Tesla, an electric car manufacturer, is well known for its cars and autonomous driving capabilities. First let’s start off with what autonomous driving is. There are six levels of self driving, ranging from zero to five. Zero is defined as driving with 100% manual control. Level five is defined as driving with 100% automated control. Most cars nowadays have level one driving(aka cruise control), while level five is still underway.
Some companies have already been developing level five self-driving cars. They include the use of advanced sensors, radar, and cameras. Their cars are already working well, and in many places these cars are used as taxis. So what makes Tesla special? Well the founder of Tesla, Elon Musk, believes that humans can drive with just their eyes, so can cars with just their cameras.
For comparison here is an already existing reliable self driving car:
Now here is a tesla:
Tesla, using 8 cameras, has achieved level two self driving, which is autonomous with the supervision of humans. How did they do that? Well they use something called a neural net processor. In a nutshell, it is designed to work like a human in one chip. More specifically, they include machine learning, advanced algorithms, and computer vision.
Neural network works by firstly accepting an input from the algorithm. The input then travels throughout the entire algorithm making more complex calculations. They go through different layers, while the layers have certain biases towards certain outputs. After the algorithm is finished running, it sends out an output. However, most importantly, it learns from its mistakes. So for example if you put it into a simulator, it will start to crash every time at first, however, from learning from its mistakes, it will slowly stop crashing. By that point, the algorithm is already trained to drive. Tesla also does another interesting thing: it learns from actual humans. Tesla uses data from their own cars to teach the algorithm to learn and drive like humans do. From data from real humans and data from previous mistakes, Tesla autopilot will predict how to drive a car, and continue to learn from inevitable mistakes.
Resources:
- https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot#:~:text=How%20does%20Autopilot%20work%3F,vehicle%20and%20deliver%20Autopilot%20features.
- https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/advice/tesla-full-self-driving
- https://getrentacar.com/en-US/car-rental/5034883
- https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/waymo-will-launch-paid-robotaxi-service-los-angeles-wednesday-rcna147101
