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Tesla Autopilot 'Predicts' Accident Before It Happens (engadget.com)
A dash cam footage suggests a Tesla on Autopilot may have predicted a nearby freeway crash before it actually happened. A video showed that a Tesla car driving on a highway in the Netherlands started to beep a few seconds ahead of two cars colliding with each other in front of it. A Tesla representative confirmed to media that the beeping heard in the video is indeed the sound of Autopilot's Forward Collision Warning. Elon Musk tweeted a news article about the incident, adding more credibility to the matter. From a report on Engadget:Tesla's Autopilot 8.0 has a particularly clever feature: it uses radar to track road activity two cars ahead, helping it avoid danger that you wouldn't normally see. And it now appears that this tech just averted a disaster. Dutch Model X owner Frank van Hoesel has dashcam footage showing his electric crossover reacting to a bad highway crash before it even starts. As you can hear in the video, the Model X's Forward Collision Warning system starts braking when it detects the SUV two vehicles ahead coming to an abrupt stop, even though the driver of the car directly behind it is unaware. The result? Van Hoesel's EV remained untouched when it could easily have contributed to a pile-up.
So we live in an age where the only acceptable stories that can be reported in the media are negative ones?
Did Tesla also report any/all instances where the forward collision warning sounded, regardless of whether or not a crash subsequently occurred? Otherwise this is just PR.
First off, an erratic driver is obviously worth paying attention to, so it's worth having the beep for near-crashes as well.
Also, in terms of the warning system's efficacy effects this probably isn't relevant unless it beeps so much as to cause drivers to ignore it. The false positive rate could be 75% and it still probably wouldn't beep more than once a week at the most (depending on where you live / Boston joke goes here.)
Gee, the comments on this so far stink. People seem to be prejudiced.
First, the dashcam video presented is not from Tesla, it's from an independent car fan who seems to have gotten it from the driver. It was then retweeted by Elon Musk.
The activity demonstrated is the Tesla Autopilot triggering on sudden deceleration of the second car ahead, which is not clearly visible from the dashcam view (and presumably equally not clearly visible to the driver). It appears that autopilot warns and brakes.
Autopilot does not predict what happens to the cars ahead (although in second-car detections it's probably implied) and "anticipate" would be a better word anyway. Autopilot anticipates that the Tesla will hit something if it doesn't brake.
Soneone on twitter pointed out that he heard the "disengage" sound after the warning sound, indicating that the driver brakes. I don't hear if, but I don't know what it sounds like. Does anyone else hear it?
Someone pointed out that the Joshua Brown accident might not have happened if the radar had worked then. Yes, it might not have. One should also point out that Brown was speeding and apparently not looking. Despite its name, "autopilot" is not ready for the driver to disengage.
Bruce Perens.
Of course it didn't predict the actual accident, but it did see the car two cars ahead abruptly slowing down (by bouncing the radar signal underneath the car in front) and reacted by braking in time. The car directly in front of the Tesla never even touched the brakes.
That's pretty impressive, and the model S and X are the only cars with that capability.
The car directly in front did not even touch the brakes. It was a very sudden and unexpected deceleration two cars ahead.
Sure, I try to keep track of multiple cars in front, driving at the far left of the left lane so I can see any brake lights come on ahead, but sometimes you just can't (behind a large van, for example) and noticing such a sudden stop while the car directly in front of you keeps going... no, most people would just have crashed into it. Hell, most people can't even stop in time if the car directly in front suddenly brakes, let alone the car in front of that car.
So does that mean it also "predicted" that it would kill that driver who slammed into a transport at high speed?
That was before the 8.0 update. Unlike other cars, Teslas get updates. The old software just used a single radar beam, which passed underneath the high trailer in the accident you are refering to. The new software lets the radar beam scan around to create a point cloud, tracking multiple objects. In an identical scenario, it would have seen the trailer and braked in time. And it can also look two cars ahead by bouncing the radar signal on the asphalt, which is what saved it in this latest video.
Well it worked great that one time out of a few hundred.
Tesla rarely has customer dashcam videos for every time it "has" worked...we mostly only get to hear about the failures, which given the number of Teslas on the road that used autopilot in 2016, are considerably few.
...airbags and seatbelts have saved countless but we don't see an article praising how well it works.
You mean we don't see them anymore...there are literally thousands of articles and advertisements about airbags and seat belts going over the past 60 years.
They updated the radar software. Instead of using a single beam, it now scans around and tracks multiple objects. Uses a constantly updated database to avoid false alarms for street signs and such. Free over-the-air update for all autopilot Teslas. It would now see that truck and react accordingly.
The wall of air that goes rushing on both directions at hundreds of miles per hour
They Hyperloop uses a near vacuum so... yeah. And even if it didn't about ten feet away it would be perfectly safe in a rupture. It's crazy to think this is any danger except for the moron that tries to pierce the tube.
If what you were afraid of was an issue every person with an air compressor would be in mortal danger.
You realize the joints between the tubes probably can't be a plain seal made of the same material as the rest of the pipe, right?
You realize the tube replaces potentially hundreds of airplanes, right? And that it's easy to reach the tube to maintain... and that maintenance and inspection can be easily and highly automated...
Discounting the increased security required for what is going to be a hugely attractive target for terrorists.
*cough*bullshit*cough. It is simply idiotic to think this is anywhere near the target planes are given that so few people would be affected compared to an airline disaster. Again, if you get a plane you get to kill the people on the plane PLUS any ground target you like. Again, if you take over a tube you MAYBE can kill some people on the tube before they stop you? And you can't re-aim the tube to attack anything else. I do not understand why you fail to grasp the magnitude of difference in attack vectors here, truly mystifying.
everyone on that car is going to die.
Nope, it would simply come to a stop. It might be rough but there's no way a single person is even seriously hurt by a breach in the tube. Just stuck for a bit. There are about ten billion ways you can devise the car to have a failsafe so that loss of pressure simply means the car stops.
Again, a mere 15 minute delay due to security removes most of that advantage
15 >= 120... Nope, does not compute. Not to mention since hyperloops are run at regular intervals it's not nearly as big a deal if you miss one, you just get the next - so there's no need ot be as cautious in traveling. I tend to show up 2-3 hours early for a plane - and I have pre-check.
The hyperloop is a watering-down of a very old idea that was impractical ~100 years ago
I wonder if material science has improved in the last 100 years. NAH CANT BE.
I'm going to let you have the last word on this since you seem to be way more unreasonably fanatically against anything Musk might have thought up than anyone who is for Musk's ideas ever was.... in the end a fight with a zealot is simply a waste of my time as you cannot learn and will not change.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley