Tesla Upgrades Its Self-Driving Hardware Suite and the 5 Levels of Self-Driving Autonomy
Tesla continues to upgrade its hardware with more computing power.
It's been thought that the original upgrade of hardware would not have enough computing power to achieve Level 5 autonomy. Now Tesla has upgraded to more powerful version of its onboard computer.
Tesla’s current onboard computer in HW 2.0 Model S and Model X vehicles is based on Nvidia’s Drive PX2 platform for autonomous driving, but Nvidia offers several iterations of the same platform with different computing power in order to enable different levels of autonomous driving.
The companies (Ford, Tesla, Volvo, and others) working on self-driving technology disagree on the computing capacity needed to achieve autonomous driving, which results in as many computing solutions as autonomous vehicle programs. Tesla achieved level 2 with 0.256 trillion of operations per seconds (TOPS) in Autopilot 1.0, but level 3 to 5 are expected to need significantly greater capacity – anything from 2 to 20 TOPS, depending on who you ask.
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The 5 levels of self driving autonomy are (very abridged):
Level 1 - No Self-Driving Features but may have Adaptive Cruise Control or other features.
Level 2 - Some Driver Assistance can control steering and speed simultaneously
Level 3 - Conditional Autonomy can control a car in all situations but return to human control if they can't drive correctly
Level 4 - Nearly Autonomous - No driver interaction needed and the car will stop itself if the systems fail.
Level 5 - Completely Autonomous in all conditional in all roads. Steering wheel, gas and brake pedals not needed.
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It was never clear exactly what version of the platform Tesla has been using in its vehicles with Autopilot 2.0 hardware until Model S owner Kyle Day dismantled the entire thing to reveal the actual board.
The hardware is upgrading (again).
The cars look great and are performing wonderfully.
Source: https://electrek.co/2017/08/09/tesla-autopilot-2-5-hardware-computer-autonomous-driving/
Great information. I like the theory of self-driving cars but I wonder if I would feel comfortable in one!
It's a good question. A lot of people I talk to ask the same question.
We're easily 3-5 years away from Level 4, but I'm ready for it today.
Yaa they improved it I watched a video of Tesla where in testing it's auto pilot mode a man was smashed at a 27mph speed. But now it is improved i guess. :)
Much improved but it still has a way to go. Tesla is the leader with the amount of data they have available, but the programming has a ways to go still.
Totally agree with you.
Keep me updated on this :)
:)