Anyone else concerned about fog without radar?

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jhogan2424

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Ah, the nostalgia. That was nearly 40 yrs ago when we started fiddling with "software radios" as we called them then. FORTRAN on a VAX with an attached array processor and then someone tried to build one with 2 MHz processing bandwidth with about 8 array processors (a good sized roomful). They clocked at 11 MHz! Now all that stuff (and more) is in your iPhone.
Thats pretty awsome! There are quite a few low Mhz microcontroller SDRs around, best value dedicated IC ones with high bandwidth are the LimeSDR one though.

Yeah pretty crazy whats in your phone. I remember dreaming as a boy, whilst playing with the grownups CB, of a handheld device I could videocall anywhere in the world to. You know JB style. :cool:

But thats sort of the point of passive SDR radar, you use all mobile signals as RF sources to see the environment. Its surprising how well it works with so little hardware, its a bit like little torches lighting up the world but in invisible RF.

There's so much we can still learn if we would just listen.

Anyway, preaching to the choir here, you already know that. :giggle:
 
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There are two assumptions being made

1. The video shows Tesla’s radar identified the accident was about to happen. The assumption is challenge due reviewing the video, I could see issue in the video before the warning showed before the brake. The video does not illustrate if the radar or visual cameras were first to detect.
2. Assumption radar is the only method to see cars ahead of the cars directly ahead. I could see cars ahead in the video and do so in my normal driving. If I can, the visual camera can too by utilizing multiple cameras view and perspective to identify items around.

if you cannot live without radar, cancel your order or petition Tesla. I can live without radar in Tesla vehicles due to some knowledge on the matter and company statements. I trust the system will work safely.

I am not stating never radar, nor never lidar, those technology capabilities, IMO, do not perform at the required level and some are cost prohibitive.

Another option, dont invest in FSD and rely on your driving ability.
Like I have said before, I am not canceling my order because radar is gone. I am simply showing that radar has a good use and I would certainly prefer to have it. In the video, a few pixels of what could be someone’s hat through the window or whatever is not enough for any AI to determine an issue is ahead. If the vehicle had tinted windows there wouldn’t even be those few pixels to work with. This car was saved by radar and NOT the cameras! It is so simple why can’t you people admit that? Is it because you think Tesla couldn't possibly make a mistake ? They are capable of making mistakes you know! And they did, by removing radar. And no, I do not want the full self driving, but I do want the autopilot and associated safety features like the automatic braking, which just had it’s’ effectiveness diminished by removing the radar that was able to prevent that crash in the video. Cameras only will never prevent a crash like that where the cars ahead can not be seen because there is no light making it to the cameras for the AI to work with. That type of crash is common (where the vehicle in front of the vehicle that is in front of you can not be seen) and it will happen again. I’m sure it happened several times today in this country. Please tell me why so many of you have to be so difficult? Is it because you don’t understand what happened or is it because you just enjoy arguing? We are looking at facts here and there is almost no room for any kind of interpretation. I’m sure someone will come up with some smart remark about how Elon is a genius and his genius cameras can see through other cars, fog, volcanic ash, and clear through mountain sides but they will be wrong. I am not one of those people that always need to be right about everything to protect my self value, I am just trying to get people to realize what really happened in this case and it is not hard at all. RADAR and RADAR ONLY prevented this particular crash! If Elon hadn’t gotten rid of radar for his own reasons, which by the way was because of supply shortage, would all of you be sending him emails asking him to remove it? I didn’t think so!
 

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You will have to pay for your own road, utility access, and septic system though, we don’t give those away here.
And you will pay more for food, more for shipping, more for medical care, more time to get any of the above...

Your police will cost more, your fire suppression, your roads, your car maintenance, everything.

-Crissa
 
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jhogan2424

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And you will pay more for food, more for shipping, more for medical care, more time to get any of the above...

Your police will cost more, your fire suppression, your roads, your car maintenance, everything.

-Crissa
Half of that is probably right but I don’t mind a bit. For me, it‘s the good life. To each their own.
 


Ogre

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And you will pay more for food, more for shipping, more for medical care, more time to get any of the above...
I’m 50+

Won’t move anywhere unless there is a good hospital within 30-45 minute drive. Doesn’t matter if it’s free, if they can’t get you there alive. I was at the ortho clinic and there was a woman with her 10 year old daughter who had driven 3+ hours for her daughter’s follow up visit. When her daughter broke her arm, Eugene was the closest medical facility where they could treat a moderatly complex break.

For some reason now I’m picturing breaking my leg and crawling into the truck and using FSD to get to the hospital Instead of an ambulance.
 
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jhogan2424

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I’m 50+

Won’t move anywhere unless there is a good hospital within 30-45 minute drive. Doesn’t matter if it’s free, if they can’t get you there alive. I was at the ortho clinic and there was a woman with her 10 year old daughter who had driven 3+ hours for her daughter’s follow up visit. When her daughter broke her arm, Eugene was the closest medical facility where they could treat a moderatly complex break.

For some reason now I’m picturing breaking my leg and crawling into the truck and using FSD to get to the hospital Instead of an ambulance.
We have a smaller, less capable hospital about a 30 minute drive away but a much larger and much more capable hospital about 45 minutes the opposite way. A lot of folks have the airevac insurance around here in case of a serious problem. Half of us learned to buy this insurance the hard way lol. I really hope you don’t break your leg man it is NO fun.
 

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Right, but we aren't going to eliminate cars. I think Tesla did what they had to do.
Um theres nothing stopping us from getting rid of cars at all. In fact its already happening in many countries where people are using other forms of public and personal transport as you mentioned. Just like people leaving the electrical grid because it adds no value to them anymore.

There are many alternatives.

With the advent of same day or hour delivery, working and studying from home, and the general direction change from excessive consumption to efficiency this will lead to a faster adoption of these alternatives. It will be gradual, but it will happen.

There's also the whole road and infrastructure debate. What will we build roads or buildings with in a low carbon economy? Can't be fossil fuel refinery waste (asphalt) or concrete based (cement) so what do we use? It should at least be recyclable too. Steel is fairly good in a rail or construction system as you don't need much of it either and it can be recycled/reused.

The schweeb addresses many of these problems head on. It also provides for easy self driving, considerable safety and efficiency improvements at the same time. For example being overhead allows for no road suburbs where everything is footpaths and green for personal use and there is little to no wildlife interaction either, providing a much better environment for all.

You can also use pods in a train to reduce consumption significantly without adding risk. You can also use the same rail system to distribute power instead of powerlines (along with internet etc) which can also power the pods too. You could also supply water through the same tube, and rubbish collection and deliveries could all use their own dedicated pods. All without FSD. There are many more benefits to numerous to list here.

Every city should likely be constructed around mass transit, we shouldn't live in giant houses that sprawl out from cities. We should live in higher density dwellings, walk, bike, scooter to work and play. Using mass transit for long journeys. Perhaps some other form of personal transportation. In many cases we don't though... kind of have to work with what we have.
The other good thing with pods is that they provide private personal space for travel. These could be 2-8 people in size, and no-one needs to drive or wait for a train/bus. Kids could go to school and friends non-stop and in safety. That's good for hygiene too in a pandemic as well as just the flu.

Then for longer distance travel between suburbs or farms etc you hang the same pod to a evtol, or shoot it through a hyperloop if one of those is going your way.

As for metro areas, they too will disperse because they are just to inefficient to run, and we won't be able to afford them in a low carbon economy, with automation replacing more and more jobs. We have aging population anyway which will lead to a fairly sharp population decline in the near future. Many things will go the way of the dodo. Mass car usage will be one of them.
 
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I don’t want to live near any city and I don’t want to walk from place to place in the heat or cold. Walking from place to place around here would certainly take you days and you’d go through several pairs of shoes. Somebody going to run a rail line out to my place just for me to go/come as I want? I’m way too busy to be waiting on train schedules. Gravel roads work just fine in my neck of the woods and are renewable.
 
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Well, it can’t, if the photons from the stopped vehicle have never reached the camera lenses. Please look back in this thread at the video posted where radar saved the day for one family, if not more. There are some comments suggesting the cameras may have picked this up and caused the car to stop but it was not the cameras, it was the radar.
I watched the crash video full screen and the impending danger can most certainly be seen by the time the Tesla braked. Look around the left perimeter of the car in front. We don't know whether it was radar or the cameras that alerted the Tesla's emergency braking but the fact is there was enough visual clues to initiate braking.

Cameras do not work like human vision - they are better in some ways. In this instance, human vision tends to lock on the car in front, cameras are processing all the relevant pixels. In fact, Tesla vision uses AI to determine which pixels to spend the most processing power on. In this instance it would have been the pixels covering the accident because they are in the direct line of the car's trajectory.

Please stop claiming that you know it was not the cameras that detected this hazard. The evidence does not support that.
 


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Well, it can’t, if the photons from the stopped vehicle have never reached the camera lenses. Please look back in this thread at the video posted where radar saved the day for one family, if not more. There are some comments suggesting the cameras may have picked this up and caused the car to stop but it was not the cameras, it was the radar. Forget the fog scenario and just think about the stopped vehicles that CAN NOT BE SEEN by any camera supplying data to any AI system. Do yourself a favor and disregard all comments including mine and just watch the video for yourself using common sense. That is all I have to say on this subject forever more, no matter how luring the responses.

OK. You continue to tell everyone on here to
Do yourself a favor and disregard all comments including mine and just watch the video for yourself using common sense.
So strap in. Here we go for a frame by frame look at the video.

1. We'll start at the bridge. This is so everyone can get a reference for where I'm starting this progression on the video. If you would like to follow along in your own viewer I will not mind.
Tesla Cybertruck Anyone else concerned about fog without radar? 01_bridge

Here we can see the red car in front of us. Just above the red car are 2 black rectangles that happen to be the top of the SUV in front of the red car. Plus there is a bright spot on the upper right order of the red car. This bright spot looks like a reflection of something. It will go away In a couple frames.

2. Next frame, the bridge is almost out of sight. The black rabbit ears of the SUV are still visible. The bright spot on the right is still visible. If you look closely though, just to the left of the bright spot on the red car, you can see the tail light of the SUV through the glass of the red car. So we now have 2 visual reference points of the SUV.

Tesla Cybertruck Anyone else concerned about fog without radar? 02_bridge


3. Next frame. Basically the same visual as the last frame except that the bridge is now totally gone.

Tesla Cybertruck Anyone else concerned about fog without radar? 04_pre


4. Moving on but still basically the same visuals available

Tesla Cybertruck Anyone else concerned about fog without radar? 05_pre


5. Next move. We are starting to see the bright reflection on the right of the red car start to fade a bit. We can still see the black rabbit ears and right tail light of the SUV though.

Tesla Cybertruck Anyone else concerned about fog without radar? 06_pre


6. And in the next frame, we continue to see the reflection on the red car fade a bit more. The rest of the view still maintaining as it was.

Tesla Cybertruck Anyone else concerned about fog without radar? 07_pre


7. In the next frame, the reflection on the right of the red car is nearly gone. The SUV tail light is clearly there. And if you look real close, there starts to be a bit of the car in front of the SUV becoming visible from behind the left side of the red car.

Tesla Cybertruck Anyone else concerned about fog without radar? 08_pre


8. In the next frame, the reflection on the right of the red car is gone. The SUV can still be seen both above the red car and through the glass to the tail light. But now, the 3rd car up is a little more visible to the left of the red car and we can just start to see its left tail light.

Tesla Cybertruck Anyone else concerned about fog without radar? 09_pre


9. This next frame makes the 3rd car's left tail light much more visible. The SUV is still as visible as it was before. At this point, the danger alert sound has not yet been activated. So we have now had a couple of frames where all 3 of the cars in front of us are visible to the camera but the alarm has not yet sounded.

Tesla Cybertruck Anyone else concerned about fog without radar? 10_pre


10. OK, in this next frame, we finally start to hear the danger alert sound. The 3rd car is much more visible on the left of the red car. The SUV is still just as visible as before but is starting to move a little more to the left.

Tesla Cybertruck Anyone else concerned about fog without radar? 12_alarm


11. Next frame. Alarm is still sounding. 3rd car is more visible again. SUV is still moving to the left a bit.

Tesla Cybertruck Anyone else concerned about fog without radar? 13_alarm


12. Skipping ahead a couple frames, we can clearly see all 3 vehicles in front of us lined up and slightly offset so that we can see all 3 tail lights. Notice however that the red car still has not put on its brakes.

Tesla Cybertruck Anyone else concerned about fog without radar? 51_alarm


So I have some questions.

Where along in this sequence do you see any evidence that the radar of the car detected anything to be concerned with? I can clearly see that the car would be able to detect all 3 vehicles in front before the alert went off. I don't know what the AI was thinking at any step along the way. We just slowed the sequence down, compared image to image, and gave our brains enough time to process the differences. Having done this, I can clearly see where I, as a human driver, would have had my caution up and would have been at least taken my foot off the accelerator if not actually started to brake.

But what are you seeing to indicate that the radar was triggered at all? And if it was triggered, what indication is there as to what triggered it?
Please look back in this thread at the video posted where radar saved the day for one family, if not more. There are some comments suggesting the cameras may have picked this up and caused the car to stop but it was not the cameras, it was the radar. Forget the fog scenario and just think about the stopped vehicles that CAN NOT BE SEEN by any camera supplying data to any AI system
Looking at this frame by frame I can clearly see that the camera was able to see photons bouncing off all 3 vehicles before the danger alarm was set off. Why do you think it was only the radar? I'm completely willing to accept that the radar may have triggered. From this video I don't see any evidence that the radar was or was not triggered. So how come you are so certain?

I'm not saying the radar was not a factor. It very well may have been. But if I had been the driver of the vehicle with this camera, if my nervous system was fast enough to keep up with the FSD computer, and if I would have been paying 100% focused attention on the scene directly ahead of me, I would have alerted entirely based on the photons hitting my eyes. So if the FSD cameras are as good or better than my eyes, if the FSD computer is faster than my nervous system, and if the FSD camera does not get distracted then there is every reason to believe that the danger alert could have been triggered based on data from the cameras alone.

But hey, you may be seeing something completely different in these frames. If so, then its all good. Go ahead and believe that the radar is solely responsible for the alert. I can't see any evidence of the radar so I can't determine if it had any input into the decision.
 

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[Edit]I wrote this relying totally on memory. When I actually wrote some stuff down I realized that I had forgotten that A also appears is the numerator (A_T*A)^-1 *A_T ) so that the dependence on the size of A is as the square, not the 4th power. The edit reflects the correction.

Why taking the radar out is a bad idea:

We are trying to estimate the state of the local volume of space surrounding the car, call it P. The state we estimate is just that, an estimate. It has associated with it errors quantified by Kp. Kp is proportional to Ks/A^2 (A squared) in which A represents the "geometry" of the things relative to the car and Ks represents the errors made by the sensors. Adding a sensor adds to Ks as the square of the sensor noise but it also makes A bigger and so, if adding a sensor increases A more than it increases Ks then Kp decreases and produces a better state estimate. If this is not the case then you don't add the sensor.

Why taking the radar out may not be such a bad idea after all:

The last paragraph talks about why more sensors of different types at different location on the vehicle are, in general, better (bigger A) than fewer (smaller A). There are cases where they aren't. If the added sensor cannot be positioned such that it makes A appreciaby bigger then it does not reduce Kp by that much (in a celestial navigation problem shooting another star at the same azimuth as a star already in the group doesn't help much nor does acquiring an 11th GPS satellite near the zenith). If the new sensor contributes so much noise that the increase in Ks is larger than the increase in A then then Kp becomes bigger. The estimate is worse.

It is easy to detect when the data from a sensor worsens the quality of a state estimate. GPS uses RAIM (Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring) to do exactly that and if a satellite is out of line it's pseudorange measurement is removed from the state solution. Tesla can do this too but they have not done a good job of this with the radar. They freely admit this. And then go on to say that they could do a good job of it but that it is not worth the time or money to do so as this added sensor does not decrease Kp appreciably. Thus it's just another engineering trade.

In the foregoing I have simplified everything greatly. A, Kp and Ks are not actually numbers but rather matrices of numbers but the principles none the less stand - one can "divide" one matrix by another.

It comes down to the following questions:
A)Can radar help the autopilot and traffic aware speed control? Yes, but not appreciably.
B)Does radar sometimes lose track and does this impair the state estimate? Yes.
C)Can this be fixed? Yes.
D)Is it worth it to do so? Given A, No.
E)Can radar see around cars in front of it? No.
F)Can it see through fog and smoke? Yes
G)Does this help autopilot? No. Autopilot is off in times of restricted visibility.
F)Does radar help TACC in poor visibility? Yes, I suppose so, if you are foolish enough to engage it
G)Is radar a comfort to the driver crawling along in traffic through fog? Yes.
 
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Yeah pretty crazy whats in your phone. I remember dreaming as a boy, whilst playing with the grownups CB, of a handheld device I could videocall anywhere in the world to. You know JB style.
No idea who or what JB is (Justerini and Brooks?) but I am old enough to remember Dick Tracy's "Wrist Radio". And I remember a 1950 issue of IRE (yes, I'm even old enough to remember when IEEE was IRE) Spectrum in which the big names in the industry were asked to predict where we would be by the end of the century (2000) with respect to communications, computing, consumer electronics etc. One of the hotshots predicted that there was no way we would have hand held telephones by 2000. Today my wife has Dick Tracy's wrist radio on which she can make video calls anywhere in the world that has internet.

But thats sort of the point of passive SDR radar, you use all mobile signals as RF sources to see the environment. Its surprising how well it works with so little hardware, its a bit like little torches lighting up the world but in invisible RF.
I was going to suggest you look up "PPI Stealer" on the web but when I tried to do so, I found nothing. This is what we used to call multistatic passive radar in the old days. The problem I see with passive multistatic in a car is with the A matrix I referred to in No. 154. In the old PPI stealer days you knew exactly where you were and exactly where the TV stations were and had a general idea as to wherer the airways ran. In a moving car with moving targets and moving "illuminators" the problem is much more difficult and with the accuracy required it seems that an active sensor is a much better solution. TOA is much easier to measure than TDOA. You know exaxtly where the clock is and you control it! The range element of Kp is small because the range component of A is 1.00000. Always. The azimuth and elevation elemnts? Well not so good. But, of course, range in the direction of the velocity vector is the most important measurement of all. Tesla claims they can get a measurement of that of sufficient quality from the cameras. I guess I don't see how they can do that at night if the guy in front of you decides to turn off his tail lights or in fog. But they, who certainly understand the problem better than I do, say that doesn't matter.
 
 




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