Auto-park and auto-load

[ajdelange]

When I see what has been accomplished with ML in the past 2 years alone (and I am by no means a champion of ML), it is not beyond my imagination to see Tesla tackle parking with great success, and perhaps try trailer mechanations.

Your bio indicates you drive an S. Have you noticed any improvement in Summon or Autopark over the past 2 years? I haven't but perhaps you have.

Your reference to engineers as seeing things that others don’t is narrow. Some engineers do, yes. Engineers, like everything else, are variable in their understanding of physics and in their vision. I meet people trained in engineering every day that don’t know the first thing about how things work.

Naturally I have too. I hope I am not one of those. I have no trouble accepting that an engineer who lacks vision will be as naive as a layman.

I think it only fair to mention at this juncture that I do know lay people who have the kind of vision of which I speak.

It may well be that a truck driving a trailer and parking it might exceed your lifetime and, given your experience with FSD, that very experience may preclude seeing the technology with as open a mind as you suggest engineers in general have.

I did not suggest that engineers are more open minded than anyone else. I've known some of them to be the most stubborn SOBs I've ever met. What I'm really getting at is that engineers are more likely to be Bayesians than other people. That means they weigh what they see with what they know in assessing the liklihood of something. You, for example, may have observed great improvement in the assisted driving prowess of your S and if so I would expect you to think rapid improvement more likely than I who have, if anything, found autopark to be less capable. Of course my feeling that engineers are more likely to be Bayesian is in itself biased by Bayesian logic as Bayes theorem was an incredibly and frequently valuable tool for me throughout my career.

Sometimes when I pull my trailer back to a parking space it is a very simple task. Pull straight forward from the ramp to an already empty space. FSD could do that now no problem.

Let's forget the trailer for a moment. How would I get my X to do that with its current FSD capability (I don't have the latest release i.e. the one that has gone out to the selected users).

I know how to get it to go forwards and backwards in a straight line over a few feet but i don't know how to get it to find a parking spot. At the ramp I use there are no parking spots in line with the ramp itself. You have to find your way to the parking lot. I guess you could park head in but most people back in.

How does the current FSD prevent the rear end of the trailer from hitting something or are you saying it only works if the parking spot is aligned with the axis of the boat ramp?

It is our way, as engineers, to see the world as a continuum, not in all or none ways.

Did you perhaps overlook the part of my post where I explained why I used the word "probability" and what the implications of that word are in this context?

Well, you’ve laid down the gauntlet and now we can only wait and see what happens and then evaluate your vision and skills of prediction.

Again I suspect that you missed the significance of the probabilistic aspects of this. I used Bayesian reasoning (as I do, consciously or unconsciously) to pick a dozen BEV related stocks and bought a couple of shares of each. As of half an hour ago all were winners. Last week about half were losers. So am I a visionary or lucky?

I'll answer that with an observation (which, as I'm a Bayesian, influences my perspective). I never met anyone who won the lottery. All the lucky people I know were visionaries.

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[ajdelange]

Wondering if trailer towing will need and adaptor kit for FSD use. Stick on camera and sensor modules that link to CT for safety.

I have mentioned several times in this thread that for safe towing of a trailer whoever is in charge, be it autopilot or pilot, has to know where the parts of the trailer are at any given moment in time relative to people, animals, other vehicles and structures. Thus there is no question that additional sensors of some kind will be necessary. These could be remotely connected (rf, wire) cameras/LIDARS/Radars/Sonars on the trailer itself or, as in the case of the linked video, sensors mounted on an arm that extends far enough to the side or above the tractor that the whole trailer can be seen.

The true believers shrug this off or ignore it.

 

[Sirfun]

What one sees depends on one's perspective. My perspective is that of an engineer with experience in AI, radar,signal processing, computing and navigation who has driven vehicles with "FSD" for about 2 years now. Engineers see things that lay people don't. There are plenty of jokes about this. (A priest, a rabbi and and engineer are about to be guilotined. The executioner pulls the rope and nothing happens. "It is the will of god" and they let the priest go. The same with the rabbi. They lead the engineer up and he says "I think I see the problem".) Anyway, did you notice the long sensor arm sticking out to the side? That covers my earlier question about how the tractor is going to see the back of the trailer. Did you see the LIDAR (I hope so as they specifically mentioned it)? Etc.

Anyway putting together my observations on GPS, assisted driving in Teslas, the history of AI and computing etc. it is my prediction that the probability of seeing, in my lifetime, a CT that can be commanded to go find a parking space and park whilst pulling a trailer is vanishingly small. Note the use of the word "probability". That word has special meaning to engineers and others who use science. In using that word I do not declare this to be impossible but rather that betting on this would be a very bad idea.

You all are, of course, free to think what ever you want and that's OK. What you want won't come in 2 years or even 10 years or perhaps ever but it is a goal to strive for. Were it not for visionaries like Elon Musk we would never move forward. The AI computer in the Tesla is remarkable and can do incredible things relative to what could be done 10 years ago. But it has its limitations.

Thank you for your well worded, thought out response to these comments. I put a lot of weight in your opinions and when I read your comment there was a hint of sorrow, thinking you could be right. But, I don't have a horse in this race. And, I still think there's a chance.

 

[Crissa]

My perspective is that of an engineer...

...Is frankly bupkis on this subject. I do not believe you have any experience with AI with your views. You deny actual tools already in production.

That you compare Autopilot to FSD is a straight up apples to oranges comparison. They're different iterations of the system, different design targets. It's dishonest, not engineering.

-Crissa

PS, two years ago Autopilot couldn't handle trailers, Now it can, in a limited fashion. Ford is selling an angle-finding option on their trucks which automates backwards parking partially. This is not even a question: These things exist. Today.

 

[ajdelange]

...when I read your comment there was a hint of sorrow, thinking you could be right.

I could be and, to may way of thinking, probably am. But then there is that word "probably" again. It's not a certainty!

think there's a chance.

I do too. A slim one, IMO, but the probability isn't 0. I''ll be quite surprised if my CT can take my boat trailer and go park it but it would be a pleasant surprise for sure. The language I often feel compelled to use when backing a boat trailer isn't for delicate ears. That's for sure.

 

[Sirfun]

I could be and, to may way of thinking, probably am. But then there is that word "probably" again. It's not a certainty!

I do too. A slim one, IMO, but the probability isn't 0. I''ll be quite surprised if my CT can take my boat trailer and go park it but it would be a pleasant surprise for sure. The language I often feel compelled to use when backing a boat trailer isn't for delicate ears. That's for sure.

Your comment about backing a boat trailer jogged my memory to about 40 years ago.
Once when I was between Sheet metal jobs, I did some work for Hobie. One time I delivered one of their monohull Hobie 33 sailboats from Oceanside California, to Palm Beach Florida. There were 2 of us driving a Chevrolet Dually, taking turns sleeping in the back with a shell. We drove straight there 24 hours a day. Well at one point we were driving by St. Augustine (oldest city in America) and we decided to take a detour and check it out. We ended up on this tiny one way street through an area that looked like the french quarter of New Orleans. It was a tourist trap with open air trams and the like. Well my buddy's driving, and saying, this don't look good. All the cross streets are tiny and with old buildings on every corner there was no way to turn off. Then we come to the end of the road and it's a T-intersection with another one way street, with a 3 foot stone wall in front of us. On the inside of our left turn is a telephone pole, WE'RE STUCK! The traffic is piling up behind us and one of the trams was behind us, with about 30 people laughing and taking photos.
I don't know where the voice came from, but in the noise I heard, can we pick it up? THAT got me thinking, we got all these people and a wheel for the trailer!
OK folks, you wanna pitch in and we can disconnect this trailer and push it around the corner? MORE laughter, but then, heck yeah lets do this. We disconnected onto the trailer wheel, drove the dually around the corner. Everybody joined in and pushed and we had it hooked up and we couldn't get out of there fast enough.
WHEW ?