Tesla’s autonomous driving fails the Wile E. Coyote test

One of the biggest obstacles, figuratively, faced with autonomous cars is the ability to expect the unexpected, to quickly identify potential problems and to respond well continued to produce a safe result. One of the biggest obstacles, literally, facing autonomous cars is the giant coyote style walls painted to look like the road to come in an attempt to encourage them to crash.

Okay, it is unlikely that the latter will occur in the real world, but that did not prevent the former NASA engineer and the current YouTuber Mark Rober from seeing how the autonomous vehicles resist the Looney Tunes test. In its most recent video titled, “Can you deceive an autonomous car?Ruber combines two different autonomous vehicle systems – Tesla’s automatic computer vision pilot and a nameless system that uses light and task detection sensors – to each other in a series of tests that culminated in an attempt to stop a car in its tracks using the same technique as Wile E. Coyote tried to use to stop the road runner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqjl3htsdyq

At the risk of spoiling the video for you, the Tesla leaves a caricatural hole in the wall after the automatic driver penetrates through the thing about 40 miles per hour.

This is the third failure in six tests that Rober performs, including a series of experiences that have considered determining whether an autonomous car mowed a child if the conditions are sufficiently unfavorable. While Tesla’s automatic pilot technology manages to stop for a stationary model, a model that exhausts in front of it at the last second, and a model which is obscured by lively lights, the somewhat autonomous system sends the false child just above the bumper when it was hidden by the fog and the heavy rains. And for as unlikely that you will meet a photoreist recreation of the road in front of you in a plaster on a wall, the fog and the rain seem to be quite common obstacles.

On the other hand, the Lidar system has succeeded each time. This should not be too surprised because the video is a decline for Lidar. He starts by Rober using a portable Lidar sensor to map the Space Mountain Ride At Disney World and presents a socket for a manufacturer of Lidar, you therefore knew a little where it all went from the start.

But it should be noted to what extent the Lidar system has been effective in the video, because Tesla has very publicly decided to give up these sensors in favor of fully relying on computer vision. The reasoning for this varies depending on who you ask and when, but it comes down To Lidar sensors that cost too much, requiring more data processing to be used and, ultimately, serving as a crutch that slows down the development of computer vision. Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, went so far as to call Lidar a “Crazy. “”

It may be true, but it is not walls either, so I have to weigh the advantages and disadvantages. Difficult to imagine leaving your car to slam in a child that she could have avoided with other technologies on board and say: “Well, at least it has not slowed down the development of technology which could ultimately not cause this exact thing that has just happened.”

Anyway, the video is very pleasant to watch, just like most Rober’s efforts. And, to judge by the Responds to Rober’s tweet Showing the images of the wall accident, he transformed Tesla’s real believers on Twitter into conspirators who believe that Rober is bought by Big Lidar and tries to slander Tesla. So it’s fun.