The improved system will be available within a week or two through an “over-the-air” software update. They will affect Tesla vehicles built since October 2014, before which hardware used by Autopilot wasn’t included. As previously reported, a Tesla driver was killed in May when the vehicle he was driving hit a truck, and the Autopilot camera was unable to spot the white trailer against the bright sky.
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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is still investigating the crash.
“Perfect safety is really an impossible goal”, Mr Musk said.”It’s about improving the probability of safety”.
In their statement, Tesla engineers confidently claimed that by bouncing signals and snapshots in front of the road, the radar system gains complete awareness of the surroundings.
On Sept 1, SpaceX, where Mr Musk serves as CEO, sustained what he later called “the most hard and complex failure” in the commercial space company’s history when a Falcon 9 rocket exploded on its launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. “It’s going from good to, I think, great”. The organization believed that the technology’s name misled drivers and hence, it should be renamed.
Consumer Reports, for example, wrote that Autopilot was ” too much autonomy too soon”.
Away from radar, he also revealed that Teslas in Autopilot mode will need to be parked if repeated warnings to hold the steering wheel are ignored by the driver. When activating the system, drivers must acknowledge that they are responsible for the vehicle.
Tesla’s head Elon Musk mentioned that improvements in the company’s Autopilot technology could have prevented the accident on May7 in Ohio. When drivers activate it, though, the display warns them to keep their hands on the wheel at all times.
Electric vehicle maker Tesla Motors announced the rollout of Autopilot 8.0 update on Sunday.
Because of how unusual the world looks in radar, the challenge in using it as a primary detection system is to avoid false alarms. Regardless of the visibility conditions, the system will allow the auto to hit the brake even when a UFO is on the road.
The updated technology will let the auto determine any changes in the lead cars movement avoiding a crash. Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit and others racing toward fully self-driving cars are counting on a technology known as lidar, which is similar to radar but uses lasers.
Radar presents it own collection of problems, Musk points out.
The Florida tragedy – the first deadly crash with a driverless system – took place after Autopilot failed to detect the truck due to poor weather and low luminosity.
Musk said that, with the latest updates, the system would have identified a “large metal object across the road”.
New restrictions on Autopilot 8.0 are a nod to widespread concerns that autopilot can lull users into a false sense of security through its “hands-off” driving, although the company maintains Autopilot of not supposed to replace the driver. Only then will Autopilot be re-enabled.
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Drivers are still required to be behind the wheel while using Autopilot, but the auto can change lanes, brake, steer, accelerate, decelerate and avoid obstacles on its own.
