Watch Tesla’s cool new Autopilot pedestrian animation in latest update

Tesla has again updated its Autopilot-powered driving visualization and this time, it features a cool new pedestrian animation.

It’s sometimes difficult to understand Tesla’s Autopilot improvements because they are often small refinements and backend updates.

The Autopilot driving visualizations are useful to gage some of the improvements since they represent what Tesla’s computer vision system is detecting.

In an update called “Full Self-Driving Sneak Preview” late last year, Tesla made a series of “Driving Visualization Improvements”:

The driving visualization can now display additional objects that include stoplights, stop signs, and select road markings. The stop signs and stoplight visualizations are not a substitute for an attentive driver and will not stop the car. To see those additional objects in your driving visualization, tap Controls > Autopilot > Full Self Driving Visualization Preview.

Since this update, we have seen several major improvements in Autopilot driving visualizations.

Tesla has been better at not only detecting surrounding cars but also many other objects like cones, trash cans, and other inanimate objects that need to be avoided.

It appears to be quite a leap compared to the Autopilot driving visualizations Tesla was producing less than two years ago:

Tesla’s Autopilot on v9 shows great improvements when it comes to rendering the surroundings on the screen, but I’m often getting those weird bugs when stopped or at low speeds. pic.twitter.com/uvfflQUaKw

— Fred Lambert (@FredericLambert) October 15, 2018

Now in recent software updates, Tesla owners have been noticing that the automaker has updated pedestrian animations as part of the visualizations.

Pedestrians used to look like chess pieces moving on a board in Tesla’s Autopilot driving visualizations and that’s when they were actually detected and showing on the screen.

In the latest updates, Tesla is representing them with much more complex animations that show them moving on the screen accurately in an impressive way.

YouTuber Black Tesla posted an interesting video with a series of example starting at 5:35:

Recently, Tesla released some impressive videos of its cars avoiding running over pedestrians thanks to the latest pedestrian detection system and collision avoidance.

Electrek’s Take

This is an impressive improvement.

Like I sometimes mention, the Autopilot driving visualizations are not an important part of the driving experience in the sense that you shouldn’t be looking at them while driving.

However, they serve as a great confidence builder for Tesla’s Autopilot features and eventual self-driving system.

If Tesla is able to accurately render the vehicle’s surroundings, it means that its computer vision system is able to accurately detect the vehicle’s surroundings.

It also helps us follow Tesla’s backend improvements to Autopilot a lot better when updates don’t include new useful consumer-facing features.

If you have interesting examples of impressive driving visualizations, please don’t hesitate to send them my way. It would be interesting to post a collection of them at some point.