January 6, 2023

How and What the Tesla Autopilot Sees

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How does Tesla’s self-driving car see what is on the road ahead and behind it?

One of the most popular reasons why people buy Teslas, besides the performance and range, is the company’s suite of self-driving features. Elon Musk previously said that Tesla is as much of a software company as it is a car manufacturer.

So, what sets apart Tesla’s Autopilot and Full-Self Driving features apart from every other car manufacturer on the planet? How do Tesla vehicles see what’s going on in the world around them?

The Basics of a Self-Driving System

Before we get into Tesla’s Autopilot, let’s take a look at the basics of a self-driving system. In order for a vehicle to successfully navigate a city road, it has to be wary of the physical objects around itself and of any signs, traffic lights, and other visual cues it encounters.

To capture this data, you need two types of inputs on your car:

• Distance measuring sensors: These are usually ultrasonic sensors or Lidars placed around the car to generate a virtual map of what’s going on in the car’s surroundings.
• Cameras: For detecting any stop signs, traffic lights, lane change signage on the road, and any other visual cues the system needs to make a safe decision.

A basic navigation system would use both of these input types to judge the car’s path accurately. However, more advanced systems, such as the ones used in a Tesla, are slowly decreasing reliance on distance-measuring sensors for major decisions.

Instead, they rely on a suite of 360-degree cameras covering the car to get a complete field of vision, map other cars, objects, pedestrians, and relevant signage in the vicinity and work accordingly.

That’s not to say that distance-measuring sensors are going to be obsolete. They’ll still be present on your Tesla and will be playing a crucial role. It’s just that as computers get faster, smaller, and more capable, computer vision is also progressing at a much faster rate. It’s better to process just one data stream rather than handle multiple inputs.

How Do Tesla’s Systems Work?

Starting in April 2019, each Tesla comes with eight cameras providing a complete 360-degree view of everything around the car to a range of up to 250 meters. Video feeds coming from each of these cameras are then processed to detect objects, signage and anything else that might be relevant to the car’s movement and navigation.

The actual processing itself is taken care of by the onboard computer. Each feed is processed by the algorithm and points of interest such as traffic lights, signs, any moving traffic and pedestrians in the vicinity are marked.

Detecting objects in a video feed by itself isn’t too difficult a task either. Using an image processing library like OpenCV, you can easily write a small script yourself that’ll detect anything from moving traffic to the actual speed the traffic is moving as well.

This is where Tesla’s neural nets come into effect. If you were to build a simplified version of Tesla’s Autopilot or Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software, you would require a neural network that can identify things.

As with any machine learning application, the larger the training dataset, the more accurate the algorithm will be at detecting things, whether they’re cars, pedestrians or street signage. With hundreds of thousands of cars driving millions of miles every day, Tesla has built quite the training dataset.

This dataset forms the backbone of Tesla’s neural network. It gets better at detecting or ‘seeing’ things every day as more and more cars on the road feed information into the database.

This neural network, combined with the aforementioned suite of eight cameras forms what Tesla calls Tesla Vision which delivers Autopilot and related features. Do keep in mind that while Autopilot comes standard in all Teslas (starting April 2019), additional features need to be purchased through your Tesla account.

Once all the decisions are made, it’s just a matter of transferring that logic into the car’s movement in a safe and gradual manner. The algorithm communicates with the car’s onboard motor controller and tells it what to do. The car then follows suit, and you get what seems like automatic driving.

What Self-Driving Capabilities Do Tesla Cars Offer?

At the moment, available Autopilot packages from Tesla are as follows.

Autopilot

This is the standard suite of self-driving features that come in all Teslas. Available features include:

• Traffic-Aware Cruise Control: matches the speed of your car to that of the surrounding traffic.
• Autosteer: helps the car stay within a ‘clearly marked lane’. Works in conjunction with Traffic-Aware Cruise Control.

Enhanced Autopilot

This is probably the most value for money package when it comes to Tesla’s driving assists, a price of $6,000. Available features include:

• Auto Lane Change: Moves the car to an adjacent lane on the highway when the driver engages the turn signal.
• Autopark: Helps in parallel or perpendicular parking.
• Navigate on Autopilot: Suggests lane changes, helps navigate interchanges and assists the Auto Lane Change feature by providing guidance for on and off-ramps on motorways. Currently in beta.
• Summon: Automatically ‘summons’ your car from or to a tight space. Only intended to be used over short distances.
• Smart Summon: Navigates more complex environments and parking spaces to find you in a car park within your direct vicinity.

Full Self-Driving Capability

As the name suggests, this is the most advanced level of autonomous driving that a Tesla can get for a moment. It’s currently priced at $15,000 upfront, following a $3,000 hike in October 2022 from the original price, or a $199/month subscription. Available features include:

• All features included in Autopilot and Enhanced Autopilot.
• Traffic and Stop Sign Control: Actively looks for stop signs and traffic lights to stop the car in time. The feature is currently in beta and requires active driver supervision.
• Autosteer on city streets: This is an upcoming feature with more details yet to be announced.

Is Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Actually Autonomous?

That really depends on what you’re expecting out of this system. If you’re just looking for convenience on your daily commute or road trips, sure, these features are a great help. However, if you’re expecting to be driven around, the systems aren’t quite there yet.

As mentioned before, at the moment, Enhanced Autopilot is Tesla’s most complete suite of driver assist features. The Full Self-Driving name is a bit of a misdirection, as Tesla itself clearly states that driver supervision is required at all times.

As quickly as the company is progressing towards full self-driving, it still has the opposition and regulations to fight. The Full Self-Driving system is also still being tested, which in itself is an entirely different dilemma to tackle.

Reference: https://www.makeuseof.com/how-and-what-the-tesla-autopilot-sees/

Ref: makeuseof

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