this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
1175 points (99.5% liked)

Not The Onion

14986 readers
2709 users here now

Welcome

We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!

The Rules

Posts must be:

  1. Links to news stories from...
  2. ...credible sources, with...
  3. ...their original headlines, that...
  4. ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”

Please also avoid duplicates.

Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.

And that’s basically it!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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!

(page 3) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 104 points 17 hours ago (35 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.

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 61 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

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 :)

[–] ArchAengelus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 9 hours ago

Front-facing radar is the bare minimum needed to pass the test given (fake-road wall). Many vehicles use it for adaptive cruise control, and radar is even faster than either cameras or lidar for figuring out the range to an object. 1000 Hz measuring distance to an object is enough to find both the relative velocity and the acceleration of another object. This provides enough time to apply the brakes safely when approaching a vehicle or obstacle

LIDAR is even better, and also more compute intensive and expensive to install.

I think Tesla was very short-sighted in removing radar sensors, certainly. If they hadn’t, they could’ve spent more of their energy on making the FSD cars better instead of just making them sufficiently safe with insufficient sensors

[–] vin@lemmynsfw.com 24 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (7 children)

Forget lidar, they don't even have mature tech like radar for emergency braking. Edit: +even

load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments (33 replies)
[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

They sound like they’re perfect for red states

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 122 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (6 children)
[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 89 points 17 hours ago (9 children)

"But humans can do it with their eyes!" - says the man not selling a human brain to go with the optical sensors

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 30 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

The day I heard that was the day I realized he's a fucking idiot and I wanted nothing to do with his cars/tech.

Judging by how things have turned out...damn was that a good decision lmao

[–] QuarterSwede@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago

Absolutely the same timing for me. That was a big, oh that’s his logic?, moment.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] blackluster117@sh.itjust.works 50 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Still think LIDAR is inferior to computer vision, Elon?

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip -1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (4 children)

The question is could this fool a human

Also I went and watched the video and he doesn't seem to even use full self driving for the wall test

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] cmhe@lemmy.world 21 points 15 hours ago (9 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.

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] Rozauhtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone 28 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

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

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] regrub@lemmy.world 34 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

I would say that it's a good idea to paint more tunnels on walls, but then I remember how dumb human drivers are too

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›