Tesla Autopilot: early test shows improvements w/ latest ‘silky smooth’ control algorithm and cyclist detection

While the wide over-the-air rollout of Tesla’s latest Autopilot 2.0 update, which was planned for last weekend, has been delayed, some owners were still able to get it and test it on the road.

We get a look at what CEO Elon Musk described as a “smooth as silk” control algorithm.

On top of the new control improvements for Autosteer and TACC, the update also introduces automatic perpendicular parking and automatic display brightness adjustments to the vehicles equipped with second generation Autopilot hardware.

The first generation already had those features, but Tesla had to reprogram them to work on the new hardware and with their new computer vision architecture.

Under its current form, Autopilot is still geared toward highway driving and it’s definitely where it performs the best, but it can still be activated on single lane roads.

Tesla Model S 90D owner Erik from Norway has been testing the last few Autopilot 2.0 updates on the same small road in an attempt to gauge improvements.

With the latest update, he is noting improvements in the way Autosteer handles turns with deceleration and while keeping its lane. Here you can watch a test he posted to his Youtube channel yesterday:

It shows only one failed attempt to stay in the lane during a turn, which is a good reminder to always stay vigilant and be ready to take control. The Autopilot system is improving fast, but it is still far from perfect.

Also, we can see that Autopilot detected cyclists quite well despite displaying them as cars on the instrument cluster. The most important thing is that it was slowing down for them. We expect that Tesla will soon introduce new renders to display them on the screen and eventually, it should even be able to pass them safely on the road.

The risk of an accident with Autopilot’s cyclist detection was something that recently came up in news, but as we reported, it was mostly blown out of proportions.

Autopilot even detected someone in roller skates at some point in Erik’s test drive.

After the new delay, it’s not clear when Tesla plans to push to update to the entire fleet over-the-air, but we will update when we get more information.