this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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Mark Rober just set up one of the most interesting self-driving tests of 2025, and he did it by imitating Looney Tunes. The former NASA engineer and current YouTube mad scientist recreated the classic gag where Wile E. Coyote paints a tunnel onto a wall to fool the Road Runner.

Only this time, the test subject wasn’t a cartoon bird… it was a self-driving Tesla Model Y.

The result? A full-speed, 40 MPH impact straight into the wall. Watch the video and tell us what you think!

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[–] Ghyste@sh.itjust.works 255 points 15 hours ago (9 children)

I seem to recall that fElon prevented the self driving team from utilizing LIDAR for any part of the system, instead demanding that everything run off of optical input. Does anyone else remember the same?

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Yes. He took too much inspiration from Stanford University’s “Stanley” winning the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005. This was an early completion to build viable autonomous vehicles. Most of them looked like tanks covered in radar dishes but Stanford would up taking home the gold with just an SUV with cameras on it.

It was an impressive achievement in computer vision, and the LiDAR-encrusted vehicles wound up looking like over-complex dinosaurs. There’s a great documentary about it narrated by John Lithgow (who, throughout it, pronounces the word robot as “ro-butt”). Elon watched it, made up his mind, and like a moron, hasn’t changed it in 20 years. I’m almost Musk’s age so I know how the years speed up as we go on. He probably thinks about the Stanford win as something that happened relatively recently. Especially with his mind on - ahem - other things, he’s not keeping up with recent developments out in the real world.

Rober just made Musk look like the absolute tool he is. And I’m a little worried that we may see people out there staging real world versions of this somehow with actual dangerous obstacles, not a cartoonish foam wall.

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 1 points 2 hours ago

I did low-key get the squiggles before writing the article. I thought, from an ethical hacking disclosure-type perspective, that this info might cause folks to... well, ya know, paint tunnels on walls.

Then I looked, the cat was already out of the bag, the video had something like 5 million views on it in the 4 hours it took me to draft the article. So I shared it, but I definitely did have that thought cross my mind. I am also a little worried on that score.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Tesla never had LIDAR. That's the little spinny thing you see on Waymo cars. They had RADAR, and yes it was removed in 2021 due to supply shortages and just...never reinstalled.

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

It was removed due to supply chain, but Musk did seem to legitimately think optical only was better.

[–] SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 22 points 10 hours ago

Yes, I recall at the time experts saying it was a terrible mistake and Elon saying Machine learning will bridge the gap.

The real reason was to increase margins.

[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 159 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Was just thinking this

A single LiDAR sensor prevents this kind of issue

[–] truthfultemporarily@feddit.org 10 points 9 hours ago

Indeed there is a lidar car in the video and it works way better in many scenarios.

[–] Ghyste@sh.itjust.works 14 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I'm trying to find an article that covers what I remember but I know for sure that it's been a good while since I saw the info I recall. Hopefully I can dig something up.

[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 54 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (3 children)

What's cool is that Teslas used to have radar sensors, at least, but Elon removed them from production to save money. Even if you have a car from back then, the software no longer uses them and they'll just physically unplug them the next time you have the car serviced, as it's just a drain on the battery at this point 🙃

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 27 points 12 hours ago

meanwhile our subaru has lidar for adaptive cruise control and emergency braking

[–] medicsofanarchy@lemmy.world 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

they’ll just physically unplug them the next time you have the car serviced

So, (looks at watch), in an hour?

[–] levzzz@lemmy.world 5 points 10 hours ago

So did they unplug it

[–] Arbiter@lemmy.world 57 points 15 hours ago (4 children)

Iirc they were using a combination of lidar and radar, but Elmo wanted to cut costs.

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 11 points 9 hours ago

Cameras and radar, I believe. Never lidar.

[–] cyd@lemmy.world 28 points 12 hours ago

Funny thing is, the price of lidar is dropping like a stone; they are projected to be sub-$200 per unit soon. The technical consensus seems to be settling in on 2 or 3 lidars per car plus optical sensors, and Chinese EV brands are starting to provide self driving in baseline models, with lidars as part of the standard package.

[–] ieatpwns@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Did he want to cut costs or did he want a network of cameras at his control all over the world?

[–] thejml@lemm.ee 7 points 8 hours ago
[–] Ghyste@sh.itjust.works 9 points 15 hours ago

Ah okay. I was genuinely curious if I was remembering correctly because I definitely know it's been awhile since I'd read anything on the subject.

[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 5 points 10 hours ago

Is that just to cover his ass cuz he was promising backwards-compatible FSD for models that don’t have LIDAR?

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 20 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I remember there being claims from him or his team about lidar being a dead end that would not scale as well as computer vision.

[–] IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world 20 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

I believe he claimed that since humans use their vision to drive that computer vision was more than enough.

I don’t know about you, but I also rely on sounds & feel when I drive. I also know that the human eye has evolved to detect motion, filter out extraneous information, and send just the important bits to the brain so that it doesn’t get overloaded with everything the eye sees. Computer vision is the exact opposite from that, having to process every bit of every image the camera sees.

[–] theterrasque@infosec.pub 10 points 9 hours ago

since humans use their vision to drive that computer vision was more than enough

Surprised he didn't swap out the wheels with legs while he was at it

[–] bluGill@fedia.io 20 points 11 hours ago

I also know of many times my vision fails. Driving into a sunrise for example

[–] JimVanDeventer@lemmy.world 5 points 10 hours ago

I don’t know about you, but I also rely on sounds & feel when I drive.

Of course. When I feel myself driving into a wall, I stop immediately.

[–] Ghyste@sh.itjust.works 6 points 14 hours ago

Yep! That's what I'm thinking of. It was Elmo. The real engineers objected.

[–] kokesh@lemmy.world 11 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Came here to actually write this. Everyone remembers that. He made Tesler the hated shit it is today.

[–] Ghyste@sh.itjust.works 8 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

As a space nut I seriously hope that he never gets a chance to do anything similar with SpaceX. Thankfully he's mostly been kept away from important things thus far.

Don't get me wrong, I know SpaceX's closet is overflowing with skeletons. But since Congress has been so kind as to continuously cut NASA's budget for the last few decades, I have to rely on SpaceX and other private companies to keep our space endeavors going.

[–] kokesh@lemmy.world 6 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I'm (was) huge SpaceX nerd, but last year or so I'm less and less. He always was dumb narcissist asshole, but now I can't take it anymore. Also the idea that we've fucked up this planet and need to move somewhere else, by doing thousands of launches finishing this planet always made me sick. If someone would take him out, I probably would come back to liking the company.

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 hours ago

To the famously already fucked planet Mars, no less.