Elon Musk desperately and fruitlessly reshuffling Autopilot deck chairs
From Electrek — Tesla Autopilot team loses several more engineers as Elon Musk takes over
It appears Elon is not happy with the progress of his Autopilot team. Apparently, they are not making good on his completely impossible promise of getting L4 this year. And by completely impossible I mean not remotely doable EVER let alone this year. Why do I say this? Because they like most of the industry is using public shadow and safety driving for most of the development versus proper simulation. I say “proper” becasue they are using gaming architectures for their simulation systems.
Public Shadow and Safety Driving — There is no way to mitigate the amount of time/work/miles (500B per RAND — One Trillion per Toyota) by driving and redriving scenarios you would have to stumble and restumble on. Spend the associated amount of money (+$300B). Or survive the casualties that will be created when handover is involved in time critical scenarios or when thousands of accident scenarios are run thousands of times each to train the ML.
Gaming Engine based Simulation — With regard to gaming engines. The real-time and model fidelity issues those systems cause especially in complex scenarios will cause differences between what the Planning system believes will occur and what will actually occur in analogous real-world scenarios. That will provide significant false confidence and lead to tragedies.
The Solution — The remedy is to use aerospace/DoD/FAA simulation technology and systems/safety engineering. Including augmenting that bottoms up Agile approach with a parallel top down approach. We also have a built in RL Engine automatic training capability built into the simulation. I will be glad to provide a demonstration this is the right approach. (Note- When I mention this approach folks usually think I am referring to air travel which is not nearly as complex as what is needed here. What is as complex and even more so is simulated DoD urban war games. Same locations, same complexity and the public experiences plus the ground vehicles can drive off the roads and shoot at each other.)
Please find more information in my articles below.
Using the Real World is better than Proper Simulation for Autonomous Vehicle Development — NONSENSE
All the Autonomous Vehicle makers combined would not get remotely close to L4
SAE Autonomous Vehicle Engineering Magazine-End Public Shadow Driving
Common Misconceptions about Aerospace/DoD/FAA Simulation for Autonomous Vehicles
The Hype of Geofencing for Autonomous Vehicles
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
- Lead — SAE On-Road Autonomous Driving SAE Model and Simulation Task
- Member SAE ORAD Verification and Validation Task Force
- Member DIN/SAE International Alliance for Mobility Testing & Standardization (IAMTS) Sensor Simulation Specs
- 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.
