AUTONOMY: Former Head Of Tesla AI Explains Why They’ve Removed Sensors; Others Differ.
In a recent interview, Andrej Karpathy, who formerly was head of AI for Tesla’s Autopilot and FSD products, outlined their reasoning behind removing both the radar and ultrasonics from Tesla cars, as well as never using LIDAR or maps. While Elon Musk is best known for making statements on this, Karpathy was his go-to guy on backing up that reasoning. Karpathy raised eyebrows, however, when earlier this year he took a sabbatical from the job and eventually announced he would leave it.
Karpathy’s main points:
Extra sensors add cost to the system, and more importantly complexity. They make the software task harder, and increase the cost of all the data pipelines. They add risk and complexity to the supply chain and manufacturing.
Elon Musk pushes a philosophy of “the best part is no part” which can be seen throughout the car in things like doing everything through the touchscreen. This is an expression of this philosophy.
Vision is necessary to the task (which almost all agree on) and it should also be sufficient as well. If it is sufficient, the cost of extra sensors and tools outweighs their benefit.
Sensors change as parts change or become available and unavailable. They must be maintained and software adapted to these changes. They must also be calibrated to make fusion work properly.
Having a fleet gathering more data is more important than having more sensors.
Having to process LIDAR and radar produces a lot of bloat in the code and data pipelines. He predicts other companies will also drop these sensors in time.
Mapping the world and keeping it up to date is much too expensive. You won’t change the world with this limitation, you need to focus on vision which is the most important. The roads are designed to be interpreted with vision.
I get it: If cameras and radar/lidar are always going to agree, why have both? If they disagree, you have to have algorithms for deciding which one is right. It’s a rational approach, though I’m more of a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy.