Things my wife said about Navigate on Autopilot tonight

[AlanSubie4Life]

Wife: "Why is it so jerky?"

Me: "Well, it can decelerate somewhat abruptly while on freeway interchanges..."

Wife: "It's not just around corners, it's all the time on the freeway; why do you use it if it is so bad?"

Me: "Well, I'm trying it out; I think maybe you notice less if you're driving"

Wife: "Well, I notice it. It's ok to try it out if you're the only one in the car, but it isn't cool to do it otherwise"

Me: ...

Wife: If you keep trying to use it, I'm going to stop riding in this car, and we're going to have to take my car*. It's not relaxing.

Me: <disengages Autopilot for remainder of trip>

<a couple minutes pass>

Wife: It's much smoother now. Did you turn it off?

Me: Yes, I did.

Wife: I'm much more relaxed now.


* My wife's car is a Chevrolet Spark EV. That tells you something.

You can't make this stuff up!

Here's hoping that Tesla discovers low pass filters soon.

 

[Tam]

...It's ok to try it out if you're the only one in the car, but it isn't cool to do it otherwise"

Most of my passengers say the same.

I, on the other hand, am addicted to Autopilot.

 

[widodh]

You read the same story everywhere. It’s the same with my wife.

AP is just not relaxed when in the car with passengers.

I keep saying AP should be more elastic to create a smoother ride.

I would love to take one of the AP developers on a ride for a few hours and show him/her all the little things which can be improved.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I keep saying AP should be more elastic to create a smoother ride.

I just don't understand what makes this so hard. My only hypothesis so far is that they have not figured out how to add filtering to "throttle" control without introducing unacceptable latency. I guess that is the safer engineering choice. Though as far as I can tell, other manufacturers (Toyota is my only reference point) have a lot more smoothing.

 

[widodh]

I just don't understand what makes this so hard. My only hypothesis so far is that they have not figured out how to add filtering to "throttle" control without introducing unacceptable latency. I guess that is the safer engineering choice. Though as far as I can tell, other manufacturers (Toyota is my only reference point) have a lot more smoothing.

Elasticity probably is slightly less safe and thus not choosen.

This causes AP to engage the brakes while not needed. Irritating

 

[BillO]

Yep, that sounds familiar...

 

[mswlogo]

AutoSteer/TACC is fine.

NoA is not so fine. Letting it take exchanges is downright frightening. I’ve stopped using it even with no passengers. It’s only a matter of time before an accident occurs.

I’ve noticed TACC “micro surge” when following another car. Seems to vary some.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

This causes AP to engage the brakes while not needed. Irritating

I'm not even sure my wife is complaining about brake application. It's the constant jittering into light regen, etc. It's totally spastic, and yes, I've definitely heard people here complain about it before. Just a teeny bit of filtering...please? And when the car is slowing down for an interchange, it's basically unacceptable to engage regen suddenly...just ease into it...like a normal, good driver! That is definitely a solvable problem, as it has nothing to do with reacting to other vehicles - the latency issue doesn't apply. It's just a question of smoothing commanded, expected speed changes, which the car knows about in advance. So you don't have to worry about causality concerns.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I’ve noticed TACC “micro surge” when following another car. Seems to vary some.

Yeah. I think it depends largely on the accelerator habits of the driver in front, and I agree the exact behavior is hard to predict.

I wonder if this is something only the HW3 folks will ever get addressed. Not that it has anything to do with hardware limitations...

 

[kbecks13]

I just don't understand what makes this so hard. My only hypothesis so far is that they have not figured out how to add filtering to "throttle" control without introducing unacceptable latency. I guess that is the safer engineering choice. Though as far as I can tell, other manufacturers (Toyota is my only reference point) have a lot more smoothing.

It's because they are trying to avoid tinkering to try to improve one small portion of the network manually "in post process", Andrej specifically discusses this in this video around 26:30. He says it makes your models incredibly complicated and also difficult to reproduce the models when you re-train in the future.

Of course they could definitely apply a filter outside of the neural net, but that's something they are slowly trying to get away from. I think that's why we're seeing some backwards steps in autopilot performance recently. Andrej talks about the balance between Software 1.0 and Software 2.0 at Tesla in this video around 16 min mark:

 

[drj3]

This solution might be dangerous (as in her wanting to take over driving the Tesla), but you could let her drive. My wife was a little hesitant about autopilot when in the passenger seat, but once she used it on a long drive she is hooked. Anytime she has to go on a longer trip she prefers to take the Tesla and raves about how much better the trip is with autopilot.

 

[ICUDoc]

I think the problem is Autopilot does what it is designed to do, but the other drivers don't do what they are supposed to do. Humans know this, and drive for it, knowing what dodgy moves the other humans are likely to make, because they've seen crap driving before. Tesla don't get it.

 

[killua]

need a new wife...

 

[idealdreams]

I've had similar experiences with passengers. I'm totally comfortable with AutoPilot and its limitations, however passengers see them as flaws. The dancing cars on the display, the double beep alert when the lane lines widen and the car doesn't know what to do, the hard braking when you come up behind a car coming to a stop, the phantom braking for no reason - I know why these happen and when to expect them, but trying to explain this to passengers simply discredits AutoPilot to them and makes them doubtful.

Couple that with all of the anti-AutoPilot headlines you see on the news. Really wish Tesla would spend less times on games and Netflix and work on the core functionalities of the car. It's embarrassing to have to explain to people why the above happens when they're already doubtful of AutoPilot.

The system has been around for years now and it still seems like a beta product. You would think after so long and so many miles driven on AutoPilot as data to improve upon it that it would at least be a little smoother if nothing else while in use.

 

[Matt L]

I'm not even sure my wife is complaining about brake application. It's the constant jittering into light regen, etc. It's totally spastic, and yes, I've definitely heard people here complain about it before. Just a teeny bit of filtering...please? And when the car is slowing down for an interchange, it's basically unacceptable to engage regen suddenly...just ease into it...like a normal, good driver! That is definitely a solvable problem, as it has nothing to do with reacting to other vehicles - the latency issue doesn't apply. It's just a question of smoothing commanded, expected speed changes, which the car knows about in advance. So you don't have to worry about causality concerns.

Mine does none of that. I don’t use NOAP but I use a ton of AP. You can’t tell if it’s on or not...which is a separate issue.

 

[jdcollins5]

My wife does not like AP when she is napping and it wakes her. If she is awake and watching she will glance over and ask what that was all about.

If she is driving she will use TACC but not AutoSteer. She does not like the way it centers the car and prefers to stay near the outside of the lane. She does not use Lane Keep Assist on her Pilot for the same reason, unless she is getting tired.

As for me, I use EAP all of the time and love it. I pretty much know when and where it is subject to misbehave so I am usually a step ahead with foot above accelerator or ready to lift up on gear stalk.

 

[Gwgan]

Chill mode is the passenger pacifier.

 

[scubastevo80]

Wife: "Why is it so jerky?"

Me: "Well, it can decelerate somewhat abruptly while on freeway interchanges..."

Wife: "It's not just around corners, it's all the time on the freeway; why do you use it if it is so bad?"

Me: "Well, I'm trying it out; I think maybe you notice less if you're driving"

Wife: "Well, I notice it. It's ok to try it out if you're the only one in the car, but it isn't cool to do it otherwise"

Me: ...

Wife: If you keep trying to use it, I'm going to stop riding in this car, and we're going to have to take my car*. It's not relaxing.

Me: <disengages Autopilot for remainder of trip>

<a couple minutes pass>

Wife: It's much smoother now. Did you turn it off?

Me: Yes, I did.

Wife: I'm much more relaxed now.


* My wife's car is a Chevrolet Spark EV. That tells you something.

You can't make this stuff up!

Here's hoping that Tesla discovers low pass filters soon.

Exact same convo with my wife although it’s worse if she’s trying to rest or sleep... she usually says “was that the car again”?
Me: “yes”
Her:”take me home...”

 

[Sunshine State]

The Tesla built AP systems lack of smoothness is why we like our Mobileye AP1 better over either our newer AP2.5 and AP3 Autopilots. The newer ones have improved quite a bit over time but still don’t match the AP1 in overall smooth steering and lack of glitches. It always strikes me funny when some people say they want to buy an AP2 car when they actually don’t know the difference.

 

[brur]

I get the sensation the computer is acting at its limit. For example, a car will cross the road to go on a side street. It's 100 yards away, by the time my car slows down the other car is completely off the road. In other words, my car did not anticipate the actions of the other car, acted far to soon but didn't clear the other car from its decision making des[ite that car being off the road. That says to me the computer is not able to keep pace with conditions.