How Does Tesla's Autopilot Mode Work? | ColdFusion

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you are watching cold fusion [Music] TV hi welcome to another cold fusion video in previous videos we've looked at how Tesla is shaking up the automotive industry but recently they're taking things a whole level further as many of you would have heard Tesla has released a software update for their late 2014 Model S and model X Series cars I know it doesn't sound like much of a big deal but it's actually starting to turn into one the thing that's interesting and the main focus of this video is that the car actually learns how to drive it's pretty much a breakthrough in the automotive industry we'll get to the details of that breakthrough in a second but to get started let's see the system in [Music] action that's pretty impressive would you have reacted in time let's just take another look at that [Applause] at those speeds if the driver had at all been distracted the result could have been very different so what does this new update include the the car can do almost anything um so we're able to uh obviously do Lane keeping on freeways do um automatic cruise control uh active emergency uh braking it it'll self Park so it'll be automatic parallel parking automatically going to a garage you'll get home you'll actually be able to to just step out of the car and have it Park itself in your garage including it it'll it'll open the door and it'll go in and park itself um uh going going a step further you um you'll be able to summon the car if you're on private property cuz you have to be on private property for this um you can actually summon the car and the car will come to wherever you are and it'll it'll it'll use the ultrasonic senses kind of like a insect antenna slowly make its way to you and and then and then stop and be ready to go it can actually go even a Step Beyond that which is if you have if you have your calendar turned on it'll it'll meet you there so how does the car learn it learns from humans of course this is the real breakthrough in a recent press conference musk referred to each Model S owner as an expert trainer that feeds a collective AI Network by simply just driving the vehicle on autopilot in other words each Tesla driver trains their car when they drive in autopilot mode by doing this they reinforce one to driving behavior from the car and discourage unwanted driving behavior but the interesting thing is all Teslas are part of a fleet so when one car learns it teaches that to all Teslas over a network so they all learn together it's basically a hive mind of Teslas it almost seems like the perfect combination of machine learning and autonomy really cool stuff since there are tens of thousands of humans training the Teslas and all the Teslas learn together that makes for a lot of instructional data so all the Teslas should get very good at driving very quickly Elon says that the system should improve every day by updating the driving algorithm he goes on to say that model S owners could add approximately 1 million miles of new data every day it's interesting to note that just a few weeks after the release Model S owners on websites such as the Tesla Motors Club are already describing how autopilot is improving by itself here's one example one guy tested autopilot on roads with aggressive curves which Tesla does not recommend but still as it turns out the system is learning how to handle sharp curves pretty fast the user with the name Comm sign states that the first time you used the car to take a curve at full speed the car didn't stay in the lane and issued the take control immediately alert after a few times more on this curve with firm pressure on the steering wheel the car started to learn to slow down first and then take the corner and today the car has no issue taking the curve it's definitely learning I'll leave a link to the Forum in the description below so you can take a look for yourself at what the reactions are of the drivers whose cars are starting to learn how to drive it's pretty fascinating stuff and it's safe to say what was once thought to be science fiction is now a reality today all right so let's go deeper how exactly does this work according to Elon there are four pillars for autonomous driving driving the first one is a long-distance radar system that can see through virtually anything this means sand snow dust and other things that the human eye might not be able to see through the second enabling technology is cameras with image recognition software the third ultrasonic sensors and the fourth is satellite imagery with real-time traffic when these systems are all integrated you get a very robust overall system that almost acts like a digital extended safety cushion of technology for your car so how is it like to drive here's some insight courtesy of seen it so we're going to try a lane change here there's a car in my blind Splat right now so it won't do it the car is gone let's see if it'll change now there we go as you can see It'll even change lanes uh completely hands off right now I'm going to take my hands completely off the wheel and my feet are off the pedals as well and as you can see the car is moving along on its own there's a Volvo in front of us that's slowing down and the cars recognize that there's a blue car here on the dashboard which has been improved with the new 7.0 software and it basically is following the moves of that car ahead of me so as it slows down we will slow down and as it speeds up we will too okay so before we wrap up the video let's hear a bit from Elon about the new technology this is him on the subject of legal implications but if it's on autopilot and a driver says hey you know this was supposed to change lanes for me and instead it hit this barrier uh I want you know I want Tesla to be responsible for this yeah um I think we're going to be quite clear with customers that the responsibility remains with the driver okay um we're not asserting that the car is capable of driving um in the absence of driver oversight um that that will be the case in at some point in the future like maybe 5 or six years from now I think we'll be able to treat achieve uh true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car go to sleep and wake up at your destination a couple years ago I thought it was more like 10 years but based on the rate of improvement uh that I'm seeing and progress we're making I think we'll probably able to do it in 5 or 6 years and this the standard for fully autonomous driving is going to be much greater than for a person right um cuz if it's just equivalent that wouldn't be enough but in order to do that you have to have fully redundant systems everything's got to be redundant so that any one system braking does not result in an accident um and you also have to prove that out over you know millions of miles of driving so I know what a few of you are thinking what about hacking it it's it's a lot like a like a cell phone or or a laptop uh you know you focus on making sure that they they can't or that it's very difficult for there to be any kind of systemwide hack um so we put a lot of effort into that and we have third parties try to attack it and MH um and and then certain parts of the the car at at the very fundamental level like like the Drive Unit controller uh or the steering controller have an additional level of security and you don't have to worry about a Skynet scenario because Elon himself is very wary of AI so you yourself have invested in some AI companies like deep mind and VI carious yeah why I I invested in those companies to keep an eye on them I wanted to see how artificial intelligence was developing okay so what are the conclusions to draw from this a lot of people say Tesla is drastically overvalued and will vanish with the bursting of the new tech bubble although it is true that we are in a tech bubble I think Tesla is showing us something that cannot be instantly measured Innovation they really are showing a whole new way for an entire Century old industry and I'd say even though it's not easily measured that is very valuable as Noble Economist Robert Schiller puts it quote technology has made the biggest changes in our economy we should start to take a look at GDP and the productivity number numbers differently because they are not estimating or capturing the impact of new technology end quote and just to put that into perspective Tesla as a whole is starting to progress in their relevant markets for example I just had a look at Tesla's shareholder meeting and I was surprised to find out that Tesla is now the number one seller of high-end premium sedans in North America not only this but for 2015 the Tesla Model S in Switzerland has sold more than the Mercedes S-Class BM W 6 series and Audi A7 combined in addition to this you can now travel anywhere in the US using the supercharges so all in all it's a great job done by the Tesla team they've repeatedly shown how the electric car is the future and their latest efforts do that by making the roads a safer place and I think that's a good thing anyway thanks for watching this video I hope you got something out of it this has been deogo you've been watching cold fusion if you want to see more stuff on Tesla stick around for the next 10 seconds and follow the prompts on your screen cheers guys I'll see you again soon for the next video have a good one cold fusion it's [Music] there [Music]