Tesla To Show New Animal Visualizations |

Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My! While Dorothy’s list of animals are not included in Elon Musk’s latest tweet regarding animal recognition by Tesla’s Neural Network, dogs, cats, and horses are included.

Speaking to Tesla’s object recognition abilities, it appears that Tesla is preparing to release an update that includes new visualizations of various animals that may stray across the car’s path.

As far as animal recognition, Teslas currently only visualize dogs, but it will often display a dog even if it's another animal.

This is due to a lack of training, where the car can't yet differentiate between a dog, a horse or a cat. It can be easily fixed by training their NN by adding and categorizing photos of addition animals.

It looks like we'll soon get new animal visualizations. The most obvious may be animals that are regularly found near streets, such as deer, horses, possums or other creatures.

While automotive competitors have made gains in developing electric vehicles after years of lagging behind Tesla, one cannot deny that Tesla’s neural networks are cutting edge.

These neural networks give Tesla the ability to gather live data from over one million participating vehicles. They utilize these vast datasets of real-world data to train their AI algorithms to identify objects that may be a hazard to drivers.

Tesla claims that "a full build of Autopilot neural networks involves 48 networks that take 70,000 GPU hours to train."

While users have noticed drastic improvements in the car’s ability to recognize various car types (as seen by improved visualizations in 2022.16), the likely addition of new animals is an interesting addition.

With FSD Beta 10.12, Tesla added numerous visualization updates. Will more animals be added in FSD Beta 10.13, which is expected in about two weeks?

While too early to tell, it remains exciting that the objection recognition abilities of Teslas continue to improve.

The car knows that something is there, just doesn’t know that they’re horses yet, but it will. Dogs, cats and many other animals will also be recognized.

Tesla registered a new high resolution radar unit with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Tesla's intended use for these radar units is unknown, but it appears they are intended for imaging, similar to how LiDAR uses lasers to map surroundings.

While Tesla's FSD software has used radar in the past, Elon Musk has a rather unfavorable stance on LiDAR. For the purposes of autonomous driving, Musk sees LiDARs as a "fool's errand." Yet, people have been spotting Tesla prototypes with LiDAR sensors since last year.

The latest instance of Tesla using LiDAR comes from Twitter user @ManuelRToronto who spotted a LiDAR-mounted Tesla in downtown Toronto, only a few weeks after the release of FSD Beta in Canada.

He took a video of the LiDAR-mounted Model Y with manufacturer license plates from California.

@elonmusk Spotted in Toronto. A @Tesla Model Y with #LiDAR and CA Manufacturing (MFG) Plates. It cut me off!, I guess it doesn’t have FSD or it may be camera shy, what’s the deal ? @NotATeslaApp pic.twitter.com/FYOdjFA1gq

There has been no official announcement from Tesla about these LiDAR-mounted vehicles, but it is safe to assume that Tesla will not use LiDAR on any production vehicles.

Tesla is likely using LiDAR to help train their machine learning algorithms, using it as the ground truth when checking for accuracy. Unlike cameras, LiDAR captures extremely accurate 3D depth measurements.

LiDAR could be used to train these algorithms to accurately interpret depth by relying on precise, non-interpretive LiDAR sensors.

Cameras are limited to 2D data combined with computer vision algorithms to interpret 3D depth. The downside to this approach is that it requires a computational process versus having precise 3D depth measurement from a LiDAR sensor.

However, LiDAR sensors are expensive; the benefit of relying solely on cameras is that it makes Teslas much more affordable.

LiDAR can't be the only sensor used in a vehicle since it can only build a wireframe 3D environment. Without cameras it wouldn't be able to read traffic signs, traffic lights or anything that doesn't have depth.

Vehicles with LiDAR also rely on camera data and fuse the two outputs of the two sensors together to build a virtual representation of the real world.

Musk believes that self-driving cars should navigate the world in the same manner as human drivers. Since humans use their eyes and brain to navigate three-dimensional space, cars with cameras and enough computational power should be able to achieve the same thing.

"Humans drive with eyes and biological neural nets, so it makes sense that cameras and silicon neural nets are the only way to achieve a generalized solution to self-driving, " says Elon Musk.

While other self-driving initiatives like Google's Waymo have taken a LiDAR approach, Tesla is outpacing the competition using vision-only, machine learning and the network effect of over 100,000 vehicles in the FSD Beta program.

Tesla's vision-only approach has become smart enough that adding radar data gives the system more information than it needs and disorients the FSD software.

LiDAR and radar may be helpful in training the FSD software, but Tesla wants to avoid using multiple sensors with potentially conflicting perceptions that would overwhelm the system.

With Tesla's recent patent of a high resolution radar, and the recent reported use of LiDAR, it is possible that Tesla's Robotaxi will employ radar and/or LiDAR in order to reach full automation.

Tesla's FSD software could eventually be segmented into consumer and commercial self-driving vehicles with consumer vehicles reaching conditional autonomy (L2/L3) using vision-only and commercial vehicles reaching full autonomy (L4/L5) with the help of radar or potentially even LiDAR sensors.

Commercial robotaxis could even be multi-sensor (cameras, radar, LiDAR), costing much more, while consumer self-driving vehicles would be vision only and more affordable.

Only very high resolution radar is relevant

Emily Schubert, a senior manager for Apple presenting at Apple’s WWDC 2022 event, couldn’t sum up the impact of CarPlay better: 98% of new cars available in the US have CarPlay compatibility.

According to Apple, 79% of car buyers wouldn’t buy a car unless it was CarPlay/Android Auto capable.

You have to hand it to Apple, they managed to fundamentally change the auto industry in the eight years since CarPlay was introduced.

Offering a superior internet-connected car UI experience to the various proprietary (and frequently painfully slow and unintiutive) automaker infotainment systems, CarPlay has dominated the auto market.

Doubling-down on the success of CarPlay in dictating UI interfaces and interactions with entertainment and navigation functions, it appears Apple is interested in taking more UI-design and control away from automakers.

The next version of CarPlay will integrate more car-based functions, enabling the control of systems like climate control and the display of information like speedometer data.

Apple describes the next iteration of CarPlay (available in 2023) as “the ultimate iPhone experience for the car. It provides content for all the driver’s screens including the instrument cluster, ensuring a cohesive design experience that is the very best of your car and your iPhone. Vehicle functions like radio and temperature controls are handled right from CarPlay. And personalization options ranging from widgets to selecting curated gauge cluster designs make it unique to the driver.”

The infotainment and instrument gauge cluster mock-up that Apple used in the presentation was stunning (as one would expect from a mock-graphic from a multi-billion dollar technology company).

The icon tray, in truth, resembled Tesla’s latest UI changes. The incredibly large and immersive screen, however, resembled the 65” MBUX Hyperscreen found in the Mercedes EQS design.

Automanufactuers have lined up to implement the new integration demands from Apple. Partners include Land Rover, Mercedes, Porsche, Nissan, Ford, Lincoln, Audi, Jaguar, Acura, Volvo/Polestar, Honda, Renault, and Infiniti. Noticeably absent was Tesla.

Tesla has an odd history with Apple. There were even rumored attempts to sell Tesla to Apple in 2015. The current speculation for a lack of CarPlay support is that Tesla is hesitant to give up their mostly successful UI design and control in favor of CarPlay.

In Tesla's defense, Tesla doesn't have a painfully slow infotainment like most automakers. Old automakers are happy to give up control of their infotainment system to Apple to help improve the user experience.

With this iteration of CarPlay, Apple is offering a whole car experience, meaing it not only has a dock to navigate to your favorite iPhone apps, but also to change car specific functions.

Functions such as adjusting your vehicle's climate control, and seat heaters.

However, Teslas have many features that likely wouldn't fit into CarPlay's offerings. Features such as the Toybox, car visualizations, Dashcam, Sentry Mode, and popular HVAC features such as Dog Mode and many others.

The inclusion of CarPlay would mean that Teslas would instantly gain a huge amount of new audio streaming services and apps, along with better text messaging integration and Siri support.

Tesla owners would finally have access to SiriusXM, Apple Music, Pandora, YouTube Music and so many more services that have been highly requested by Tesla owners. Tesla has a good set of audio choices, but there are countless music streaming services nowadays.

The same could be true for video streaming, where Tesla owners wouldn't be limited to YouTube, Netflix and a couple others.

Apple CarPlay and Google's Android Auto have the huge advantage of having a robust ecosystem with millions of developers. We spend hours a day on these devices and store our most important information on them, such as photos, health and financial informaiton and more.

Phone apps already exist to do almost anything imagaineable. This makes it difficult for Tesla to compete with the amount of data and apps available on our devices.

Furthermore, Apple is adding widgets to CarPlay in this iteration. Widgets that could show you the weather, our workout activity, access to home controls and more.

Some of things these Tesla may never be able to incorporate because they don't have access to the user's data.

For Tesla to implement CarPlay it could mean giving up a certain amount of control of their UI.

Some initial questions that come up are how would visualizations, AutoPilot controls and other features tie into CarPlay?

Would CarPlay live on a portion of the screen, leaving other portions available to Tesla specific features? Would it require two docks, one for CarPlay functions and another for Tesla specific functions such as Dashcam access and Caraoke?

Although Apple is offering various layout options for the speedometer and other features, Tesla would still be limited to Apple's offerings.

If Tesla were to adopt CarPlay, Tesla would likely have to adopt a similar UI to Apple's for their own features, so that CarPlay and Tesla functions would flow and the integration would look seamless.

This may be giving up more control than Tesla is willing to.

In addition, Tesla may be hesitant to partner with a company that is secretly designing an EV to directly compete with Tesla. Apple enthusiasts would point out that the new version of CarPlay does not require taking up the entire screen (and could be integrated into a window, similar to the jerry-rigged Tesla CarPlay solutions floating around the internet). But, ultimately, it is unclear if Tesla will budge on CarPlay implementation.

The impact of Apple’s latest CarPlay features remains to be seen, but one can’t deny that continuing to ignore customer demand for CarPlay functionality may ultimately affect demand for Tesla (as other car manufacturers start delivering their planned EV lineups).

View the release notes for the upcoming version 2022.16.1.1.

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