Elon Musk Says Autopilot Will Soon Recognize Emergency Response Vehicles (inverse.com)

Over the weekend, Elon Musk alluded to impending software updates that would make Teslas even safer than they already are. In response to a story about a DUI where a Tesla autopilot may have been involved, Musk said Autopilot may soon be able to recognize emergency response vehicles and react accordingly. Inverse reports: "Default Autopilot behavior, if there's no driver input, is to slow gradually to a stop & turn on hazard lights," Musk explained in the replies. "Tesla service then contacts the owner." That naturally got people wondering whether or not Tesla's autopilot was capable of differentiating between emergency response vehicles and everyone else. Presumably, someday soon autonomous vehicles are going to be able to recognize sirens (or their futuristic software equivalent.) If an ambulance pulls up behind an autonomous car on a single-lane road, it will need some mechanism to know it's supposed to get out of the way. In the meanwhile, Musk said that Tesla is already working on the first half of that problem, by teaching neural net to be able to recognize police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks. On Twitter, he said that this capability would be added to the neural net "in the coming months."

Comments

Re:What about School Buses?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Nope. It will not handle it.

As it is shipped today, the Enhanced Auto Pilot supports only freeway driving. It has no ability to recognize stop signs, traffic lights, 90 degree turns, etc. All it can do is to follow the lane markings, follow the car ahead at a fixed distance, make lane changes when commanded. That is all. Even that only with the proviso that the human driver remains active and engaged in driving.

In short you engage EAP and drive normally as though you don't have EAP. It will help you avoid dumb mistakes like drifting to another lane or making a lane change without fully checking blind spots.

To me, it is not worth the price. I did not buy EAP.

Re:Talk about ignoring the elephant in the room

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The driver alertness detector is so easy to defeat. Apparently people just hang a weight on the steering wheel and that stops the nag.

First thought, bad idea.

[Monster_user]

My first thought on this, is its a bad idea to utilize imperfect machine learning algorithms for critical interactions. This is bound to go bad at a really bad time.

Re:Autopilot = adaptive cruise control

[dunkelfalke]

That argument only flies when the Tesla drivers will have to pass a license test comparable in the complexity to the test for a pilot certification and in addition a type rating for the Tesla model they want to drive, need a constantly renewed health check and have to recertify their driving license every two years.