Tesla Autopilot

We previously reported about what Tesla’s Autopilot can see with its suite of 8 cameras around the car, but we rarely got into how the Autopilot understands and interprets what it is looking at through its computer vision system.

That’s changing today after a few hackers were able to overlay Autopilot data on top of snapshots of what the system is seeing.
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As we reported earlier this week,Tesla’s latest Autopilot update comes with more ‘nag’ to make sure drivers keep their hands on the wheel, but some owners are complaining about their hands not being detected on the wheel even though they are gripping it.

CEO Elon Musk now says that Tesla will update Autopilot’s ‘Hold Steering Wheel’ to better reflect what needs to be done.
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The new Autopilot software update that Tesla started to roll out last week features some improvements in performance as promised by CEO Elon Musk. But now, owners are also finding out that Tesla significantly increased the “nag” to force drivers to keep their hands on the wheel.
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Andrej Karpathy, Tesla’s director of AI and computer vision, is currently hard at work trying to improve Autopilot by training Tesla’s neural net with incredible amounts of data from Tesla’s fleet.

He took a break from it to give some interesting insights into the development at a conference last month.
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Tesla’s next major software update ‘version 9.0’ is now set for a release in August and it will include the first ‘full self-driving features’ for Autopilot 2.0 vehicles, says CEO Elon Musk
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Amid the controversy over the use of Tesla Autopilot and the few highly publicized accidents involving the driver assist system, a Tesla service technician has been filmed either asleep or unconscious at the wheel of a Model S driving on Autopilot.
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As Elon Musk announced earlier this week, Tesla started pushing a new Autopilot software update.

It features some performance improvements and it has a new feature that renders the surrounding car on the instrument cluster.
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During Tesla’s 2018 shareholder meeting yesterday, CEO Elon Musk teased a new Autopilot software update that could come as soon as this week and he talked a little about upcoming Enhanced Autopilot features.

He even confirmed that Tesla plans to bring back free Autopilot trials.
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Following all the recent news about crashes involving Tesla vehicles on Autopilot, music producer and Tesla owner Anton Zaslavski, better known by his stage name Zedd, decided to share a story that he thinks “shows the other side” of Autopilot, Tesla’s semi-autonomous driver assist system.
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Tesla had a few high-profile departures lately, but it is now making a high-profile hire of its own as it poaches Stuart Bowers, a former machine learning engineer at Facebook who most recently was VP of engineering for monetization at Snap.

Bowers will now become VP of Engineering at Tesla and work on Autopilot.
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There have been many shake-ups in the leadership of Tesla’s Autopilot as the autonomous driving space is getting increasingly competitive and companies are hunting for talent with experience in the field.

Sameer Qureshi is one of those engineers with experience since he has been “responsible for the entire Autopilot software stack across all of Tesla’s cars and platforms” for the past year and a half.

Now Electrek has learned that he left the automaker this month to join Lyft.
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A Tesla driver who recently crashed into a truck while on Autopilot got a citation from the police after Tesla released data logs and the driver admitted that she was looking at her phone during the accident.

Now the NHTSA is also announcing that it will investigate the accident, but only for data gathering as a “special crash.”
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New autonomous driver assist systems are coming to market using eye-tracking and other driver monitoring systems to make sure that drivers are paying attention to the road.

Tesla apparently looked into adding such a system to its Autopilot, but it chose not to because it found it to be ineffective, according to CEO Elon Musk.
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Several comments made by CEO Elon Musk since the launch of its Autopilot 2.0 hardware suite in all Tesla vehicles made since October 2016 indicate that the company might have to update its onboard computer in order to achieve the fully self-driving capability that it has been promising to customers.

Now it looks like Tesla might have to also offer computer retrofits for Autopilot 2.5 cars.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been extremely critical of the way the media portrays accidents involving Tesla vehicles on Autopilot.

Now, we have a better idea of why it bothers him so much. The CEO said that Tesla is actually able to detect dips in Autopilot use from its fleet when there’s negative media coverage.
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As part of the settlement of a class action lawsuit started by a few Tesla owners, the automaker has agreed to partially reimburse people who bought cars with Enhanced Autopilot over the long delays to roll out the features promised by the package.

If the settlement is approved by the court, Tesla will pay between $20 and $280 to all U.S. Tesla owners who bought or leased cars with Enhanced Autopilot between October 2016 and September 2017.
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Tesla’s Autopilot driver assist features can make driving safer as long as the driver stay attentive and is ready to take control, but you need a driver in order to do that.

A Tesla owner in the UK was caught on video leaving the driver’s seat and getting into the passenger seat while on Autopilot. He received an 18-month license suspension for what has been deemed “dangerous driving.”
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Legendary chip architect Jim Keller has seen an increasingly important role at Tesla since he joined the company in 2015.

He most recently took over the responsibilities of the Autopilot program after Chris Lattner left and Tesla went in another direction by hiring AI expert Andrej Karpathy to oversee computer vision and AI.

Now we learn that today was Keller’s last day at Tesla as the Autopilot team sees yet another leadership change.
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Accidents involving Tesla’s Autopilot driver assist system are often making the news, but it’s rare that the near-miss incidents where Autopilot potentially made the difference get much attention.

But now a Tesla owner says Autopilot saved him from a near-miss crash with a semi truck caught on video.
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Automakers are currently in a race to bring self-driving vehicles to market and data is expected to be a big part of what will eventually enable a fully self-driving system that is safer than humans.

While many companies developing the technology are limited to test fleets to collect data, Tesla has the advantage of having a large fleet of vehicles equipped with many sensors in the hands of customers traveling around the world every day.

Now, their fleet is getting much bigger with the Model 3 and Tesla started opening the floodgates of data gathering by adding the vehicle to its Autopilot data collection program.
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Following the fallout between Tesla and NTSB over the investigation of the fatal Model X accident on Autopilot last month, Elon Musk commented on the accident emphasizing that the Autopilot is not perfect and that owners need to keep paying attention.
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