Software Update 2018.10.4

[Compton]

Is Lidar intended to be a better ultrasonic device, or a better camera? I thought it is the later. Maybe its both?

Also how can a camera sense the speed of the objects around you? Thats the job of a radar or ultrasonic, correct?

Also on the same lines how can the camera sense the distance to an object? with two cameras you can get which one is farther and which one is closer - a 3D view - but not how much is the distance between you and the objects.

I don't see why even stereoscopic vision would be required for autonomous driving. Proof is in the budding; people can drive with one eye. Stereoscopic vision is most useful when objects are near your eyes. Your brain can then deduce the relative distance of the objects by comparing (among other things) angular differences. The importance of stereoscopic vision is quickly diminished at larger distances because the angular differences become negligible.

You determine the distance between you and objects by applying several different techniques simultaneously. One is the size of the object; a car that is seen as a tiny spec must be pretty far away. Another is the relative size of objects; a truck that seems to be as large as a small japanese car must be further away than the latter. An object that seems to grow in size rapidly is probably approaching you at high speed and further assessment can be made by comparing the position of the object to it's surroundings etc. Computers with neural nets can apply similar techniques and there are more than just the ones that I mentioned.

 

[TexLaw]

The AP driving is so very much better, and the more I drive it, the more I see the improvement. However, I did have to take over when my AP2 MS went so far to the outside of a curve that we got dangerously close to a car that was hugging the inside of the adjacent lane. I was rather surprised, as it seemed like that was fixed, but there obviously seems to be some real work to be done on that front.

 

[buttershrimp]

It's hard to tell from the video, did the car actively steer you to the left or did it just beep?

This is interesting, would ultrasonic sensors be able to do this or do we think the rear camera (or repeater) has a NN active?

@jimmy_d can you explain what is most likely occurring in my video? Would it be he side rear facing cameras? I think this may be why Tesla lists this safety feature as side collision avoidance, since in both instances i experience the car is picking up a car approaching from an angle

 

[Speedr117]

I was at Disney this weekend and it downloaded the update overnight using cellular. Will echo others, it's awesome!

 

[Speedr117]

An example of how great this new update is:

I turned into the exit lane off of a divided expressway going 60 MPH (the speed limit) and engaged autopilot. The turn was marked 25 mph and the exit ramp does a 180 u-turn. It slowed the car down and made the turn within the lines. Very impressive!

 

[ahkahn]

I noticed the updates have really slowed. We have a 2017 S and X and I emailed Tesla about this and they said “must have Wi-Fi - park next to a coffee shop.” Problem is that we garage our cars at both Work and Home deep underground with no WiFi but surprisingly strong LTE. They simply refuse to push over LTE!

I've had mine on Wifi since the update first came out, at work and at home, and I have not yet gotten the update. I also rebooted the MCU...

 

[ddkilzer]

I noticed the updates have really slowed. We have a 2017 S and X and I emailed Tesla about this and they said “must have Wi-Fi - park next to a coffee shop.” Problem is that we garage our cars at both Work and Home deep underground with no WiFi but surprisingly strong LTE. They simply refuse to push over LTE!

I bought an Eero Home WiFi System for my house to make my WiFi network reach our MX when it's parked in the driveway. I've received multiple software update notifications while using this setup. (I am not claiming that I have received more updates than other folks--just that when Tesla does want to push an update, the MX is usually on WiFi at home, so it's able to receive it.)

Eero devices create a "mesh WiFi" network which makes it look like you have one large WiFi network instead of a core WiFi network plus "extenders" that actually require devices to switch to a different network. There are other similar product available, but I'm extremely happy with my Eero system. If you have a lot of devices that use your WiFi network (phones, tablets, printers, etc.) and you're reaching the device limit for one WiFi router, or if you're currently using network extenders, you will love switching to a mesh WiFi product (that's set up properly).

I should also note that you need to make sure your WiFi network is secured with a password at all times to prevent unwanted use of your network. (Eero sets up a secure network by default.) One of the coolest things about the Eero is that you can see a list of connected devices, and if there's a device you don't recognize, you can block an individual device without affecting anything else. The Eero app even lets you provide your own names to each device (once you figure out what each one is) so it's easy to recognize new/unknown devices. (One last thing: The Eero app lets you group devices, such as kids' tablets, and then lets you manually disable Internet access to just that group of devices when it's time for bed, for example.)

Eero is available online on their website, on Amazon and at electronics stores like Best Buy.

 

[rnortman]

Is Lidar intended to be a better ultrasonic device, or a better camera? I thought it is the later. Maybe its both?

Also how can a camera sense the speed of the objects around you? Thats the job of a radar or ultrasonic, correct?

Also on the same lines how can the camera sense the distance to an object? with two cameras you can get which one is farther and which one is closer - a 3D view - but not how much is the distance between you and the objects.

Lidar is qualitatively different than both ultrasonic and camera, but if you want to stretch an analogy, the characteristic it shares with ultrasonic is that it is based on range-finding. The characteristics it shares with camera are high speed (refresh rate) and high resolution.

A single camera can give rough range via apparent size from a single frame. If you throw more computational horsepower at it and start using multiple frames from a video feed, you can do more, such as temporal stereo, which uses two frames from a moving camera as two viewpoints for computing stereo. This is way, way harder and less reliable than a properly aligned and calibrated stereo pair, but it's not nothing. I don't think we have any evidence that Tesla is doing this, but they probably are starting to use apparent size, and *might* be comparing apparent size over time to estimate velocity.

The infamous "FSD demo video" from shortly after the AP2 release showed optical flow being used in some of the cameras. This is also sort of an approximation of temporal stereo -- trying to find matching pixels in consecutive frames and look at how far the pixel moved between frames. Again, there is no evidence (that I know of) that this is being employed live in the vehicles at this point.

 

[futurem3owner]

Curious to know what this software update will entail with regards to how soon we will be seeing EAP and FSD develop? We all know Elon's overly optimistic viewpoint when it comes to these timelines since he just recently announced at SXSW that 'self-driving will encompass all modes of driving by the end of next year’. With this latest update being miles better than any others before it, is he being realistic or will he fall flat on his face?

 

[ddkilzer]

AP2 doesn't yet track six cars (two on left lane, two ahead, two on right lane) like AP1 does on highways (AP2 only shows up to two vehicles ahead of you in the same lane), but I noticed this new behavior with the 10.4 update and my MX:

• On a highway, when a car changes lanes in front of you into your lane, AP2 picks up the vehicle about halfway through its lane change into your lane on the driver's display. Prior to this update, the vehicle would only appear once it was "fully" in the lane ahead of the MX.
• Again on a highway, when I signal to change lanes with Autopilot engaged (to let the MX change lanes itself), cars in adjacent lanes that are 1-2 car lengths ahead of the MX are detected about halfway through my MX lane change, then animate into my lane on the driver's display.

I have no idea if this is just extra processing from the front-facing cameras or if side cameras are starting to be used, but it was super cool when I discovered it did this. (Apologies if someone mentioned this already; I haven't had time to read the whole thread.)

 

[D.E.]

It's hard to tell from the video, did the car actively steer you to the left or did it just beep?

This is interesting, would ultrasonic sensors be able to do this or do we think the rear camera (or repeater) has a NN active?

What's “NN”?

 

[jimmy_d]

Anyone else “feel” like the NagNanny is coming more often with 10.4? It was so persistently quick I timed it. Once a minute on the clock:



View attachment 287169

Interesting. After driving it for a couple of hours I started thinking that the problem of people being lulled into complacency might actually become a real thing on this latest version. So maybe they need to be more diligent about warning people to pay attention. In previous versions it would scare the crap out of you every 20 or 30 minutes, which is probably even more effective than a gentle reminder every 60 seconds.

 

[pkodali]

What's “NN”?

Neural network

 

[mongo]

AP2 doesn't yet track six cars (two on left lane, two ahead, two on right lane) like AP1 does on highways (AP2 only shows up to two vehicles ahead of you in the same lane), but I noticed this new behavior with the 10.4 update and my MX:

• On a highway, when a car changes lanes in front of you into your lane, AP2 picks up the vehicle about halfway through its lane change into your lane on the driver's display. Prior to this update, the vehicle would only appear once it was "fully" in the lane ahead of the MX.
• Again on a highway, when I signal to change lanes with Autopilot engaged (to let the MX change lanes itself), cars in adjacent lanes that are 1-2 car lengths ahead of the MX are detected about halfway through my MX lane change, then animate into my lane on the driver's display.

I have no idea if this is just extra processing from the front-facing cameras or if side cameras are starting to be used, but it was super cool when I discovered it did this. (Apologies if someone mentioned this already; I haven't had time to read the whole thread.)

Sounds like the display only shows vehicles that are over 50% in your current lane. Likely AP2 is tracking the other cars, but they do not get displayed. (Cluster code vs AP code).

 

[J Roc]

Just had to reboot the MCU to wake the car up. I woke up to a TeslaFi measage that the car was offline. It responded to my fob (lights, etc) but MCU out and no response to brake pedal. Rebooted and all’s well.

Maybe they rewrote too much. I’ve seldom (never?) had the offline overnight, as I’m ‘always connected, no energy savings, don’t sleep’ in settings/TeslaFi.

I had this happen to me when I left for vacation. The Tesla App kept failing to connect. I thought I was a victim of phantom drain, and I was going to have to jump my car when I returned. Turned out it was just the MCU bonked out and wouldn’t respond to anything but a two thumb salute.

 

[BlueRocket]

Something in the rear camera picked up the speeding car in my video... same as the motorcycle that buzzed me yesterday.

I was (trying to) doing a lane change yesterday and the car hesitated then started to go ,then aborted. There was a car pretty far back in the lane I wanted to change in to but gaining on me in that lane. I assumed it saw it and wasn't sure if it could make it, so aborted.

This version of AP is so good that my wife didn't even complain after 5 hours of driving on AP! Of course, once I took over she complained it was driving erratically and to turn it off

 

[jimmy_d]

@jimmy_d can you explain what is most likely occurring in my video? Would it be he side rear facing cameras? I think this may be why Tesla lists this safety feature as side collision avoidance, since in both instances i experience the car is picking up a car approaching from an angle

It could be the repeater cameras are watching your blind spot. It’s hard to completely rule out the ultrasonics because the video doesn’t show what happens prior to when the passing vehicle moves ahead of your car. There is a vision network for the repeater cameras so they are being used for something, and given their field of view the most likely thing is that they are watching the adjacent lanes to the side and rear of your vehicle.

I notice that lane changes are now a lot more gradual than they were in the previous version and it occurs to me that the previous version’s abruptness might have been a measure that was intended to help manage situations where you are changing into a lane and there is traffic coming up on you fast from behind. If you make a slow and gradual lane change then the possibility that an approaching vehicle will try to squeeze past you and create a dangerous situation is much more likely. So in the previous version the fix might have been to just do the lane change very quickly. If they now have the ability to use the repeaters to make sure that blind spot is safe then that allows them to have a much more comfortable lane change. And if they can do that then they can also protect you from people approaching fast from behind and maybe getting too close to your vehicle as they flash by.

I watched through your video a couple of times but I’m not completely clear on the sequence of events. It looks like you are getting warned about the vehicle coming up behind you on your right and that your car moved over to the left as you were being warned. And it also looks like your vehicle moved so far to the left that it was actually intruding on the lane to the left of you. Is that what happened? Or did you move the car? If the car moved itself then it must have been watching the left lane to make sure that it was clear also. If the vehicle is now capable of automatically making a lane change to avoid a dangerous situation then that is certainly an escalation of it safety capabilities.

 

[Lawsteve]

By the way, I take full credit for the timing of this major update. Ever since my first Tesla in Sept of 2013, it was a sure thing that Tesla would send out a big update whenever I left town for more than 4 days and left my car at home.

Early on March 14 I left Tampa for a six day trip to Telluride CO. That evening I got the software update notice on my phone, and it has nagged (tortured) me every day since then.

You're all welcome............

 

[Raincloud]

I totally agree with others that the new update is awesome. When in bought my MX last year, this is what I always expected it to be able to do. Having driven it couple of hundred miles in last two days, mostly on the inner road, I love the way it handles the curves now. There is one stretch of street that the previous versions were never able to handle but even is being handled very well. Love this update. I made a small video this morning and it is amazing how the new version handles all the curves.

 

[Sawyer8888]

Disengaging AP using the steering wheel is still a bit rough despite what someone posted earlier in this thread.

My backseat passengers questioned why the car was jerking. And I was attempting to be as subtle as possible when using the wheel to change lanes. Manually turning the wheel while in AP allows TACC to stay active but causes AP to turn off.

Auto lane change is much better and much more comfortable. However, when you need to change lanes quickly, where letting the car do it would be too slow, grabbing the wheel to make the move will cause an uncomfortable jerkiness for passengers who aren't expecting it - at least at highway speeds.