Tesla followed up a previously released video that demonstrated the capabilities of the company’s autonomous driving system with a new one, this time giving us a glimpse of how its self-driving cars see the world.
The Model X in the video is seen circling through the neighborhood streets surrounding Tesla’s Palo Alto, Calif. headquarters, with no human intervention. A series of colorful boxes and lines outline real-world objects detected by the vehicle’s suite of sensors in spectacular detail. The vehicle is able to individually identify in-lane obstacles from oncoming obstacles, while also having the ability to distinguish road signs from traffic lights – something its current generation Autopilot is unable to do.
Using what the company describes as Tesla Neural Net for vision – combining signals captured through eight cameras and twelve advanced ultrasonic sensors – Tesla’s fleet of vehicles with “hardware 2” will have a 360-degree view and see the world in precision beyond what humans are capable of.
Tesla continues to collect data in “Shadow Mode” and incrementally improve upon its self-driving algorithms through over-the-air software updates. “Our goal is, we’ll to be able to do a demonstration drive of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York,” CEO Elon Musk has said in the past. According to Musk, the trip would be “from home in LA, to dropping you off in Times Square, and then the car will go park itself.”
