Autonomous Vehicle Industry is Throwing Stones at Tesla from a Glass House
First, Tesla and Elon Musk deserve all the criticism they are getting about their “autopilot” name and stating they will be L5 soon. Beyond that there are the other much more important issues I have written about extensively, especially their massive stationary/crossing object AEB/AP detection debacle. Issues which have led to several needless deaths and vehicles hitting police cars, fire trucks, passenger cars, street sweepers, tow trucks, trailers, and barriers. More on that below.
This brings me to the significant hypocrisy the industry, including most of its press, is undertaking in criticizing Tesla. While Tesla’s conduct is more egregious, given the issues I mentioned, virtually all of the AV makers use human Guinea pigs as public “safety drivers” largely for no reason. That process will result in thousands of deaths. The reason for that being the machine, and in many cases deep learning, have to experience scenarios over and over to learn them. That will include fatal accident scenarios in many cases. While Tesla’s stationary/crossing object detection debacle will mean more injuries and deaths, the accidents associated with “safety driving” in general will have to be experienced by everyone in the same “geofence” as Tesla. Meaning all public roads. (Those in highway or shuttle “geofences will have less tragedies but by no means will most of these folks be on higher ground.) Since Tesla has had the most deaths, that AEB/AP stationary/crossing object detection debacle and Elon Musk basically invites criticism based on that, how he treats his employees, his tweets, fights he has picked with folks around the world and the Covid-19 debacle at his facilities etc, it’s easy and fashionable to pile on Tesla. But as I said, pretty much everyone else if going to injure or kill people needlessly. This makes them disingenuous, hypocritical, invalidates any high ground they think they are on and leaves them tossing rocks from glass houses.
More in my articles here. Including how to do this right.
The Autonomous Vehicle Industry can be Saved by doing the Opposite of what is being done now to create this technology
Proposal for Successfully Creating an Autonomous Ground or Air Vehicle
Simulation can create a Complete Digital Twin of the Real World if DoD/Aerospace Technology is used
Simulation Photorealism is almost Irrelevant for Autonomous Vehicle Development and Testing
Forget Tesla’s “autopilot” their Automatic Emergency Braking is a Debacle
Tesla “autopilot” development effort needs to be stopped and people arrested
Autonomous Vehicles Need to Have Accidents to Develop this Technology
Using the Real World is better than Proper Simulation for AV Development — NONSENSE
Why are Autonomous Vehicle makers using Deep Learning over Dynamic Sense and Avoid with Dynamic Collision Avoidance? Seems very inefficient and needlessly dangerous?
The Hype of Geofencing for Autonomous Vehicles
Remote Control for Autonomous Vehicles — A far worse idea than the use of Public “Safety” Driving
My name is Michael DeKort — I am a former system engineer, engineering and program manager for Lockheed Martin. I worked in aircraft simulation, the software engineering manager for all of NORAD, the Aegis Weapon System, and on C4ISR for DHS.
Key Industry Participation
- Founder SAE On-Road Autonomous Driving Simulation Task Force
- Member SAE ORAD Verification and Validation Task Force
- Stakeholder for UL4600 — Creating AV Safety Guidelines
- Member of the IEEE Artificial Intelligence & Autonomous Systems Policy Committee (AI&ASPC)
- Presented the IEEE Barus Ethics Award for Post 9/11 Efforts
My company is Dactle
We are building an aerospace/DoD/FAA level D, full L4/5 simulation-based testing and AI system with an end-state scenario matrix to address several of the critical issues in the AV/OEM industry I mentioned in my articles below. This includes replacing 99.9% of public shadow and safety driving. As well as dealing with significant real-time, model fidelity and loading/scaling issues caused by using gaming engines and other architectures. (Issues Unity will confirm. We are now working together. We are also working with UAV companies). If not remedied these issues will lead to false confidence and performance differences between what the Plan believes will happen and what actually happens. If someone would like to see a demo or discuss this further please let me know.
