I haven't installed my dash cam yet.

Also, what you experienced was NOT emergency braking. AEB only occurs when a collision is unavoidable and will brake regardless of whether TACC/Autosteer is enabled. Yours was forward collision warning which sounded the alert. TACC braking was separate.
At first I thought you were wrong, and that it must be AEB, since FCW doesn't activate the brakes; only AEB does. But I think TACC was active when this happened. I usually use it on this section of road - it's one of those roads with an artificially low speed limit. It should be 55mph easily, not the 40 that it is. As a result, there's a radar trap there all the time.

So it could have been an FCW/TACC braking event or an AEB event. I'm guessing the former, since it was only moderate braking. I would expect AEB to trigger maximum braking, at the threshold of lockup. But I don't want to test that theory!
 
I have had only one such event. It occurred when the car saw an oncoming car on a two lane road. My car has often seen slow moving oncoming cars, so I'm not sure why Tesla doesn't use some of this info. Could you have had this happen too?
 
Thanks for posting the video. To me, it looks like your car only started to accelerate after he was fully over onto the right lane. That was my experience until this latest release, in which my car will actually start accelerating while still making the lane change to the right.

Did some more testing today, and you are right -- there is no acceleration when passing on the right, but there sure is going left.

I'm still on 17.14.23
 
Just got 17.36.1b27c6d installed on my S85D (AP1 of course) at the Burlingame service center to fix an error that caused my GPS position to be stuck.

After this, I noticed what seemed to be an improvement in the autopilot sensor display on the IC. Previously, if there was a car in an adjacent lane on the freeway merging in front of me, it would often disappear from the display partway during the merge and then reappear when it had gotten all the way into my lane. This made me nervous because it wasn't clear if the car was actually being detected or not during the time it wasn't visible on the IC.

Anyway, with 17.36.1b27c6d, it seems like the display on the IC does a much better job of showing cars as they're merging. I had 17.26.17 before this.

I've only done about 40 miles on the new firmware so far...I'll get to test it with a 400-mile road trip this weekend.

Anyone else notice this? Or am I just imagining things?

Bruce.
 
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Just got 17.36.1b27c6d installed on my S85D (AP1 of course) at the Burlingame service center to fix an error that caused my GPS position to be stuck.

After this, I noticed what seemed to be an improvement in the autopilot sensor display on the IC. Previously, if there was a car in an adjacent lane on the freeway merging in front of me, it would often disappear from the display partway during the merge and then reappear when it had gotten all the way into my lane. This made me nervous because it wasn't clear if the car was actually being detected or not during the time it wasn't visible on the IC.

Anyway, with 17.36.1b27c6d, it seems like the display on the IC does a much better job of showing cars as they're merging. I had 17.26.17 before this.

I've only done about 40 miles on the new firmware so far...I'll get to test it with a 400-mile road trip this weekend.

Anyone else notice this? Or am I just imagining things?

Bruce.
Don't have .36 yet but when I get it I will let you know.
 
just got the update notice any more info on this 17.36.1b27c6d update?

did a search and there are only 2 posts about it currently...

Seems like there's more if you search for 2017.36 — it's the build that adds supercharger power availability displays in the maps. Nothing else is officially stated about the build, but your usual maybe-placebo Autopilot/Autopark is worse/better seems to apply...
 
I have it for few days. It is better than 34 whereby it has again started to ‘see’ vehicles at stop lights and slow down upon approaching them BUT my auto high beams no longer work. Also on the highway if you use autopilot it kinds of ping pongs at times between lanes which I had not seen happen in last few builds.