In addition to taking the first steps in a new market, the appearance of Tesla’s robotaxis in the streets of Austin leaves us many other readings. Among them how the company has approached autonomous driving, the use of artificial intelligence and how it takes advantage of its millions of cars in the street to advance faster and spending less money than competition.
And that has its consequences.
An unexpected brake. A Tesla Robotaxi that exceeds a crossing, which marches at the expected speed and that, without prior notice and without apparent reason, slows hard until it almost stops completely. What makes the car doubt?
To the right of the intersection, in a street perpendicular to the march of the Robotaxi de Tesla, a police patrol is stopped. This does not hinder the march of the autonomous vehicle but, despite this, the car stops strongly. The video can be found on YouTube After the up of a user and Antitesla accounts have replicated them in X.
Who has uploaded the video is Edward Niedermeyerjournalist specialized in the motor world in the United States and author of a book in 2019 on the birth of Tesla and the figure of Elon Musk, especially known for its critical positioning with the brand.
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Fear of police. In Techcrunch They echo the video and put on the table the possibility that this type of behavior is due to learning that Tesla robotaxis have made of their own drivers.
It is likely that, learning with the Huge database Of millions of cars on the road, the artificial intelligence that supports the movements of the autonomous car replicates the behavior of a good part of the humans: stop before a police car. This is what DGT defines how “Miron effect”.
“Live millions of lives”. For a long time, Elon Musk presumes that the artificial intelligence used in its drinks from the vehicles that the company has in the streets. “It’s like living millions of lives simultaneously And see very unusual situations that a person in his entire life would not see, “Elon Musk said in the presentation of Tesla Cybercab.
The company trusts not having to invest billions of dollars in the development of its total autonomous driving such as Waymo and Cruise because they use the data that their drivers yield with their vehicles. Thus, artificial intelligence learns from their behaviors and makes decisions that could be considered more human and less robotized. As human as stopping a police car or cover an intersection.
A differential value. Tesla is confident that this approach is key to positioning itself as the best operator in the market. Although there is only a dozen robotaxis circulating through the streets, the data collected are not only obtained with trial vehicles, real data with real conductors are obtained, which should save enormous amounts of money and hours invested.
Not only that, the company also aspires to have cheaper vehicles on the street. The combination of Artificial intelligence cameras It is a combo that, according to the company, allows them to save money on radars and lidar sensors, which make vehicles that are put on the streets a lot.
Of course, it is not entirely clear that this is the right act because, as has been seen in some tests, The lidar sensor is much more effective in front of the cameras in concrete situations such as low visibility or with obstacles that can generate confusion to the cameras.
A shadow. The latter is relevant. Mark Rober’s test showed that a car with cameras cannot discern safely If what is in front is a painted wall like a road or a real road. The lidar sensor, however, does detect the obstacle.
Although this situation is not going to be given in real conditions, it does show us the effectiveness of the system to discriminate when it is facing a situation or not of danger. For example, when a Tesla Robotaxi confuses a simple shadow with an object On the road. This case, which is in A Reddit post Where all the errors of the robotaxis are being collected, it could be solved with the use of this system instead of trusting everything to the cameras.
Photo | Tesla and Remi Gieing
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