They will affect Tesla vehicles built since October 2014, before which hardware used by Autopilot wasn’t included.
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Tesla also explained that radar can see past the auto ahead, giving vehicle more time to break if need be.
The company is making the change after Joshua Brown was killed when the Autopilot in his Tesla Model S failed to recognize a truck in his path and initiate braking. So the company will use data gathered by its entire fleet of cars to register these spots based on how human drivers handle it and eventually let autopilot take over by white-listing that particular spot as safe.
“The most significant upgrade to Autopilot will be the use of more advanced signal processing to create a picture of the world using the onboard radar”, explains Elon Musk in a blog post. This new development will upgrade its use to a primary control sensor without needing the camera for visual confirmation.
“I do want to emphasize this does not mean ideal safety”.
Tesla has released a remote update that should cut Autopilot accidents “in half”, says Elon Musk. It’s really about improving the probability of safety – that’s the only thing that really ever possible.
Mr Musk did say he believed the new software update, which he called a “massive enhancement”, would have prevented the death of Mr Brown. “This is not going from bad to good”. This upgrade could have avoided the fatal accident that happened back in May. It shows not only that Tesla is committed to leading when it come to the development of fully self-driving cars, but that it willing to take action after the Florida crash.
Tesla’s Autopilot system can maintain a set speed, keep the vehicle within its lane and brake automatically.
“The net effect of this, combined with the fact that radar sees through most visual obscuration, is that the vehicle should nearly always hit the brakes correctly even if a UFO were to land on the freeway in zero visibility conditions”, the company stated.
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Despite the limitations of radar, Autopilot 8.0 can supposedly unlocks access to six-times as many radar objects than its range of cars could before. “Slamming on the brakes is critical if you are about to hit something large and solid, but not if you are merely about to run over a soda can”. This is a non-trivial and counter-intuitive problem, because of how unusual the world looks in radar.
