Tesla Makes Major Upgrade to its Self Driving Software

The autopilot software built into Tesla’s electric cars already offers a glimpse of the future, with what feels like autonomous driving on the freeway. Today the company announced a suite of upgrades to the system, to be pushed over-the-air to existing cars over the next couple of weeks. Chief among the improvements in Autopilot Version 8.0 is increased reliance on the radar system in the company’s Model S and Model X. The sensors have been in Teslas since October 2014, and the new software will download and run on existing hardware—although Musk says it was quite a job to get it to fit.

Tesla says that the new software shifts that burden to the radar, unlocking six times as many information points per object with every reflected pulse. Ten times a second the radar will ping outward, and then assemble those reflections into a 3D image as the car moves. Radar is a bit of a blunt tool when it comes to imaging, but Tesla has improved the signal processing to make it work, the company says. The repetition is helpful too; it’ll increase the car’s confidence that a reflected pulse is a real object. Obviously not seeing an actual object would be a big deal—the car might hit it. But false positives are almost as bad. An autonomous car is useless if it continually slams on the brakes for no reason.


Credits:
https://www.wired.com/2016/09/teslas-self-driving-software-gets-major-update/