Tesla electric autopilot does not recognize cyclists

Ilon Musk has been actively working for several years to make his company electric cars drive the roads of the whole world. I must say that he is doing quite well, although there are, of course, failures. In any case, the capitalization of Tesla Inc. is now about $ 54 billion. Part of the success of the company is obliged technology Autopilot, which allows the driver for a short time to take control, giving it to the computer. The autopilot copes quite well with the definition of various obstacles and, if necessary, an electric vehicle can quickly eliminate a potential emergency on the road. But he also has problem areas. One of the problems known to many is the influence of bright sunlight on the ability of the system to “see” what is happening around.

There is a less known, but important problem. It is about autopilot identification on the road cyclists. According to Heather Knight, a man-robot interface specialist, Tesla has one problem - for some reason, cyclists are ignored by the automatic car control system. The researcher gave all the details in the work of Tesla Autopilot Review: Bikers Will Die. The name, of course, is pretentious and not at all scientific, although there are some interesting moments.

Knight, in particular, describes the details of his trip to Tesla with the autopilot turned on and on the response of the system to passing cyclists. As it turned out, the work of the system in this regard leaves much to be desired. But cyclists who prefer the roads of ordinary use, rely on the attention of the driver or autopilot. Of course, they count, otherwise none of them would drive the roads. But autopilot seems too early to trust the lives of all lovers of their bikes.
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Yes, the autopilot works fine most of the time allotted for a journey through southern California. But the reaction of the system to cyclists “scares”, as Knight wrote. She believes that Tesla’s computer-aided control system for electric vehicles ignores most of the cyclists on the road, and therefore puts their lives at risk.

“I believe that Autopilot correctly estimates the number and behavior of nearby other cars (about 30% of the environment) and only 1% of cyclists,” says Knight. She also added that she cannot yet say whether the autopilot "sees" cyclists or not. Nevertheless, the recommendation that she gave to the owners of Tesla sounds a bit unexpected: “Never turn on the autopilot next to the cyclists!”.

There is almost no information on the web about whether Tesla had an incident with cyclists. But there was one incident that occurred in Norway in 2016, which, according to Knight, showed the problem of the Tesla computer system that she discovered: the autopilot simply did not recognize the motorcyclist, as a result of which an accident occurred and he got injured.

After the publication of this information, data on the ability of the Tesla software and hardware platform to recognize cyclists on the road was shared by the Wall Street Journal. Already after this, reports began to appear that the autopilot was still able to identify the cyclist on the road. One of the owners of Tesla told how an electric car helped him avoid a collision with a cyclist who was driving, literally buried in a mobile phone, no longer paying attention to anything.

The researcher said she liked Tesla. According to her, she tries to pay attention, first of all, to problem areas, and then praise the system.



It is worth noting that the company itself does not recommend anyone to throw the steering wheel in the middle of the road and begin to relax in the car. No, Tesla Inc honestly says that the autopilot function is only short-term driver assistance, the responsibility for accidents on the roads lies with the person, not the computer.

Previously, the company announced that the second generation of autopilot Tesla will present a fully autonomous control function. Despite the fact that this feature is not yet available, drivers began to more actively use the autopilot, ignoring the warning. In the light of these events, it is strange to blame a computer for not responding very well to cyclists or motorcyclists. Some experts believe that the problem is not in autopilot, but in drivers who use this system for other purposes.

Now there is a "refinement" of the system, after which it is likely to distinguish objects on the road more qualitatively. Well, until that moment, drivers must themselves follow everything that happens in the direction of travel. It is not for nothing that the Tesla manual says that drivers are not recommended to take their hands off the wheel during a trip - anything can happen, and the autopilot system is not perfect yet. As for the autonomous autopilot function, it will appear no earlier than at the end of the year.