Sun, 21 Aug 22 09:02:14 +0000

People are now testing Tesla's 'fully self-driving cars' on real kids

Washington DC (CNN)Carmine Kupani tried to set the record straight. So he asked his young son to stand in the road as the Tesla raced through the parking lot.

North Carolina residents tried to refute a widely-circulatedvideoof Tesla featuring the company's "fully self-driving" beta software. Tried. You steer, brake, and accelerate, but you must have an observant human driver ready to take the wheel.

Dan O'Dowd, CEO of the software company, who released a video earlier this month, said The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Tesla CEO Elon Musk was "fully self-driving." ” should be banned. He proves he doesn't mow down children. ''

That's when Kupani, who runs an auto shop focused on imported cars and Tesla, got involved and adopted his son. He's a self-described "BMW guy," but says the software doesn't compare to what Tesla has to offer. It also wasn't the first time Kupani said he had his 11-year-old son involved in the development of a car that could go viral. Earlier this year he posted a video of his son driving a Model S. Plaid — in 1.99 seconds he reaches 0-60 — in a private parking lot. It has been played over 250,000 times.

"Some people look at it and say, 'Oh, this crazy dad, what are you doing?'" Kupani told CNN Business. "Well, I do a lot of that sort of thing, but I'm going to make sure the kids don't get hit." '' test . His son was standing near the end of the aisle with his smartphone to film the test.Kupani accelerated the Tesla from the other side, going into "fully self-driving" and reaching speeds of 35 mph. did. Tesla braked steadily and came to a complete stop - long before his son.

Cupani used his Autopilot, Tesla's more rudimentary driver assistance software, on the road for another test with his son and found it stopped for my son too. "This Dan guy says he's an expert in this and an expert in that," Kupani said. It's home."

Cupani is one of many Tesla supporters who challenged O'Dowd's video and set out to create their own test. Some asked their children for help. Some made hand-made mannequins, others usedblow-up dolls.

The ardent advocacy and criticism of 'fully autonomous driving' underscores how the technology has become a flashpoint for the industry. His DMV in California recently said the name "fully self-driving" is deceptive and is a reason for Tesla to suspend or revoke its license to sell cars in the state. rice field. Ralph Nader, who criticized the auto industry in the 1960s and helped found the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), joined the chorus of critics of "fully self-driving" this month.

But this is also another example of the unintended consequences of actually introducing unfinished and disruptive technology. This shows how willing some Tesla followers are to defend it and the company. Enough people appeared to be pursuing their own experiments, so one government agency took the unusual step of warning people not to use children to test automotive technology.

NHTSA said in a statement Wednesday, "Consumers should not create their own test scenarios or use real people, especially children, to test the performance of vehicle technology." hm,” he said. The agency called the approach "extremely risky."

Testing Tesla

Earlier this month, California resident Tad Park said another Tesla enthusiast would like to test "fully self-driving" with his child. See you thinking, two kids. Park told CNN Business that it was "a bit of a challenge" to get his wife to agree. She agreed when he promised to drive the car.

"I'm not going to push the boundaries because my kids are more valuable to me than anything else," Park said. "I'm not going to risk their lives."

Park's test, unlike O'Dowd's test, made the Tesla he start at 0 mph. did. Tesla stopped at all of Park's tests in front of his two children involved in the video, including a 5-year-old. Park said he didn't feel comfortable doing a 40 mph high-speed test with his kids like O'Dowd did with a mannequin.

Toronto resident Franklin Kadamlo created a child-like 'Box Boy' made out of an old Amazon cardboard box. "Don't blame me for what the car does or doesn't do.

His Tesla slowed down as he approached the 'box boy. Then he picked up speed again and hit a cardboard mannequin. Kadamuro speculated that this may have been because the camera was short so he could not see the box coming right in front of the bumper and short he forgot the box was there.

A human baby learns that invisible objects still exist at about eight months, many years before he gets his driver's license. But some artificial intelligence systems, like Tesla's "fully self-driving," may not yet have this ability. Another Tesla fan found similar results.

Kadamuro said his videos started as entertainment. But he wanted people to know that "fully autonomous" isn't perfect.

"I find that many people have two extreme thoughts about the 'fully self-driving' beta," he said. "People like Dan think it's the worst thing in the world. I know some friends who think it's almost perfect." , said it also conducted other tests in which Tesla moved at high speeds and effectively maneuvered around a "box boy."

According to Raj Rajkumar, a professor of research at Carnegie Mellon University, the computer vision system that Tesla cars rely on is more capable of sensing things like young children than sensing large objects or adults. Detecting small objects quickly and accurately would generally be more difficult. Self-driving car.

The more pixels an object occupies in the camera image, the more information the system needs to detect features and identify the object. The system is also influenced by the data it is trained on, such as how many small child images it is exposed to.

"Computers with machine learning His vision is not 100% foolproof," he says Rajkumar. "Just like with any disease diagnosis, there are always false positives and false negatives."

Tesla did not respond to requests for comment and does not typically engage with his media outlets.

"Wild West Chaos Rules"

Following criticism from his Tesla fans for his first test, O'Dowdannounced another Video released.

Some Tesla supporters had criticized O'Dowd for using cones as his lane markings in his first test. Others claimed that O'Dowd's test driver forced Tesla to press the accelerator and bang the mannequin, but that wasn't shown in the video released by O'Dowd. He also pointed out that a blurry message was displayed on the Tesla car's screen as an indication that Tesla was pushing the accelerator to test it.

O'Dowd told CNN Business that the blurry message referred to unavailability of supercharging and uneven tire wear. CNN Business didn't provide a clearer video of what happened inside the car with O'Dowd during the test, so we couldn't independently confirm what the message was saying.

In a second video, O'Dowd tested in a residential neighborhood without cones and showed the inside of a Tesla, including his accelerator pedal. Tesla, like O'Dowd's other tests, crashed into a child mannequin.

In an interview with CNN Business earlier this year, O'Dowd lamented the lack of an industry testing body to test code for "fully self-driving cars." The U.S. government does not haveperformance standards for autonomous driver assistance technologies likeAutopilot.

O'Dowd is the founder of the Dawn Project, an effort to make computers safe for humanity. He ran for U.S. Senate this year in a campaign focused solely on his criticism of “fully self-driving cars,” but was unsuccessful.

NHTSA is currently investigating Tesla's driver assistance technology, so changes may come first.

"The software that controls the lives of billions of people in self-driving cars has to be the best software ever created," said O'Dowd. says. "We're using absolute wild west chaos rules, and we've got some pretty scary stuff."

116}