Tesla’s new ‘light-years ahead’ navigation and maps engine is ‘almost done’

https://electrek.co/2018/03/04/tesla-new-navigation-maps-engine-elon-musk/

by evo_9 • 8 years ago

37 22 8 years ago

annon2323• 8 years ago

Lightnyears ahead of current verwion but jo vetter than google maps

jijojv2• 8 years ago

who gives a damn about maps, just use your phone. Sick of their false tweet timelines. FFS it took 14 months to "learn rain" and enable wipers...

drewg1233• 8 years ago

I'm pretty sure maps are important because having good maps and routing data is a prerequisite for better autopilot and eventually full self driving. I'm still hoping the $3K I paid for FSD will pay off...

jijojv2• 8 years ago

They use Google maps today already, so just another move to cut costs. They can make it pretty but data can't be better than Google's whose waymo.com has real FSD trials happening now.

dogma11383• 8 years ago

Autonomous vehicles need HD maps to be able to localize themselves accurately on a centimeter scale, GPS and current maps do not allow that.

The higher the resolution of your map is the better and faster the localization is, better localization means better and more accurate decision making for your car.

To illustrate it simply we’ve all been at a point where the GPS app we use put us on the curb or on a different lane sometimes even in incoming traffic.

This is because your phone localized you erroneously. While we ignore it or make a joke about it if this happens to an autonomous vehicle someone can get hurt or worse.

HD maps are the new gold rush in autonomous vehicles and companies are rushing to find ways to cheaply produce, update and more importantly distribute them to vehicles.

jorvi• 8 years ago

Current maps might not, but afaik Galileo has (will have?) centimeter accuracy by default and sub-centimeter accuracy when enhanced.

mycall• 8 years ago

Snap to lane and quality learned vectors is good to compensate for bad GPS signals.

Keyframe• 8 years ago

About two months ago I opened google maps on my phone and departed for a neighbouring country. I took it in offline mode (am still weary of EU-wide roaming) and had a route going on and everything. Half-way on my route, I missed a turn and thought no big deal, I'll turn around and continue from there. Google maps had different idea. It turned off route completely and congratulated me on arriving to my destination, while I was still half-way through the route. There I was, god knows where on my route, with google maps mocking me. I finished my trip by following signs, ye olde way.

On my way back, I turned on wifi and dialed in route for going back, while specifically telling it to avoid tolls (for several reasons - scenic and because it was not really a long trip to my country so I wanted to avoid tolls which make you pay for 7-day vignette at minimum). Anyways, route was on and I departed. 5 minutes into the trip, there I was in-front of the tollbooth. Thanks, Google Maps. Never again for anything outside of city driving (traffic info is great). I can't imagine handing out my life to this crap guiding the autonomous vehicle.

manicdee• 8 years ago

Nobody needs centimetre accurate navigation.

patman81• 8 years ago

There was another Tesla software update announced as "almost done": a major update to Autopilot 2, with an all new neural net and what not.

This all new navigation system might include functionality to help, not only the human driver, but that new Autopilot as well.

At some point Autopilot and Navigation will have to merge. Right now, both systems operate completely separate.

But if those upcoming updates will allow Autopilot to follow the navigation system changing lanes thru highway intersections, than that would indeed be 'light-years ahead'.

ardit33• 8 years ago

"Almost Done" . -- Elon Musk suffers from the typical engineer's optimistic feature task/project estimation.

Some people have wrongly attributed his overpromising, and delivering late, as Elon being a salesman, while the more obvious explanation is that he is just an optimistic engineer that tends to miss deadlines because 'estimating is hard'.

We all have been there

My expectation is that when it comes it, it will kick ass, but it will be late, always a bit late, like most of our projects...

Animats• 8 years ago

Looks more like "minor change to map GUI". "The main difference seems that it enables a significantly more important zoom and smoother engine."

heavymark• 8 years ago

While the light-years-ahead would imply compared to current available navigation systems such as Google Maps, Apple Maps, etc, the actual tweet in the article notes he's saying it's light years ahead of their own current system. So doesn't necessarily mean it will be as good as Google Maps nor any promise it will be better and certainly not light years ahead of Google Maps or Apple Maps presumably.

Tesla’s new ‘light-years ahead’ navigation and maps engine is ‘almost done’

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