Here's What's Missing from Self-Driving Cars: TRUST

[NerdUno]

@EinSV Not sure how a representation by Cadillac becomes a promise from me?? Let's not shoot the messenger. We'll know soon enough whether Cadillac can deliver. My track record with them is pretty good based upon ownership of a half dozen of their cars. But your crystal ball may turn out to be better than mine... or maybe not.

 

[EinSV]

@EinSV Not sure how a representation by Cadillac becomes a promise from me?? We'll know soon enough whether Cadillac can deliver. My track record with them is pretty good based upon ownership of a half dozen of their cars. But your crystal ball may turn out to be better than mine... or maybe not.

In fairness, I personally would call it a prediction from you but the word "promise" gets thrown around quite bit around these parts so I thought I'd have a little fun.

Let's see where we are in the fall on Supercruise v AP. For the record, if someone beats Tesla to FSD my money would be on Waymo. In any case, will be interesting to watch.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Let's see where we are in the fall on Supercruise v AP. For the record, if someone beats Tesla to FSD my money would be on Waymo. In any case, will be interesting to watch.

FSD is a long way off, though. (Not talking about some FSD features of course, Elon promised those in a couple from days now... )

What seems to be the imminent possibility and question is: who is first with "read a book" Level 3. That seems to be an imminent possibility and given the state of AP2, and Tesla's continued "driver is responsible" approach, I have a hard time believing it will be Tesla.

 

[McRat]

In fairness, I personally would call it a prediction but the word "promise" gets thrown around quite bit around these parts so I thought I'd have a little fun.

Let's see where we are in the fall on Supercruise v AP. For the record, if someone beats Tesla to FSD my money would be on Waymo. In any case, will be interesting to watch.

Super Cruise is not the same project as Cruise Automation's AV work. Super Cruise is a brute force approach that involves facial recognition and LIDAR mapping of the US highway system.

The AV Bolts are using LIDAR for real time decisions. And they are most likely going to be fleet cars for taxi service. And expensive.

Tesla and GM are taking two dissimilar paths. Tesla's system will have advantages and GM's systems will have advantages.

 

[whitex]

So you're saying self-driving cars should not be sold because an accident might result in the banning self-driving cars?

Not at all, I am saying alpha or even beta cars should not be sold to the public. Bad things can happen during experimental phases of products operated by regular people all over the spectrum as far as their technical knowledge or driving ability. Testing should be done by qualified test drivers in controlled conditions, not by laymen on public roads. One accident with some shock value and US self driving becomes severely limited.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Not at all, I am saying alpha or even beta cars should not be sold to the public. Bad things can happen during experimental phases of products operated by regular people all over the spectrum as far as their technical knowledge or driving ability. Testing should be done by qualified test drivers in controlled conditions, not by laymen on public roads. One accident with some shock value and US self driving becomes severely limited.

Who is selling alpha or beta cars? Note, even though Tesla uses the "beta" label for Autopilot, that is akin to Google's "beta" labels for some of their consumer products (it's a marketing word).

Elon says he will keep calling it "beta" until there is at least 1 billion miles of active use. I'm willing to bet none of the level 2 systems out there have 1 billion miles of testing.
Elon Musk clarifies the use of the word ‘beta’ for the Autopilot, says will need at least 1 billion miles to get out of it

The actual beta testing is done by ~1000 Tesla owners as part of the Early Access Program. Alpha testing is done by Tesla engineers and Elon himself. Elon was driving with high speed autosteer on HW2 around November 2016 in his personal car. That didn't get publicly released until late March 2017. That time in between is used for testing and regulatory approval.

As noted before, Tesla's "beta" system is better than other "non-beta" systems from other manufacturers. Other systems will also happily throw you into the oncoming lane, and keep fully in that wrong lane too (not just head towards the lane as in AP).
Fatal Flaw in AP2 Design

 

[Cosmacelf]

I can tell you the AEB in Caddys is very good. Certainly not beta, perhaps the world's leader in AEB technology since it also uses thermal imaging in the system, not just multiple radar and cameras. The ACC is also high quality.

Do you have one, or did you just test drive it, or how do you know this?

 

[McRat]

Do you have one, or did you just test drive it, or how do you know this?

One of our cars is a CT6 Platinum. I've driven many Cadillacs sold this century on the road and/or on race courses.

At an event recently, a Caddy pro driver let me record the AEB test at parking lot speeds:

Watch my camera vibrate as the ABS pulses.

 

[whitex]

Who is selling alpha or beta cars? Note, even though Tesla uses the "beta" label for Autopilot, that is akin to Google's "beta" labels for some of their consumer products (it's a marketing word).

Elon says he will keep calling it "beta" until there is at least 1 billion miles of active use. I'm willing to bet none of the level 2 systems out there have 1 billion miles of testing.
Elon Musk clarifies the use of the word ‘beta’ for the Autopilot, says will need at least 1 billion miles to get out of it

The actual beta testing is done by ~1000 Tesla owners as part of the Early Access Program. Alpha testing is done by Tesla engineers and Elon himself. Elon was driving with high speed autosteer on HW2 around November 2016 in his personal car. That didn't get publicly released until late March 2017. That time in between is used for testing and regulatory approval.

As noted before, Tesla's "beta" system is better than other "non-beta" systems from other manufacturers. Other systems will also happily throw you into the oncoming lane, and keep fully into that wrong lane too (not just head towards the lane as in AP).
Fatal Flaw in AP2 Design

The difference between a web beta product, as all google public betas are, is that if it crashes in the worst case you have some annoyed people. When FSD crashes, worse case is people die. I never said no beta products should be given to the public, only ones that are life critical.

And yes, I know Tesla says the driver always has to be in control and ready to take over in a split second. Well, what's the point of a system like that other than beta testing? It requires more attention that driving with a student driver, as the latter usually has a survival instinct and their neural networks have been trained for 16+ years on and off-road, so if they see an orange cones on the road, they will deduce they shouldn't drive through them, unlike AP in this post for example. The danger happens when people who use this beta product start treating it as if it was a non-beta, ready to trust product. One person has died already, which already caused some regulation, but if this was a schoolbus full of children, you would see a much stronger reaction.

By the way, can you explain to me how "beta" is a marketing word? How is calling your product "unfinished" a good thing for marketing, other than covering the company's ass when it fails? Would you fly (as a passenger) on a beta/unfinished commercial airliner if there were reports about close calls as there are about EAP today?

 

[oktane]

Who is selling alpha or beta cars? Note, even though Tesla uses the "beta" label for Autopilot, that is akin to Google's "beta" labels for some of their consumer products (it's a marketing word).

Elon says he will keep calling it "beta" until there is at least 1 billion miles of active use. I'm willing to bet none of the level 2 systems out there have 1 billion miles of testing.
Elon Musk clarifies the use of the word ‘beta’ for the Autopilot, says will need at least 1 billion miles to get out of it

The actual beta testing is done by ~1000 Tesla owners as part of the Early Access Program. Alpha testing is done by Tesla engineers and Elon himself. Elon was driving with high speed autosteer on HW2 around November 2016 in his personal car. That didn't get publicly released until late March 2017. That time in between is used for testing and regulatory approval.

As noted before, Tesla's "beta" system is better than other "non-beta" systems from other manufacturers. Other systems will also happily throw you into the oncoming lane, and keep fully in that wrong lane too (not just head towards the lane as in AP).
Fatal Flaw in AP2 Design

Um...Tesla?

 

[NerdUno]

The actual beta testing is done by ~1000 Tesla owners as part of the Early Access Program. Alpha testing is done by Tesla engineers and Elon himself. Elon was driving with high speed autosteer on HW2 around November 2016 in his personal car. That didn't get publicly released until late March 2017. That time in between is used for testing and regulatory approval.

How do you know all of this? Do you really think the HW2 code that we're using today was being used by Elon in November 2016? My estimate would be that it got finished about a week before release to the masses. And, for the hundredth time, no regulatory approval is required unless a driver is not in immediate control of the car. In Tesla's case, that would be never at this point in time.

 

[stopcrazypp]

The difference between a web beta product, as all google public betas are, is that if it crashes in the worst case you have some annoyed people. When FSD crashes, worse case is people die. I never said no beta products should be given to the public, only ones that are life critical.

And yes, I know Tesla says the driver always has to be in control and ready to take over in a split second. Well, what's the point of a system like that other than beta testing? It requires more attention that driving with a student driver, as the latter usually has a survival instinct and their neural networks have been trained for 16+ years on and off-road, so if they see an orange cones on the road, they will deduce they shouldn't drive through them, unlike AP in this post for example. The danger happens when people who use this beta product start treating it as if it was a non-beta, ready to trust product. One person has died already, which already caused some regulation, but if this was a schoolbus full of children, you would see a much stronger reaction.

Huh? Have you looked up the definition of a level 2 system? By definition the driver must be alert and ready to take over by monitoring the system. This is true of all level 2 systems.
https://www.sae.org/misc/pdfs/automated_driving.pdf

It seems your problem is more with the idea of a level 2 system, than anything else. The point of a level 2 system is it frees the driver to use their attention on the macro parts of the driving task (monitoring the road).
Cruise control frees you from making constant adjustments to the accelerator pedal
ACC frees you from slowing/braking for traffic
Lane keeping frees you from making constant adjustments to the steering

None of them free you from having to monitor the road, but nevertheless most people would agree they are useful features.

By the way, can you explain to me how "beta" is a marketing word? How is calling your product "unfinished" a good thing for marketing, other than covering the company's ass when it fails? Would you fly (as a passenger) on a beta/unfinished commercial airliner if there were reports about close calls as there are about EAP today?

Beta as a marketing word simply is a signal that the company is still constantly tweaking and adding new features to the product (see article explaining why Google kept the "beta" label for many products, despite them being far more mature than traditional beta as the definition is used in software engineering).
There are also internal checkmarks that Google has before they removed the label.
Why Google kept Gmail in "beta" for so many years.

I think a lot of people will agree the "beta" gmail worked a ton better than the other "non-beta" web email products of the era (like yahoo mail and hotmail).

The idea for Tesla is similar. The checkmark that Elon made public is at least 1 billion miles of active use (Tesla may have other additional criteria internally before they remove the label).

 

[whitex]

Huh? Have you looked up the definition of a level 2 system? By definition the driver must be alert and ready to take over by monitoring the system. This is true of all level 2 systems.
https://www.sae.org/misc/pdfs/automated_driving.pdf

It seems your problem is more with the idea of a level 2 system, than anything else. The point of a level 2 system is it frees the driver to use their attention on the macro parts of the driving task (monitoring the road).
Cruise control frees you from making constant adjustments to the accelerator pedal
ACC frees you from slowing/braking for traffic
Lane keeping frees you from making constant adjustments to the steering

None of them free you from having to monitor the road, but nevertheless most people would agree they are useful features.


Beta as a marketing word simply is a signal that the company is still constantly tweaking and adding new features to the product (see article explaining why Google kept the "beta" label for many products, despite them being far more mature than traditional beta as the definition is used in software engineering).
There are also internal checkmarks that Google has before they removed the label.
Why Google kept Gmail in "beta" for so many years.

I think a lot of people will agree the "beta" gmail worked a ton better than the other "non-beta" web email products of the era (like yahoo mail and hotmail).

The idea for Tesla is similar. The checkmark that Elon made public is at least 1 billion miles of active use (Tesla may have other additional criteria internally before they remove the label).

So that's a yes, you would pick to buy tickets on beta airliners over non-beta release quality ones? Again, there is a difference between life-critical systems and google web apps. Go ask a marketing department of for a heart-pacer how many more sales they'd get if they slapped a "beta" label on it.

From the article about Google beta:

Tim O'Reilly, the open-source advocate, has used the term perpetual beta positively as an indication of open-source development processes wherein users are "treated as co-developers.".​

This works great in open source, but for life critical systems, you want to make sure all your "co-developers" are well qualified, especially if they can get killed in the process of co-development.

 

[stopcrazypp]

How do you know all of this? Do you really think the HW2 code that we're using today was being used by Elon in November 2016? My estimate would be that it got finished about a week before release to the masses. And, for the hundredth time, no regulatory approval is required unless a driver is not in immediate control of the car. In Tesla's case, that would be never at this point in time.

Early access program covered in this article:
http://jalopnik.com/tesla-will-run-a-public-beta-for-model-s-autopilot-1722371968

Elon mentioned he was testing high speed autosteer three months ago during a 2/22/2017 earnings call (works out to somewhere around November 2016).
"Safety is always our primary concern. So, really we could have released Tesla Vision and including (18:42) high speed, probably three months ago - I was driving at a high speed personally three months ago, but I think we want to just have an exhaustive testing process, vetting (18:57) process before enabling that throughout the fleet."
From 2/22/2017 Earnings call.
Tesla's Attempt To Leverage Mobileye IP - Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA) | Seeking Alpha

High speed autosteer did not come until March 29, 2017:
Tesla releases 8.1 software update and improves Autopilot 2.0 features: Autosteer 80 mph and Summon

 

[stopcrazypp]

So that's a yes, you would pick to buy tickets on beta airliners over non-beta release quality ones? Again, there is a difference between life-critical systems and google web apps. Go ask a marketing department of for a heart-pacer how many more sales they'd get if they slapped a "beta" label on it.

From the article about Google beta:

Tim O'Reilly, the open-source advocate, has used the term perpetual beta positively as an indication of open-source development processes wherein users are "treated as co-developers.".​

This works great in open source, but for life critical systems, you want to make sure all your "co-developers" are well qualified, especially if they can get killed in the process of co-development.

I would buy a "beta" product (marketing sense) over "non-beta" products that worked horribly. I would not buy a beta product (as in the traditional software engineering definition without the quotes).

But I don't like analogies when there are direct examples: the Mercedes Drive Pilot level 2 system is "non-beta" but it will put you directly into the oncoming lane and keep you there (as I linked above in the Norwegian test; another review linked below said the same). Just because the other automakers don't put the "beta" label doesn't mean their product works better.
The War For Autonomous Driving: 2017 Mercedes-Benz E-Class VS. 2017 Tesla Model S

 

[whitex]

Just because the other automakers don't put the "beta" label doesn't mean their product works better.

I never claimed the other guys stuff works better. It's just that Tesla takes the most risks and make biggest claims, and they are the only ones with a death while in AutoPilot control (which happened before the nags got implemented).

 

[verygreen]

My estimate would be that it got finished about a week before release to the masses

What are you talking about?! This is Tesla we are discussing here, they move at breakneck speed, process and testing only gets in the way, whenever they get the new feature they were adding to finally build, they immediately pack it up and ship a new release out.
I wish I was joking. (this is not related to the actual neural net code - that one is done differently).

I would not be surprised if Elon stands behind the back of the poor sap who was assigned to be in charge of the newest build containing $SHINY promised on twitter by Elon 2 seconds after coming up with it and then communicated to the development team with orders to try and keep up wit the self-imposed deadline, but still being way too late (understandably). Once it builds, he then pushes the big red "release" button himself. (Full disclosure - this last paragraph is speculation.)

Also about the early access program, is there at least one known participant in this program on TMC, have anybody met one ever?

 

[SomeJoe7777]

they are the only ones with a death while in AutoPilot control

While no official cause of the Joshua Brown accident has been released, there may be a few considerations given before a wanton indictment of autopilot is made. Like the stoned 18-wheeler driver, for instance.

Plus, it would be difficult for any other automobile company to have a fatality during level 2 autonomous driving given that none of them have a working, deployed level 2 autonomous system.

 

[Off Shore]

The concern trolling in this thread is massive. When automation is obviously better than the status quo it will be permitted. It's a low bar.

 

[jeffro01]

The concern trolling in this thread is massive. When automation is obviously better than the status quo it will be permitted. It's a low bar.

Exactly...

There are a number of members, very vocal members currently, here that are salty AP2 doesn't meet their expectations so they project there issues onto everything else Tesla does or doesn't do...

I can't wait for FSD, I already trust it.

Jeff