I like checklists.
Ok if we're actually turning this into a can wk057 fix our problems wishlist:
1. Allow dumb cruise control when radar sensor is blocked with snow/salt/sand.
I actually did this mod on my S a while back when I had a broken radar bracket that would eventually slide out of usefulness. The problem with it is that you get used to TACC and it limits your reaction time, even if you've been told by the car you're in dumb mode now. So, honestly, this is something that shouldn't be done. It actually is a problem resolved on the facelift cars, X, and 3... since the radar is protected.
2. Allow disabling of sonics when there is a high degree of noise, i.e. snowy/salty/sandy conditions. Prevents false positive collision avoidance events. (yes, happens to me EVERY winter storm)
This is a definite. Even happens to me in the rain. The car will start nudging to one side or the other thinking theres something to avoid. Ugh.
3. Move nags back to low confidence events instead of timers.
Better yet, just make it an option. Disabled, Confidence Based, Standard.... or something.
4. Preheat seats/steering only to max temp, no heater core.
Not quite sure why they don't just have the cold weather controls page directly in the app yet... this seems like a simple no-brainer.
5. Allow a 3rd "disable regen" function for slippery conditions, or immediately disable regen on yaw control event.
Definitely an issue in some conditions, although probably a harder problem to tackle than many. I think this is another problem that stems from the California-is-the-center-of-the-universe mentality.
6. Allow dumb intermittent wipers, zero sensing. Optimize/adjustable speed/acceleration to prevent chatter.
Maybe Tesla will read this and take a hint.
I think the RLS on AP1 works great, and they should put this back into production for AP2 cars. More options are better than less, though, in most cases.
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As for my AP1 mods, I never really documented much of them anywhere because I never felt like I did everything that could be done... and also didn't have time to get back to the project. I did post some notes around here somewhere a while back, but I'll be damned if I have any idea where those posts are.
On a day-to-day basis, my AP1 mods are limited to automatic overtakes (and returns) on freeways, removing nags, truck-lust correction, and other minor improvements. These I use regularly.
Automatic overtakes work like this (super basic explanation):
- Custom software monitors the environment as reported by the AP1 hardware
- If the lead vehicle is traveling slower than my set speed, there is a travel lane to the left, there is not a slower vehicle visible in that lane, and ultrasonics are clear in that direction..... it starts a lane change process. This works as follows:
- The car engages the turn signal and sounds a distinct tone over the speakers to note that, "Hey, I'm about to pass this guy... you should make sure all is clear."
- The car does not initiate the lane change immediately. After the above, there is a full 3 second delay. The blinker remains on during this time.
- If the human meat computer in the driver seat sees that the lane change won't be safe it can be aborted by tapping the blinker, disengaging autosteer or cruise, etc.
- If aborted by the blinker, it will reset the state of things and eventually retry if conditions go unchanged... which is good for just delaying a maneuver for a courtesy or whatever.
- If the lane change will be safe, no action is needed. The car will do the lane change. When complete it will disengage the blinker as well.
- Ultrasonics are monitored during the change, just in case, as a minor safety thing... although the human meat computer should have checked anyway.
- The software then monitors the car that's being overtaken.
- Once the car goes out of view of the camera, it continues to extrapolate its position. It also uses the ultrasonics for some added confidence.
- If other cars are ahead of the car being overtaken, those cars are essentially tagged as a car being overtaken unless they are traveling faster than or equal to my set speed.
- Once it makes sense to return to the right, the car returns to the right.
- A side benefit of the keep-right-pass-left logic is that it can result in overtakes on the right by default.
Note: Before people jump out with "This is so unsafe!"... remember, this is a level 2 driver assistance feature. The human meat computer must be aware and attentive. In no way would I say that the car should just blindly make a lane change with this setup. That said, it's extremely useful.
The result is that the car is usually able to seemlessly overtake a slower vehicle without ever decelerating.
The software will also recursively overtake another vehicle that appears ahead while already in an overtake maneuver, and eventually work to return to the original lane unless a number of factors make it clear that it shouldn't (like that target lane being exit-only or something). Lots of sanity checks. For example, a lane must exist for a full mile before being considered a target lane. It also checks nav data about the current road to double check if a lane is a ramp or not, when possible... although this data is pretty bad.
There is a lot of logic coded in... it makes the "thoughts" of the custom setup a bit more defined, mainly due to the predictive nature of the model used. It will continue to project vehicle positions for every vehicle ever encountered, until a max number of objects is encountered. It's kind of cool, although limited since it assumes a constant speed for the other vehicles it can no longer see. I also wrote an algo that predicts longitudinal movement of vehicles seen by the ultrasonics, which augments that data a bit and works okay. The result is that, in practice, rarely does it begin the process of an overtake/lane change while there is a vehicle in the way in the target lane. The only exception tends to be when moving back to the right near a merge... which I don't even think AP2 can handle as of yet, either.
I did try to program in courtesy lane changes for interchanges/merges, but just not enough data to work with to make it reliable.
Overall, it works pretty well considering the sensor limitations of the AP1 system. In most situations I use it in (long interstate drives) I can go whole stretches of interstate without ever touching a control in clear conditions.
That's it for things that are used regularly. Now, with my super pre-pre-alpha software/hardware, I've managed to make my AP1 S drive with near-zero interaction from my driveway to my old shop (6 miles, 6 stops/turns). I did this in a pretty hacky way, though, and probably not something I'd ever consider being usable as a real AP1 feature.
Basically I setup a database that monitored that route over dozens of human-driven passes and built up a pretty high resolution representation of the route using GPS data, reported lane positions at those coordinates, and other reported consistent factors with a particular location point. Through some clever software, I can use this data to augment the actions of AP1 on the route, including full stops and full turns. The result was surprisingly good, and I managed to do the route a few times with zero interaction. Most of the time, though, since AP1 can't see cross traffic, I'd have to disengage at intersections and reengage when clear.
I think this could be useful in some limited situations where the environment were closed/controlled, though, for moving the car autonomously... but probably not super useful in daily use for most. The benefits of the augmentation are amazing for general AP1 autosteer, though, and routes learned in the database are handled better overall than standard autosteer on either AP1 or AP2. So, most of the back roads in my town are well processed and autosteer works amazingly well on them while I use this mod, even without the full features of stopping/turning/etc.
Currently, this requires hardware I don't always keep hooked up, and haven't actually messed with for many months. But it's a great proof-of-concept.
The more interesting aspects of all of my mods.... they're things Tesla
could implement without any hardware changes, since they could mod the actual software to handle it. In my case, I have to build on top of that with intercepts and external hardware... but no reason all of this can't be done in software on an AP1 car, from a technical perspective. Even the 6-year-old Tegra setup in MCU1 is plenty for running/storing my augment database setup.
The biggest problem with porting these mods to AP2 would be that the data produced by AP2 is super inconsistent. With AP1, I can drive a path at a constant speed, record the data, do it 10 more times, and compare the data of each pass only to find super minor variations in the information recorded about the path. With AP2, I logged some of this info and the same path run 10x might as well look like you were on another planet when each recording was made. So they definitely have some issues to work out to catch up to the quality of info produced by AP1.
I think the overtake stuff could be implemented on an AP2 car pretty easily, along with other improvements. The more advanced stuff would be limited by the noisy data produced by AP2, though.
Anyway, gotta run. Hope this clears up a little.