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posted by martyb on Tuesday September 13 2016, @12:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the taking-another-look dept.

Tesla's Autopilot software is being upgraded to version 8.0, which will increase reliance on radar data:

The update focuses primarily on the radar component of the Autopilot sensor system, turning it from a supplementary part of the overall tech, designed to complement the cameras, into a primary control sensor that, according to Elon Musk himself, should prevent accidents like the one that resulted in Josh Brown's death.

"We're making much more effective use of radar," Musk explained on a press call regarding the updates. "We weren't confident that we could resolve false positives where the radar would think that it should brake, but it shouldn't."

But after getting upgraded components from Tesla's suppliers, they found they could combine that with their real-time fleet learning system and almost entirely eliminate false positives. That means radar alone can initiate a braking event, rather than requiring the camera component to also provide a positive image recognition result of a potential object.

Musk said that the new system should detect "any thing that's metallic, anything that's large and dense," and then brake the vehicle, "as long as it's not large and fluffy." If Autopilot is active, the system will be better able to predict the car's path and then produce a gradual brake that Musk said should be "much more comfortable" and able to "brake entirely" in most cases, but even if Autosteer is not engaged, it should also result in a emergency brake that will "mitigate" rather than completely avoid collisions in most cases.

The update comes with release notes.

Ars Technica's coverage of this upgrade points out a shortcoming:

Musk spoke about the kinds of targets the radar could detect, including "an alien spaceship" or "truck turning across the road," the latter a reference to the fatal Model S crash earlier this year that has seen much scrutiny focused on Tesla's Autopilot system. However Musk said that "large and fluffy" objects could be more of a problem; large moose should be detected but small deer, he told us, wouldn't. While this sounds trivial, there are more than 1,000,000 moose, deer, and elk strikes by cars in North America each year.


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