Summon seems like a silly party trick to me

[ddm3]

That is why owners need to use Smart Summon responsibly. Line of sight is not good enough. You must have a clear sight of full 360 degree around your car. If you lose situational awareness in full 360 degree around your car, you should immediately abort Smart Summon.

As has been pointed out by electronblue, the car will always block part of the view unless you are directly above the car. (Even the view from the 10th story of a nearby building will have blond spots.) Since your definition of operating SS responsibly involves a driver having full 360 awareness around the car at all times, it seems that there is no way to responsibly operate SS. (Maybe Tesla should market a Smart Summon drone accessory...)

 

[electronblue]

The example you gave illustrates the problem: you aborted the Smart Summon due to a parked car you could see. But how could you ever know to stop the car for example for a pet or a child that would approach from the other side of the car, behind the car, and — say — slipping under the back wheels?

That is why owners need to use Smart Summon responsibly. Line of sight is not good enough. You must have a clear sight of full 360 degree around your car. If you lose situational awareness in full 360 degree around your car, you should immediately abort Smart Summon.

...but how? Looking at the car from an elevation/hill? With a drone?

Your own example suggests you used Smart Summon in a situation where you did not have a 360 degree view of the car, yet you only aborted once you thought it might hit another car... that means you must have driven it in a situation where you did not see the other side of your car? What if a cat or a child ran to the other side of your car and under the rear wheels?

You must see the impossibility of that requirement.

This is actually what I think may be an issue with Automatic city driving too. Mind you, not the vision part as you are sitting in the driver’s seat, but that it will place an unreasonable requirement/burden on the responsible driver. In that case because even if you are vigilant, in an urban environment things happen so fast that it may be unreasonable to be able to react to anything at any time, when the car is driving semi-autonomously.

Smart Summon seems to place the responsible driver in an impossible situation, except when they are at the car and moving around it all the time as it drives.

But I would also point out that these cases exist even without Smart Summon. There are cases now, where a kid gets out of a SUV on the opposite side and runs out into traffic and an incoming car does not see them because the SUV blocked their view. It is not a problem unique to Smart Summon. In both cases, the driver should exercise extreme caution. If you are driving the car, you stop and wait. With Smart Summon, you should abort.

Of course but with Smart Summon the problem practically is... you never see around the car that is moving. That is not the normal situation from a driver’s seat where you see in all directions (with mirrors/cameras anyway).

Maybe a realtime camera view could mitigate this. The current visuals are only good for things the car sees anyway.

 

[electronblue]

If he works in the AV industry, he most definitely knows a lot more than you or I. But then he should share his knowledge in a civil way. I would actually love it if he did share his wisdom. I love to learn. His attack style is the wrong way to go about it though. It's a turn off.

I agree.

 

[electronblue]

As has been pointed out by electronblue, the car will always block part of the view unless you are directly above the car. (Even the view from the 10th story of a nearby building will have blond spots.) Since your definition of operating SS responsibly involves a driver having full 360 awareness around the car at all times, it seems that there is no way to responsibly operate SS. (Maybe Tesla should market a Smart Summon drone accessory...)

One scenario where I think Smart Summon can be used responsibly is when driving the car out from a parking spot or garage and you are personally there to monitor its every move from a close distance and just want to use the feature to move the car so you can fit in. Assuming you check all directions all the time.

But this summoning from the other side of the parking lot will always result in a blocked view and thus operating the car partially on blind faith/luck.

 

[diplomat33]

...but how? Looking at the car from an elevation/hill? With a drone?

Your own example suggests you used Smart Summon in a situation where you did not have a 360 degree view of the car, yet you only aborted once you thought it might hit another car... that means you must have driven it in a situation where you did not see the other side of your car? What if a cat or a child ran to the other side of your car and under the rear wheels?

You must see the impossibility of that requirement.

I think you misunderstand. I did not mean a bird's eye top down view of the car. I mean having line of sight of where the car is going to be. So if you have line of sight on your car but you lack line of sight on where the car is heading, then you should abort. That is exactly what I did. I had line of sight on my car but I saw it heading towards another car. From my angle, I could not tell how close my car was going to get to the parked car so I aborted in order not to take any chances of a possible collision.

But thank you for asking. I much prefer people just ask rather than assume and ridicule what they think I said.

 

[electronblue]

I think you misunderstand. I did not mean a bird's eye top down view of the car. I mean having line of sight of where the car is going to be. So if you have line of sight on your car but you lack line of sight on where the car is heading, then you should abort. That is exactly what I did. I had line of sight on my car but I saw it heading towards another car. From my angle, I could not tell how close my car was going to get to the parked car so I aborted in order not to take any chances of a possible collision.

OK, I would agree that is certainly more doable from a distance, but I don’t quite agree it is sufficient because you lack visuals of the ”dark side” of the car and anything can be going on there unless you are driving on an empty field. You can’t see if a child runs under the car chasing a ball or a pet etc, or gets wedged between the car and another object on the other side of your car etc.

Sure many things could surprise the driver even when they are sitting in the driver’s seat, but there are no blindspots of this magnitude there (and anyways, the risks are more accepted socially when you are there in the driver’s seat compared to mobile driving half a parking lot away).

For example think of the recent garage Smart Summon crash. What if there had been a baby in pram between that wall and the car that crashed into each other.

 

[clyjr]

What I don't get is how some people don't understand that this is just the beginning stages of what will be coming to ALL vehicles? In X years all cars will be able to self drive and communicate with each other to eliminate or greatly reduce accidents. Who knows what X is, but someone needs to get the ball rolling and that's exactly what Tesla is doing with Autopilot and Summoning.

For now I pretty much agree it's a party trick, but what will it be in 3 months? how about 1 year? 5 years? With the data Tesla is gathering they can stay in front of all other manufacturers...

 

[electronblue]

What I don't get is how some people don't understand that this is just the beginning stages of what will be coming to ALL vehicles? In X years all cars will be able to self drive and communicate with each other to eliminate or greatly reduce accidents. Who knows what X is, but someone needs to get the ball rolling and that's exactly what Tesla is doing with Autopilot and Summoning.

For now I pretty much agree it's a party trick, but what will it be in 3 months? how about 1 year? 5 years? With the data Tesla is gathering they can stay in front of all other manufacturers...

I would imagine most people following an Autonomous Vehicles forum agree that it is coming. It is the how, why and when that is ground for some healthy and diverse thinking and discussion.

I mean it isn’t like Tesla’s approach isn’t — for all its consumer accessible advances — controversial too.

 

[SandiaGrunt]

I would actually love it if he did share his wisdom. I love to learn. His attack style is the wrong way to go about it though.

Imagine my perspective for a moment. There are probably only a few dozen people on earth who know more about this subject than I do. I've been working on AVs for nine years. I can't use arguments from authority, because I'm not permitted to identify myself -- and such arguments don't usually work anyway.

Practically every adult in the US knows how to drive, so every single one of them also thinks they know how self-driving cars work, or how they should work. People who have never studied ML or AI in any capacity, who have never worked on any automotive system, now have really, really strong opinions about everything from sensor capability and redundancy, the relative utility of lidar, functional safety, hazard analysis, test methodology, reliability, etc. Their opinions are usually completely unfounded.

Something like 7M people have watched at least part of Tesla's autonomy day. The typical viewership of Game of Thrones, one of the most popular TV shows in the world, is ~11M viewers. The Autonomy Day presentation was aimed at laypeople -- it was almost embarrassingly entry-level -- but it convinced millions of people that Tesla has every problem solved, and just needs more data.

Every now and then I dip my toes into a discussion about AVs somewhere on the internet, like TMC or Reddit or Twitter. It usually goes badly -- just like it did here.

Apparently an entire cottage industry of amateur content makers has sprung up to repeat Elon’s talking points and collect clicks. I assume this is a lucrative business model. As an example, they make videos with charts disparaging lidar, which look extremely professional, yet completely fail to include lidar's only real utility -- it has 100% recall of rare and unknown objects.

If I try to say anything about this failure, I am just met with dozens of replies with links to Tesla's Autonomy Day presentation, people telling me "just wait, you'll see," and comments beginning with "Elon said..." If I press on and try to teach people what 'precision' and 'recall' mean, people mute and block me, call me a short seller, a Big Oil shill, or "just another idiot on Reddit."

No one goes on Twitter, or TMC, or Reddit, to learn anything. No one has any interest in actually thinking deeply about the subject. They just have their beliefs, their emotional crutches, their wishes. They don't want anyone to say anything that challenges their thinking.

It is infuriating. I don't think brain surgeons are inundated with amateur wannabe brain surgeons every time they tweet. I doubt airline pilots are met with furious fanboys who block and mute them when they say obvious things like "ailerons are used to roll an airplane." I don't think pastry chefs are met with a constant barrage of online homemakers who don't believe there is powdered sugar in frosting because they watched a YouTube video that said so.

I come here, and say something that is literally as basic as those examples: "This Smart Summon thing is fundamentally unsafe, because it removes the user's visibility, reduces the space of disengagement actions to just releasing a button, cannot reliably detect a wide range of obstacles, obviates the users self-preservation instincts, and invites predictable abuse by allowing people to operate their cars outside their line of sight."

BOOM. Ten pages of flame war by people who can't do statistics.

 

[electronblue]

@SandiaGrunt

Don’t be quite as pessimistic. While most here readily admit we are amateurs in this sphere (after all this is a car owner forum), many of us are quite realistic about the yarn we were spinned on Autonomy Investor Day. Even if we refer to it as a bit of a joke quite often.

Thank you for confirming my long-standing point about Lidar by the way. As an amateur that was the use I saw for it: reliable reaction to unknown obstacles.

 

[diplomat33]

Imagine my perspective for a moment. There are probably only a few dozen people on earth who know more about this subject than I do. I've been working on AVs for nine years. I can't use arguments from authority, because I'm not permitted to identify myself -- and such arguments don't usually work anyway.

Practically every adult in the US knows how to drive, so every single one of them also thinks they know how self-driving cars work, or how they should work. People who have never studied ML or AI in any capacity, who have never worked on any automotive system, now have really, really strong opinions about everything from sensor capability and redundancy, the relative utility of lidar, functional safety, hazard analysis, test methodology, reliability, etc. Their opinions are usually completely unfounded.

Something like 7M people have watched at least part of Tesla's autonomy day. The typical viewership of Game of Thrones, one of the most popular TV shows in the world, is ~11M viewers. The Autonomy Day presentation was aimed at laypeople -- it was almost embarrassingly entry-level -- but it convinced millions of people that Tesla has every problem solved, and just needs more data.

Every now and then I dip my toes into a discussion about AVs somewhere on the internet, like TMC or Reddit or Twitter. It usually goes badly -- just like it did here.

Apparently an entire cottage industry of amateur content makers has sprung up to repeat Elon’s talking points and collect clicks. I assume this is a lucrative business model. As an example, they make videos with charts disparaging lidar, which look extremely professional, yet completely fail to include lidar's only real utility -- it has 100% recall of rare and unknown objects.

View attachment 462328

If I try to say anything about this failure, I am just met with dozens of replies with links to Tesla's Autonomy Day presentation, people telling me "just wait, you'll see," and comments beginning with "Elon said..." If I press on and try to teach people what 'precision' and 'recall' mean, people mute and and block me, call me a short seller, a Big Oil shill, or "just another idiot on Reddit."

No one goes on Twitter, or TMC, or Reddit, to learn anything. No one has any interest in actually thinking deeply about the subject. They just have their beliefs, their emotional crutches, their wishes. They don't want anyone to say anything that challenges their thinking.

It is infuriating. I don't think brain surgeons are inundated with amateur wannabe brain surgeons every time they tweet. I doubt airline pilots are met with furious fanboys who block and mute them when they say obvious things like "ailerons are used to roll an airplane." I don't think pastry chefs are met with a constant barrage of online homemakers who don't believe there is powdered sugar in frosting because they watched a YouTube video that said so.

I come here, and say something that is literally as basic as those examples: "This Smart Summon thing is fundamentally unsafe, because it removes the user's visibility, reduces the space of disengagement actions to just releasing a button, cannot reliably detect a wide range of obstacles, obviates the users self-preservation instincts, and invites predictable abuse by allowing people to operate their cars outside their line of sight."

BOOM. Ten pages of flame war by people who can't do statistics.

Thanks for the reply. I am sure it is very frustrating. But please keep in mind that it only hurts your case when you launch personal attacks. Please try to be more civil so that we can discuss ideas in a constructive manner. Thank you.

I am not an expert in autonomous driving but I do have a masters degree in physics and did my thesis on electrical conductance in parallel quantum wires. So, I am capable of understanding pretty high level stuff. I also started a thread awhile back on whether Tesla needs LIDAR. And I believe Tesla should use LIDAR. I am open to discussing these ideas. If you had presented your reasons against Smart Summon in a more civil way, I would have listened to you. But instead you chose to launch personal attacks against me and even went so far as to label me forum enemy #1. Surely, you can see how being personally attacked and vilified, especially after I tried to discuss numbers with you, is only going to make it harder to discuss things.

 

[SandiaGrunt]

If you had presented your reasons against Smart Summon in a more civil way, I would have listened to you.

I do not believe this for one hot minute.

You see, I've tried every possible approach on every social media platform. I've tried just linking people to research papers. I've tried quoting Wikipedia. I've tried boiling everything down to questions in the Socratic method. I've tried framing everything as a Zen koan. I've tried stating things in a few firm but careful sentences. I've tried leading with jokes. I've read and practiced Crucial Conversations.

Most of it doesn't work. The parts that do work are exhausting. I do not have time or energy to spend speaking sweetly to someone for 10 pages as I gently guide them to a new understanding of the subject. I don't have time to craft a conscientious online curriculum for each dummy I interact with.

The unfortunate truth is that there are now millions of self-proclaimed AV experts all over the internet, and they collectively drown out the voices of anyone who actually knows a goddamn thing about them. That is the problem, sir, not the gentleness of my approach.

went so far as to label me forum enemy #1

You are one of the most vocal people here, and almost everything you say is wrong or at least cringe-worthy. I really, truly feel you do this place a tremendous disservice. I'm not going to renege on that.

 

[diplomat33]

You are one of the most vocal people here, and almost everything you say is wrong or at least cringe-worthy. I really, truly feel you do this place a tremendous disservice. I'm not going to renege on that.

I've been on this forum a lot longer than you. People on this forum have given me over 500 "helpful" or "informative" ratings. So I think I contribute something positive to this forum. I am not going anywhere. So you might as well try to have a civil discussion. If you explain why I am wrong in a civil way, I will listen.

 

[Economite]

I don't necessarily disagree with any of the OP feeling that Tesla should focus on genuine utility, but in this case Elon tied their hands years ago. Tesla/Elon put smart/enhanced summon in the list of promised features for Enhanced Autopilot, and then when that was dropped they put it on list of promised features for FSD. Even going as far as declaring it already done well before it shipped.

So it's really irrelevant whether it's a party trick or not. People paid for this feature so it needed to be worked on, and released. It was a significant part of the promise for enhanced autopilot.

As to the utility of it? It really comes down to needing to have a bunch of things in place, and smart summon is just one piece. It's going to be a lot more useful when it's been improved, and when it's capable of the reverse. The whole finding a parking space, and parking itself.

In a lot of ways it feels premature, and out of order.

I would have approached it from a freeway/highway perspective first, and then worked my way towards the parking lot. Where the parking lot was the LAST thing I added.

True, Musk did promise this a long time ago, and it is way late based on his promises.

But that isn't an excuse for releasing a buggy, unsafe, feature.

The right thing to do would be to apologize and issue refunds (and not charge people in the future for features that don't yet exist). His bad business practices don't excuse making the public less safe.

 

[SandiaGrunt]

So you might as well try to have a civil discussion.

Or, more likely, I just leave, again, disgusted by the state of the world.

 

[electronblue]

I've been on this forum a lot longer than you. People on this forum have given me over 500 "helpful" or "informative" ratings. So I think I contribute something positive to this forum. I am not going anywhere. So you might as well try to have a civil discussion. If you explain why I am wrong in a civil way, I will listen.

You are obviously a nice person, a reasonable convesation partner... and you tow the ”company line” reliably enough to get support from others who see things that way.

I fear you are terribly wrong on Tesla and autonomy though.

But you don’t deserve to be attacked by @SandiaGrunt. If amateurs had to shut up, there would be almost none of us left.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

True, Musk did promise this a long time ago, and it is way late based on his promises.

But that isn't an excuse for releasing a buggy, unsafe, feature.

The right thing to do would be to apologize and issue refunds (and not charge people in the future for features that don't yet exist). His bad business practices don't excuse making the public less safe.

I agree.

They should have simply given a partial refund for Enhanced AP owners, and told FSD that it would have to wait for HW3. There wasn't enough Enhanced AP only owners left to justify prioritizing it's release before HW3 upgrades.

But, I think Elon/Tesla operate in what's essentially hype mode.

Where how well something works doesn't matter as much as the media attention some feature generates. I have to admit that Smart Summon has a generated a massive amount of publicity.

In any case the true score card of success is whether the price for FSD will go up. Before the release Elon claimed that it would go up by at least $1K after V10 was released. It still remains to be seen if that happens.

My bet is it won't happen.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

I come here, and say something that is literally as basic as those examples: "This Smart Summon thing is fundamentally unsafe, because it removes the user's visibility, reduces the space of disengagement actions to just releasing a button, cannot reliably detect a wide range of obstacles, obviates the users self-preservation instincts, and invites predictable abuse by allowing people to operate their cars outside their line of sight."

I've said basically the same things and I haven't been flamed at all.

I think it's more about the approach.

If you stuck with technical aspects it likely would have been a much more productive discussion, but instead you went down the toddler path to evoke emotions. So much so that you should added some theme music to go with the words.

But, from a technical perspective I don't have any disagreement. At the end of the day Smart Summon does not work in a way that's suitable to really use in real world situations.

Oh, and just an FYI - I'm also a strong proponent of Lidar, but any mention of Lidar on TMC will get you flamed to hell and back. Pretty much more than anything except threatening to sue Tesla. If you threaten to sue Tesla you'll get like 300 dislikes on a post.

 

[SandiaGrunt]

If you stuck with technical aspects it likely would have been a much more productive discussion, but instead you went down the toddler path to evoke emotions. So much so that you should added some theme music to go with the words.

I mean, I got deep into the statistics, so much so that I changed @diplomat33's mind, something that I did not even believe was possible.

What I'm really hearing from you is this: whatever techniques you employ in a discussion here, we'll just say you should have used other techniques.

So, **** it. I'm out of here. Y'all have fun with the Smart Summon gimmick. If you get near my kid, though, I'm going to find you and put that smartphone through your face.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

I mean, I got deep into the statistics, so much so that I changed @diplomat33's mind, something that I did not even believe was possible.

What I'm really hearing from you is this: whatever techniques you employ in a discussion here, we'll just say you should have used other techniques.

So, **** it. I'm out of here. Y'all have fun with the Smart Summon gimmick. If you get near my kid, though, I'm going to find you and put that smartphone through your face.

I wasn't referring to the statistics part. The statistics on smart summon was so laughable that I couldn't take it seriously. So I just made a joke on the ridiculousness of it. The joke that it took 500,000 activations just to get it to move.

So I pretty much scrolled past the entire discussion on that. I also scrolled through much of the discussion you had with diplomat33 as that was a discussion between you, and him.

I think you're making a lot of assumptions about this place on a singular discussion you had with diplomat33, and you're ignoring other peoples perspective.

If that's how you are then yes make your way to the exit.

Lots of other people agreed with you.