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If you have been While driving your Tesla last week, you will probably enjoy the major upgrade of Elon Musk's automaker that has just received a free live software update. And if you believe the blog post announces the breakthrough, you've taken a big step towards chillax on the highway, while the car handles the traffic for you. By accepting this download, the owners are giving their cars the option to "Navigate autopilot," which, Tesla says, "guides a car from the ramp to the highway exit, including suggesting and modifying lanes, managing highway interchanges and taking exits. . "
However, it has many caveats, including the fact that the pilot must always maintain control and confirm every movement of the computer. No surprise, the owners are already wondering how much better their cars are. Forget the reality in the short term: it's a long-term game designed to help Tesla keep the promise made by Musk to have a truly autonomous vehicle.
Each Tesla built since the end of 2016 is equipped with eight cameras around the car, a radar behind the front bumper and ultrasonic proximity sensors integrated into the front and rear bumpers . For $ 5,000, a pilot can activate "Enhanced Autopilot", a system that has done little to deserve this adjective. Like similar systems from other automakers, it keeps the car between cleared lane marks and away from the car in front.
What may have seemed odd is that Tesla installs these sensors in every car, even if the new owner does not pay the $ 5,000 for this feature. (It just does not unlock the software that runs Autopilot.) It's a costly move for a builder looking for money, but it's a clever one.
The big advantage for Tesla is data collection. The manufacturer can use its software in "shadow mode" on all these cars to test new features on real roads, without the drivers are aware. The Tesla fleet of vehicles, which now has around 30,000 vehicles a month, is rapidly collecting data on the drivers' environment and behavior.
This is how Tesla can claim to have traveled tens of millions of kilometers to validate the latter function Navigate on Autopilot, run it in the background, test what the computer would have done and how compare to what a well-bred human did. Tesla can also download car data to simulate and eliminate as many bugs as possible. A wide variety of drivers on different roads also exposes its software to extreme cases – exceptional cases, such as when a worker has just spilled a line of paint that looks like a lane, but only when the sun is out. Horizon. These cases are both strange and innumerable and constitute a major pain for those who practice self-driving.
A video published by Tesla shows how should operate autopilot. The driver enters a destination in the navigation of the car via the touch screen and activates a new button "Navigate autopilot". Then they use the autopilot normally, when it is safe to do so, by tapping the steering wheel twice. But now, on roads where lane change suggestions are available (which is supposed to be on limited access highways), a chart on the screen of their car appears with a blue line, pulling toward the lane. 39, before, highlighting what he considers the best way.
This will usually be all right. But let's say that there is a slow truck ahead: the blue line will bend to indicate the passage to the left lane. The driver must note that, to check that it is not dangerous to change lanes, he must then press the turn signal to give the robot approval. Then the car must execute the maneuver. (In typical Tesla style, the options to make this merge worse are called Mild, Average, or Mad Max.) The car will also emit a small sound with the onscreen suggestion if the lane change is essential to stay on the suggestion. navigation route. If you think it's a stupid or dangerous idea, ignore it.
Some drivers already report that it looks like a gadget. "In the morning, I go to downtown. Navigate the autopilot as a glue on the left lane up to a quarter of a mile from the exit where he finally decides to cross six lanes, "said Reddit, an Atlanta driver. "It's about two miles late …" Others complain that it's embarrassing to try to monitor the suggested changes.
But it is also useful information for the car manufacturer Elon.
"Tesla and the other automakers really need to understand how humans interact with different levels of autonomy," says Costa Samaras, a civil engineer who studies electric and autonomous vehicles at Carnegie Mellon University. Do drivers use the suggestions? How confident are they in them and how quickly do they notice and accept them? What parameter do they use to determine the degree of aggression of lane changes?
"These types of partially automated features, where there is a very visible human in the loop, allow them to get data and eventually improve their systems," said Samaras.
Of course, Tesla also wants customers to give it money, not just data, so publish this update to the futuristic sound and discuss other enhanced autopilot capabilities, such as allowing the car to leave and park itself and then come back (Musk says a version of this could be ready in six weeks) could mean that more people are paying $ 5,000 for sensors that Tesla will install anyway. It's important as the company is trying to make profits for a second consecutive quarter.
A spreadsheet voluntarily added by people who placed orders for Model 3 shows that out of 186 people who said they had ordered the new model cheaper, $ 45,000 in the mid-range model 3, 93 did not paid the supplement for the improved autopilot, maybe not convinced that he needed that.
But if Tesla uses the data it can collect correctly, the system should improve over time and convince more people. Each suggested path change, confirmed or ignored, of the human driver is a data point to assess the quality of the idea. Anyone using Navigate autopilot potentially teaches the system as a whole to drive.
For Tesla, you're not just an end customer, you're a beta tester – with a better product to expect with the next software update.
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