“When the history of autonomous cars is written, the winner will be Tesla,” speculates long-time technology pundit Robert Cringely. “Heck, I think they’ve already won.”
But his article includes a disclaimer that it’s “based pretty much on logic, not knowledge, which is to say I might again be too frigging stupid to read, much less write.”
Tesla has more than a million data-gathering devices on the roads. We call them cars. Tesla cars have no LIDAR but they have eight cameras and RADAR. Every night all those cars wirelessly report their driving data back to Tesla. I would love to know how Tesla decided what to put in those reports. Given the limited bandwidth LTE connection involved, it can’t be a complete data dump. They have to pick and choose what to report. And what does Tesla do with the reports? I think it comes down to algorithms, mapping, and exceptions. They are logically trying to improve their algorithms, improve their maps, but mainly — after having already parsed billions of miles of driving data — they are looking for exceptional events that are testing their algorithms in ways never seen before…
Tesla has a dual processor system in their cars — two completely distinct computers. Why…? Because every night is an A-B test for Tesla — a test that is running on your car. One processor is driving the car (or following the driver’s actions if Autopilot isn’t being used, which is most of the time) with production software while the second processor is running beta software, simulating the drive, and noting discrepancies between the two software versions. Multiply this times a million cars per night. Whether Autopilot is used or not doesn’t matter: the evolution of the software continues. And it’s finished when the beta software stops improving and the outcome shows the only difference between human and Autopilot driving is that Autopilot does it better. Continue for another month or year or decade just to confirm your results, then announce that full autonomous mode is available. That is exactly where I believe Tesla has been heading for as long as those two-processor cars have been on the road.
Tesla’s autonomous driving software could be ready right now for all we know. Elon certainly hints at this from time to time in his tweets. And THAT’s why I believe Tesla has already won the autonomous driving war, because they have real cars facing real exceptions that you won’t find in a simulation, and their dual processor system knows what it knows.
Yes, I reached out to Tesla about this last week. They still haven’t replied.
Again, Cringely wants that this is “based pretty much on logic, not knowledge, which is to say I might again be too frigging stupid to read, much less write.”
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot