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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To any artists in Austin,TX: you have your work cut out for you. Godspeed.

[–] kane@femboys.biz 2 points 18 minutes ago

Can this be solved with just cameras, or would this need additional hardware? I know they removed LIDAR, but thought that would only be effective short range, and would not be too helpful at 65 km/h.

[–] arankays@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

I tried Waymo when I was visiting LA a few months ago. Genuinely terrific stuff.

I do not trust Teslas one bit though.

[–] kenoh@lemm.ee 2 points 28 minutes ago

Tesla doesn't use lidar for its sensing, living on the prayer that AI will just get good enough soon enough. Absolutely galaxy brained decision.

[–] melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 minutes ago

waymo's have almost hit me like three times, and if i were slower, they would have. you are part of the problem. those are killing machines.

[–] Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org 43 points 3 hours ago

TIL Mark Rober is a domestic terrorist

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 61 points 5 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 7 points 2 hours ago

Im glad Luigi & Wile are on the same side.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 189 points 7 hours ago (4 children)

OMFG someone test to see if Teslas stop to eat free bird seed.

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[–] cmhe@lemmy.world 23 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

I am a bit disappointed to not see the Tesla crash into a real wall. I feel a bit click baited here.

Also, they prepared the polystyrene wall to break this cartoonishly, but still played on being surprised.

[–] SippyCup@feddit.nl 3 points 2 hours ago

Is such depressing cynicism fun for you?

[–] tiramichu@lemm.ee 54 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

The purpose of the video is to test a hypothesis, not to total a car.

Mark Rober is a youtuber sure, and some of the stuff he does is to feed the algorithm. But he's also an engineer, and that involves experimentation and a good dose of science.

Engineers won't set up tests that intentionally destroy their expensive test equipment if they can conduct an equivalent test non-destructively.

[–] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 29 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Did anyone seriously expect it to be a real wall with Rober sitting in the driver's seat?

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 15 points 4 hours ago

Apparently, yes.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 3 points 2 hours ago

Yeah, do YTers not have the money to kill one Tesla?
That seemed like an expensive production, sadly one totaled car couldn't make it.

[–] Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 118 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

It got fucking wile e coyoted

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 62 points 7 hours ago

The scientists in Ireland calling their data set to prevent this exact fucking thing "Coyote" sent me over the moon.

[–] Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 87 points 7 hours ago (10 children)

I saw the video pop up in my Youtube recommended, but didn't bother watching because I just assumed that any cars tested would be using LIDAR and thus would ignore the fake road just fine. I had no idea Tesla a) was still using basic cameras for this and b) actually had sophisticated enough "self driving" capabilities that this could be tested on them safely.

[–] Lukas@feddit.org 126 points 7 hours ago (6 children)

They are not still using cameras but removed LIDAR and radar from their cars during the chip shortage 2020/21. The story they were telling was "humans don't have LIDAR but can drive cars as well, so the cars also only need 'eyes' like humans".

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 hours ago

Small correction here: they never had LIDAR. Cars with LIDAR have big racks on top with a spinny thing measuring the surroundings. Teslas had radar but removed during the chip shortage (and disabled it on existing cars) and acted like it was an improvement. The radar was used for distance keeping on cars and could actually detect the car in front of the car by bouncing signals off the ground, it was really slick.

[–] Undaunted@feddit.org 18 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

That statement of him is not entirely wrong. But we humans have a very powerful bio computer that is perfectly tuned to process those visual inputs in realtime. Until a comparable performance is possible, removing LIDAR is very stupid.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 9 points 3 hours ago

Besides that, in the fog and rain tests a human likely would have killed a kid anyway, and why settle for human limitations when you could be safer?

We absolutely should also have lidar or analogous tech as part of a solution here, even if cameras did manage to get to human level safety.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 73 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Humans cannot, in fact, drive cars well. Humans kill tens of thousands of other humans with cars every year in the US alone.

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 61 points 6 hours ago (11 children)

Yup, cameras and humans share various exploits. Self-driving is going to work better than humans once every car has it and communicates with each other, allowing for minimal gaps even at high speeds, once roads are all very standardized and in a database, and-

Wait, that's trains

Fucking build more electrified high-speed rail and forget tech bros' shitty promises

[–] frank@sopuli.xyz 25 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I was getting mildly outraged and ready to comment how you were re-deriving the train at first. Well played.

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 16 points 5 hours ago

They really had me in the first half, not gonna lie

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[–] gnutrino@programming.dev 6 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

And the really dumb thing is that lots of modern non-selfdriving cars now have lidar sensors to help the humans not crash into things. Musk apparently wants the AI to be working at a disadvantage.

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 82 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

And let me just add, Musk ordered the LIDAR removed against the engineers better judgement.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 8 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Did he have lidar removed? I thought it was radar. I didn't think any Tesla vehicle ever took on the cost of lidar.

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

This is true. There never was LIDAR.

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 33 points 6 hours ago

I'll add that every other self driving car company has a pretty good safety record, specifically because they do use LIDAR and RADAR so they can see better than humans.

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[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 54 points 7 hours ago

They tested a LiDAR rigged car, and it stopped just like you predicted. As of 2021, Tesla uses only cameras for FSD, and not even radar (which my stupid fine Toyota truck has).

They tested the idea safely by building the wall out of styrofoam, or at least that's what it looks like when it blows apart :)

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[–] blackluster117@sh.itjust.works 39 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Still think LIDAR is inferior to computer vision, Elon?

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[–] jet@hackertalks.com 97 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (10 children)
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[–] Rozauhtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone 24 points 6 hours ago

The war against AI will be fought with Looney Tunes bits.

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