Tesla Autonomy Investor Day: New Tesla FSDC (Full Self-Driving Computer) computer, full autopilot, robotici

On the evening of April 22, 2019, Tesla Autonomy Investor Day, a special event for investors, was held at Tesla Headquarters in Palo Alto, Santa Clara County, California, where (after spending a few hours on stage) Ilon Musk and Tesla employees announced their new car supercomputer, announced the launch of a "full autopilot" and proprietary service robot Tesla Network, which will compete with Lyft and Uber.



The event itself on the video starts at 1:00 10 minutes, and after three hours of broadcasting there is a very interesting conversation with questions from the audience and Ilona Mask answers.





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In Tesla presented a specialized automotive system on a chip (SoC) of its own design for the supercomputer Tesla Full Self-Driving Computer (FSDC), formerly known as Autopilot Hardware 3.0.



The chip is packaged in a BGA-type case with dimensions of 37.5x37.5 mm with 2116 ball-outs and is manufactured using CMOS technology using 14-nm FinFET process technology at Samsung production facilities in Austin, Texas.







The microcircuit occupies an area of ​​260 mm², contains 6 billion transistors and 250 million logic gates.



A double neural module was housed on a common substrate (72 computational cores with 2.0 GHz TOPS cores are concentrated in two blocks) to work with machine learning, artificial intelligence, 1 GHz GPU and 600 GFLOPS performance (support for FP32 and FP64 calculations), 12- 2.2-GHz Cortex-A72 core 64-bit processor, as well as two dedicated hardware security blocks, one of which is responsible for verifying the authenticity of the executable software code signed with the Tesla cryptographic key.











On the printed circuit board of the new on-board computer Tesla FSD two such chips are installed, and the second chip acts as a backup and can turn on at any time when one or several components of the main one suddenly fail.



At the presentation, the head of Tesla, Ilon Mask, said that the probability of a complete failure of this system is lower than the probability of a driver having a heart attack.







New on-board computer Full Self-Driving (FSD) will replace the current generation of HW 2.5, built on the basis of the chip NVIDIA Drive PX 2.



According to the manufacturer of the on-board computer, the specialized dual neural module of the new platform is 21 times higher than its predecessor in performance in deep learning tasks, performing 72 trillion corresponding operations per second.



And this is despite the fact that it costs 20% cheaper and significantly more economical in terms of power consumption (57 W vs. 72 W for its predecessor).











During the presentation, Ilon Mask said that Tesla engineers have already begun to develop the next generation of automotive processor, which will be "three times better" than the current one. It is planned that it will be ready in two years.



New computer Full Self-Driving Computer (FSDC) - one of the components of the hardware platform Autopilot.



The hardware part of the Autopilot complex includes:

• the on-board computer responsible for processing all the data
• eight (8) cameras that create a panoramic picture around the car,
• twelve (12) ultrasonic sensors that calculate the distance to the obstacle
• one (1) radar mounted in the bow.

Since 2016, all Tesla cars, including the younger version of the Model 3, are equipped with the above components.



During the presentation, Ilon Mask said that lidars (3D laser scanners that allow to detect objects and determine the distance to them) used in many self-driving cars are already expensive and unnecessary for stand-alone machines.



The head of Tesla said that lidar is like a very expensive appendicitis, and soon everyone will realize it.























According to the head of the artificial intelligence unit in Tesla, Andrei Karpaty, the usual camera images already contain all the necessary information about the distance to cars and objects on the road, it’s just a matter of learning neural networks.



All new Tesla cars are already equipped with the new on-board computer FSD, and in older models the Model S and Model X began to be installed after March 20, and in the younger Model 3 - from April 12 of this year.



Owners of previously released Tesla cars, who ordered the Full Self-Driving option, have promised in the next few months to replace the old on-board computer with a new FSDS for free.



It turns out that in 2016, Tesla hurried, saying that all its cars are equipped with the necessary hardware and software for free movement on roads of general importance without human intervention.



Thus, it will not be possible to do without upgrading the hardware on previously purchased cars.



The new on-board computer FSD will further expand the capabilities of the Tesla "full autopilot". Here we are already talking about the option “Full Self-Driving” (Full Self-Driving).



Now Tesla cars with Full Self-Driving package can only move independently along the motorways (under the constant supervision of the driver, of course), but at the end of the year after the corresponding firmware update they will begin to recognize the markings and traffic lights, thanks to which they will be able to automatically move not only by speed motorways outside the city, but also along the roads within the city.



Ilon Musk earlier promised to realize this opportunity at the beginning of the year.



The head of Tesla noted that lately the developers of the Tesla Autopilot have been able to greatly develop the abilities of the autopilot system, which is constantly learning based on real driving data collected from all Tesla vehicles, including data on accidents and incidents.







To date, Tesla cars around the world have totally hit more than 70 billion kilometers.



This is a huge array of data that was processed by neural networks that provide Tesla autopilot.



Ilon Mask noted that as soon as Tesla received the necessary permission from the regulator, it would immediately “move the switch” and all vehicles with Full Self-Driving simultaneously learn to drive independently through the city streets (for the time being, this is only about the USA).



It should be noted that Full Self-Driving is the marketing name for the extended autonomous driving package.



Now the Full Self-Driving option costs $ 5,000 when added during checkout and $ 7,000 already when the customer unlocks this option after purchasing the car.



Last week, Tesla warned about the rise in price of this option from May 1, 2019.



Advanced Full Self-Driving functionality includes:

• possibility of self-parking and departure to the owner on call (Autopark and Summon functions),
• Navigate on Autopilot functionality (“Autopilot Navigator”), which is responsible for choosing the most optimal route to the destination with the Autopilot function active,
• Autosteer Stop Light Warning feature.

In 2016, in terms of Tesla’s development, Ilon Musk suggested launching an electric car sharing service, which would allow Tesla car owners to receive passive income by renting their car for idle time.



And now, three years later, in 2019, Tesla Investor Autonomy Day announced the launch of its own Tesla Network robot service.



This service will allow owners of electric cars to rent them out to other drivers in unused time.



Tesla is going to release a special mobile application for this service, and full-fledged functionality for Tesla owners who want to rent out their cars is planned to be launched in 2020 in test mode in several US regions.



































As part of this service, robotaksi Tesla owners will be able to set the time when you can take their car, as well as limit the circle of people who are allowed to use the car, for example, friends or family members.



At any time, the owner of the car will be able to add or remove his car from the Tesla network.



In addition, Tesla plans to replenish the robot park independently, including through leasing cars, hoping that in the next year and a half up to 1 million electric vehicles will be connected to the service.



The cost of a trip to the self-driving Tesla with the highest fifth-level autopilot is $ 0.18 per mile.



For comparison, the average cost of a trip in ordinary car-sharing services is now $ 2-3 per mile.



According to Tesla, renting a car, the owners will be able to earn up to $ 30 thousand per year. In the Tesla company they plan to take 25-30% commission from the proceeds from the owners.



Also, Tesla is planning to increase the "vitality" of their cars.



It turns out that the subsystems of the drive and the body of the Tesla Model 3 were created with a margin of safety like a commercial truck capable of driving a million miles (over a million and a half kilometers) without any significant breakdowns.



During the presentation, Ilon Musk promised that Tesla will soon start producing cars that can travel over one and a half million kilometers with minimal maintenance costs.



Ilon Mask: “The main message of today's meeting, which I want to convey, is to buy any other vehicle besides Tesla, is a rash decision. It's like buying a horse. ”