[TaylorAlexander]

> knowing where the moon is happens to be an extremely solved problem.

It's true... but I don't think that's how Tesla would solve it. Their goal is to create a neural network "driver" which can drive in any place even if it has never seen it before. They'd rather teach their neural network that the moon and stoplights are not to be confused visually. Thought I suppose in searching for training examples they could use the known position of the moon for approximate labeling.

[asdff]

>which can drive in any place even if it has never seen it before

Isn't that impossible considering these networks need training and therefore have seen everything before?

[TaylorAlexander]

What I mean specifically is that competitors self driving systems use "HD maps" meaning they store the entire world in 3D and then they localize themselves to that world (at least, this is what Karpathy says competitors do). So those systems cannot navigate any stretch of road they haven't seen.

But with the Tesla, it is learning to drive in general. It does not need an HD map of a fork in the road to understand how to navigate it. Just as a person who learned to drive in California will have little trouble driving in Florida, a neural network that has learned to drive on a million intersections will be pretty good at navigating most intersections. Especially because the corner cases will stand out and become integrated in to training. So it may see many intersections, but it will generally know what to do with one even if it has never seen it before.

Though I would suspect that the competitors are perhaps using HD maps to jumpstart a system that long term would behave more like the Tesla one. Mapping every road is a lot to ask.

[trangus_1985]

Complicated - they should be able to piece together a route with reasonably up to date "street view but like for self driving" imagery, up to date maps, and reasonable weather conditions.

One actually really important feature of these systems is how they handle failure. If the car gets confused, how does it handle it?

[soco]

I would have looked at that as a stretch goal, and very stretching at it. Because I won't need very soon an autopilot to take me through the woods, especially if it's that trustworthy as it feels to be. I'd be happy to have one to drive reliably highway and wake me up when we're in close range from destination.

[TaylorAlexander]

Well that’s what Tesla is doing. The current system can drive itself on highways and they are pushing to create a system capable of driving on all roads.