ColdFusion - How Does Tesla's Autopilot Mode Work? | ColdFusion

Starting point is 00:00:00 You are watching Cold Fusion TV. Welcome to another Cold Fusion video. In previous videos, we've looked at how Tesla is shaking up the automotive industry, but recently they're taking things a whole level further. As many of you would have heard, Tesla has released a software update for their late 2014 Model S and Model X series cars. I know, it doesn't sound like much of a big deal, but it's actually starting to turn into one. The thing that's interesting and the main focus of this video is that the car actually learns how to drive.

Starting point is 00:00:39 It's pretty much a breakthrough in the automotive industry. We'll get to the details of that breakthrough in a second, but to get started, let's see the system in action. That's pretty impressive. Would you have reacted in time? Let's just take another look at that. At those speeds, if the driver had at all been distracted, the result could have been very different. So what does this new update include? The car can do almost anything. So we're able to obviously do lane keeping on freeways, do automatic cruise control, active emergency braking.

Starting point is 00:01:26 It'll self-park. So you'll be automatic parallel parking, automatically go into a garage. You'll get home. You'll actually be able to just step out of the car and have it park itself in your garage, including it'll open the door. and it'll go in and park itself. Going a step further, you'll be able to summon the car if you're in private property,

Starting point is 00:01:49 because you have to be in private property first. You can actually summon the car and the car will come to wherever you are. And it'll use the ultrasonic sensors, kind of like an insect antenna, slowly make its way to you and then stop and be ready to go. It can actually go even a step beyond that,

Starting point is 00:02:05 which is if you have your calendar turned on, it'll meet you there. Okay. So, how does the car learn? It learns from humans, of course. This is the real breakthrough. In a recent press conference, Musk referred to each Model S owner as an expert trainer

Starting point is 00:02:25 that feeds a collective AI network by simply just driving the vehicle on autopilot. In other words, each Tesla driver trains their car when they drive an autopilot mode. By doing this, they reinforce wanted driving behavior from the car and discourage unwanted driving behavior. But the interesting thing is, all Teslers are part of a fleet. So when one car learns, it teaches that to all Teslers over a network. So they all learn together. It's basically

Starting point is 00:02:51 a hive mind of Teslers. It almost seems like the perfect combination of machine learning and autonomy. Really cool stuff. Since there are tens of thousands of humans training the Tesla's, and all the Tesla's learn together, that makes for a lot of instructional data. So all the Tesla should get very good at driving very quickly. Elon says that the system should improve every day by updating the driving algorithm. He goes on to say that Model S owners could add approximately 1 million miles of new data every day. It's interesting to note that just a few weeks after the release, Model S owners on websites such as the Tesla Motors Club are already describing how autopilot is improving by itself. Here's one example. One guy tested autopilot on

Starting point is 00:03:36 roads with aggressive curves, which Tesla does not recommend. But still, as it turns out, the system is learning how to handle sharp curves pretty fast. The user with the name comma sign states that the first time you use the car to take a curve at full speed, the car didn't stay in the lane and issued the take control immediately alert. After a few times more on this curve, with firm pressure on the steering wheel, the car started to learn to slow down first and then take the corner, and today the car has no issue taking the curve. It's definitely learned. I'll leave a link to the forum in the description below so you can take a look for yourself at what the reactions are of the drivers whose cars are starting to learn how to drive. It's pretty fascinating stuff and it's safe to say what was once thought to be science fiction is now a reality today.

Starting point is 00:04:22 Alright so let's go deeper. How exactly does this work? According to Elon, there are four pillars for autonomous driving. The first one is a long-distance radar system that can see through virtually anything. This means sand and snow, dust, and other things that the human eye might not be able to see through. The second enabling technology is cameras with image recognition software. The third, ultrasonic sensors, and the fourth is satellite imagery with real-time traffic. When these systems are all integrated, you get a very robust overall system that almost acts like a digital extended safety cushion of technology for your car.

Starting point is 00:05:01 So how is it like to drive? Here's some insight courtesy of CNET. So we're going to try a lane change here. There's a car in my blind spot right now, so it won't do it. The car is gone. Let's see if it'll change now. There we go, as you can see, it'll even change lanes completely hands off. Right now I'm going to take my hands completely off the wheel, and my feet are off the pedals as well. And as you can see, the car is moving along on its own. There's a Volvo in front of us is slowing down. And the cars recognize that. There's a blue car here on the dashboard, which has been improved with the new 7.0 software.

Starting point is 00:05:40 And it basically is following the moves of that car ahead of me. So as it slows down, we will slow down, and as it speeds up, we will too. Okay, so before we wrap up the video, let's hear a bit from Elon about the new technology. This is him on the subject of legal implications. But if it's on autopilot and a driver says, hey, you know, this was supposed to change lanes for me and instead it hit this barrier, I want, you know, I want Tesla to be responsible for this. Yeah, I think we're going to be quite clear with, because, customers that the responsibility remains with the driver.

Starting point is 00:06:16 We're not asserting that the car is capable of driving in the absence of driver oversight. That will be the case at some point in the future, like maybe five or six years from now, I think we'll be able to achieve true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car, go to sleep, and wake up to the destination. A couple years ago, I thought it was more like 10 years, but based on the rate of improvement that I'm seeing and the progress are making, I think we'll probably do it in five or six years. And the standard for fully autonomous driving is going to be much greater than for a person. Right.

Starting point is 00:06:48 Because if it's just equivalent, that wouldn't be enough. But in order to do that, you have to have fully redundant systems. Everything's got to be redundant so that any one system braking does not result in an accident. And you also have to prove that out over millions of miles of driving. So I know what a few of you are thinking. What about hacking? It's a lot like a cell phone or a laptop. You focus on making sure that it's very difficult for that it be any kind of system-wide hack.

Starting point is 00:07:19 So we put a lot of effort into that and we have third parties try to attack it. And in certain parts of the car at the very fundamental level, like the drive unit controller or the steering controller have an additional level of security. And you don't have to worry about a SkyNet scenario because Elon himself is very wary of AI. So you yourself have invested in some AI companies like DeepMind and Vicarious. Yeah. Why? I invested in those companies to keep an eye on them. I wanted to see how artificial intelligence was developing.

Starting point is 00:07:55 Okay, so what are the conclusions to draw from this? A lot of people say Tesla is drastically overvalued and will vanish with the bursting of the new tech bubble. Although it is true that we are in a tech bubble, I think Tesla is showing us something that cannot be instantly measured. Innovation. They really are showing a whole new way for an entire century-old industry. And I'd say even though it's not easily measured, that is very valuable. As noble economist Robert Schiller puts it, quote, technology has made the biggest changes in our economy.

Starting point is 00:08:26 We should start to take a look at GDP and the productivity numbers differently because they are not estimating or capturing the impact of new technology. technology." And just to put that into perspective, Tesla as a whole is starting to progress in their relevant markets. For example, I just had a look at Tesla's shareholder meeting and I was surprised to find out that Tesla is now the number one seller of high-end premium sedans in North America. Not only this, but for 2015, the Tesla Model S in Switzerland has sold more than the Mercedes S-class, B&W 6 series and Audi A7 combined.

Starting point is 00:09:03 In addition to this, you can now travel anywhere in the US using the supercharges. So all in all, it's a great job done by the Tesla team. They've repeatedly shown how the electric car is the future and their latest efforts do that by making the roads a safer place. And I think that's a good thing. Anyway, thanks for watching this video, I hope you got something out of it. This has been to go-go, you've been watching Cold Fusion. If you want to see more stuff on Tesla, stick around for the next 10 seconds and follow

Starting point is 00:09:29 the prompts on your screen. Cheers guys, I'll see you again soon for the next video. Have a good one. Cold fusion. It's me thinking.

ColdFusion - How Does Tesla's Autopilot Mode Work? | ColdFusion

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