The electric auto maker plans to roll out a new software update in a week or two that will bring significant improvements to Autopilot, CEO Elon Musk said during a press call Sunday.
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Tesla Motors said Sunday that it is going to upgrade its Autopilot semi-self driving system in a way that will make its electric cars more dependent on radar, rather than cameras, and improve its accuracy in being able deal with hazards.
Brown’s auto drove under a tractor-trailer that had made a sharp turn in front of it before continuing off the road, striking fences and a power pole.
On a conference call with reporters, Musk said he thinks that the improvements, which will roll out globally in the next week or two in the form of a software update, probably would have prevented that crash.
Other areas will be taken care of by fleet learning, where over time, if a number of Teslas see a potential crash according to Autopilot but travel through it safely, that spot and those visual and radar criteria are eventually registered as safe. The Model S, traveling at 74 miles per hour with a 65 miles per hour speed limit, hit the trailer and traveled under it before veering off the road, killing driver Joshua Brown. Musk said, “I do want to emphasize: this does not mean ideal safety”. “Things are already good”. According to Tesla boss Elon Musk, with this updated autopilot the accidents caused by the vehicles can be cut down my nearly half. After the fatal collision in May, many people were concerned Tesla drivers were depending on the new technology too much. To prevent false positives so Teslas on Autopilot don’t brake when they see overhead road signs, for example, the company is building a “geocoded whitelist” of fixed items cars should not stop for.
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The advanced signal processing, which comes in the form of the radar, isn’t new to the Tesla Model S, as it had been added to all Tesla vehicles back in October of 2014. Some said Apple would have been Tesla’s only true competitor in the field. “I really pressed hard on testing those assumptions”. “Nobody else could solve this”. And these kinds of stops always have the potential to cause injury, making a false positive potentially risky. According to Tesla, this software upgrade will implement “more advanced signal processing” using radar sensors now installed on all Tesla vehicles since October 2014.
