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Tesla confuses wall for a person while driving through Elon Musk’s ‘highspeed’ Las Vegas tunnels – highlights big issue
The camera mistake highlights a big disagreement around the safety equipment in self-driving cars
BENEATH the desert grounds of the Las Vegas Convention Center, dozens of Teslas are traveling through Elon Musk's single-lane tunnels.
The Teslas, complete with dozens of cameras and sensors around the car's body, constantly monitor activity around the vehicle.
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During our underground trip, we saw several moments when the car's safety tech misidentified the tunnel.
The U.S. Sun visited the Advanced Clean Tech Expo in Las Vegas in late April.
The Boring Company, Musk's tunnel-building startup, transported visitors from the public transportation railway to the front doors of the expo.
Elevators and escalators brought handfuls of passengers into a colorful underground waiting station.
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From there, we took a series of driver-manned Teslas.
Musk has claimed the company is working on building self-driving pods that will eventually transport passengers at 200-plus-mph speeds through the tunnels.
For now, regulations and still-developing tech have held the company back from deploying the autonomous vehicles.
But The U.S. Sun watched as the camera sensor technology on several Teslas misidentified the tunnel walls and safety apparatuses around the cars.
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Multiple times, rides in various Model Ys showed the cameras misinterpreting the tunnel.
Images of an imaginary 18-wheeler flashed across the car's infotainment system.
Tesla's cybertruck will quickly make you feel like Beyonce - but you're brought straight back to Earth by the doorhandle
We even captured a moment on camera when another Model Y thought a corner in the tunnel was a pedestrian.
The cars, still operated by humans, seemingly didn't change their driving approach after misinterpreting the objects around the vehicle.
However, these cameras are crucial for Tesla's future plans, as they play a vital role in the company's efforts to achieve full self-driving, or FSD, capabilities.
The cameras are the main road-monitoring devices each car will use when driving autonomously.
Musk has stated several times that the company will rely mostly on cameras placed around the camera instead of deploying LiDAR radars.
Other companies with self-driving goals - including Zoox, Cruise, and Waymo - all use bulbous LiDAR tech to scan the three-dimensional space around their vehicles.
But Musk has remained decidedly in opposition to the rest of the industry.
The same cameras that we saw misidentifying walls for trucks will be the eyes on the road and will dictate how the cars will drive in just a few years' worth of updates, according to the billionaire.
How do autonomous cars work?
Autonomous cars use sensors, algorithms, machine learning systems, and powerful processors.
They can create and maintain a map of the area around them based on several sensors situated in different parts of the car.
Radar sensors are used to keep track of the positions of other cars.
Video cameras can detect traffic lights, read road signs, track other cars, and look out for pedestrians.
A sophisticated software processes all of this information and plots a path for the car to take, sending instructions to the car's actuators, which control acceleration, braking, and steering.
Hard-coded rules and object recognition help the software follow traffic rules and avoid obstacles.
Source: Synopsys
Musk has called LiDAR a "crutch."
"It's expensive and unnecessary," he said in 2019, according to CDO Trends.
"You have expensive hardware that's worthless on the car."
But The U.S. Sun's experience is not alone with the cameras misidentifying neighboring objects.
Tesla drivers have filmed similar events in their own cars. One vehicle confused a train for a line of overlapping 18-wheelers.
Another Tesla driver slid onto train tracks after the car misunderstood the rails and thought they were another road.
Still, advocates for self-driving technology remain bullish despite the early slip-ups.
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Autonomous vehicles are involved in fewer accidents than motorists, studies have shown.
The U.S. Sun reached out to Tesla for comment on this article. The company didn't immediately respond.
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