FSD Beta v11.x

The next big milestone for FSD is 11. It is a significant upgrade and fundamental changes to several parts of the FSD stack including totally new way to train the perception NN.

From AI day and Lex Fridman interview we have a good sense of what might be included.

- Object permanence both temporal and spatial
- Moving from “bag of points” to objects in NN
- Creating a 3D vector representation of the environment all in NN
- Planner optimization using NN / Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS)
- Change from processed images to “photon count” / raw image
- Change from single image perception to surround video
- Merging of city, highway and parking lot stacks a.k.a. Single Stack

Lex Fridman Interview of Elon. Starting with FSD related topics.

Here is a detailed explanation of Beta 11 in "layman's language" by James Douma, interview done after Lex Podcast.

Here is the AI Day explanation by in 4 parts.

Deep Understanding Tesla FSD Part 1: HydraNet

From Theory to Reality, Analyze the Evolution of Tesla Full Self-Driving

saneryee-studio.medium.com

Here is a useful blog post asking a few questions to Tesla about AI day. The useful part comes in comparison of Tesla's methods with Waymo and others (detailed papers linked).

Twelve Questions about Tesla Autopilot Technologies Exposed at 2021 AI Day

On Aug. 19 2021, Telsa held an AI day , exposing more technologies about Autopilot , from perception, planning, data labeling, simulation…

yuhuang-63908.medium.com

 

[drtimhill]

That's a separate topic, and maybe I'm wrong, but speed limits are a gray area in traffic laws.

In what way gray?

 

[drtimhill]

If the issue was to prevent the car from ever exceeding the speed limit, then all Teslas would need to be recalled.

As would every car ever made, regardless of maker.

 

[drtimhill]

Thankfully that's not what NHTSA is requesting to be changed. This is rare, but I agree with NHTSA on this "recall". The speed change thing (along with everything else mentioned) is so horrid and should not exist.

+1 .. this has been pointed out many times here and on YouTube .. the car slow down profile is WAS too leisurely. I’ve no idea why Tesla didn’t address that earlier (along with a few of the other things the NHTSA called out).

 

[jabloomf1230]

In what way gray?

The gray area (if there is one) is erratic enforcement. It seems like the sheriff allows 10 over on interstates and 5 over everywhere except school zones. And that's only if they are watching. So everyone does 15 and 10 respectively.

 

[drtimhill]

Elon says 11 was planned for this year but was *surprise* delayed. It is in ”alpha” now.

Question is what is alpha … rough with a lot of bugs ? But that is what Beta looks like !

To me alpha sounds like a POC - proof of concept. Significant dev work remains, apart from fixing bugs. Hope we get 11 by this time next year.

Originally, alpha met functionally complete but buggy (“all the bugs are checked in”), and beta meant “we think its bug free but are not sure”, the final stage “release candidate” (and other terms) meant “We this this is the one .. last chanice to find issues before release”.

Then makers who did more public testing started using beta to mean something between alpha and beta because they didn’t want to admit that the software wasn’t ready for use, but wanted to get as many people to test it as possible. These days beta means pretty much nothing except “dont expect it to work properly.”

 

[drtimhill]

The gray area (if there is one) is erratic enforcement. It seems like the sheriff allows 10 over on interstates and 5 over everywhere except school zones. And that's only if they are watching. So everyone does 15 and 10 respectively.

Well yes, but legally any time you drive even 1 mph over the limit you are speeding. Failure to enforce doesnt change the law, the only “gray area” is how well enforced it is. We’ve already seen one stupid example, where the NHTSA got all excited about FSD not rolling across a Stop even it ONLY did it when no cars were detected in ANY direction as far as it could see.

The problem, of course, is that NHTSA is enforcing rules that are designed for the eccentricities of human drivers, not cars.

 

[jabloomf1230]

Well yes, but legally any time you drive even 1 mph over the limit you are speeding. Failure to enforce doesnt change the law, the only “gray area” is how well enforced it is. We’ve already seen one stupid example, where the NHTSA got all excited about FSD not rolling across a Stop even it ONLY did it when no cars were detected in ANY direction as far as it could see.

The problem, of course, is that NHTSA is enforcing rules that are designed for the eccentricities of human drivers, not cars.

Unless policing jurisdictions can prove that radar guns are ±1 mph, I don't think that speed limits will ever be absolute.

 

[sleepydoc]

Unless policing jurisdictions can prove that radar guns are ±1 mph, I don't think that speed limits will ever be absolute.

You’re confusing legality, enforcement and the ability to convict.

 

[Supcom]

Unless policing jurisdictions can prove that radar guns are ±1 mph, I don't think that speed limits will ever be absolute.

If you challenge the radar calibration in court, I suspect the police department can easily produce current calibration data proving accuracy well within that limit. +/-1 mph would be a pretty poor modern radar unit.

 

[Mardak]

They don't want to mix a "recall" with an iffy update

Tesla isn't in a rush to push out FSD Beta updates especially "while not concurring with the agency’s analysis" such as early last year's removal of rolling stops with 10.10.2, which went wide February 17th. Tesla met with NHTSA to discuss January 10th and made a voluntary recall on January 20th, so that's 4 weeks from recall to wide release.

If 11.3 is actually close and already incorporates all/some of the "remedy," Tesla doesn't need to waste time on another 10.69.x release to be replaced soon by 11.x.

 

[bayareaever]

I’ve been a tester for about 16 months and I’m personally glad to hear about this recall as it pertains to unsafely rolling through intersections, assuming it forces Tesla to fix this behavior.

In my neighborhood, fsdb rolls through or even speeds up at faded stops signs, yield signs, and uncontrolled intersections all of which have poor cross-traffic visibility. This problem hasn’t improved at all even with all the other improvements, most of which seem more complicated to address than this one.

It seems so simple: when you approach an intersection, be cautious/slow down unless you know for certain that cross traffic has to stop. How hard can that be to program? Maybe it’s more complicated than I think, but NHTSA obviously agrees.

 

[Mardak]

At this point, it just seems like nhtsa is nitpicking about preferential issues. If the car doesn't adjust to the speed limit fast enough it's a problem

What is fast enough? Will NHTSA require another recall with FSD Beta 11.x highway driving if it doesn't slam on the brakes on the highway if FSD Beta decides to follow a truck speed limit sign? What about all the other driving assist systems that don't even respond to speed limit signs or even other vehicles for basic cruise control? Never slowing down seems like these systems used incorrectly would "increases the risk of a crash."

 

[powertoold]

Except that this isn't "will the cop put down his donuts to pull me over today"

This is your car company is selling illegal vehicles if they are capable of performing the DDT and speeding. There is no gray area there.


That's a pretty massive difference in legal liability you seem to be hand waiving away as "semantics" when it's really not.

Is there any precedent on strict enforcement of speed limits for level 3+ cars?

I don't see the government ever enforcing this because in some situations, the car may need to drive faster than the limit for safety.

For example, Cruise was approved for up to 30mph roads in general (keep in mind that most of SF is 15-25mph limit), nothing to do with the actual speed limit of the car:

DMV Authorizes Cruise to Test Driverless Vehicles in San Francisco - California DMV

Sacramento – The California Department of Motor Vehicles today issued a permit to Cruise LLC, authorizing the company to test driverless vehicles on public roads in San Francisco. While Cruise has had state authority to test autonomous vehicles with safety drivers since 2015, the new permit...

www.dmv.ca.gov

 

[JulienW]

Is there any precedent on strict enforcement of speed limits for level 3+ cars?

I don't see the government ever enforcing this because in some situations, the car may need to drive faster than the limit for safety.

Since the car manufacture is liable they will likely impose strict speed limits since any accident in which the car was speeding opens them up to HUGE lawsuits. Injury attorneys would LOVE this since it would be easy and BIG pocket money.

Unlike in a current accident which often relies on subjective observations about speed an L3 or higher would have quantifiable and quality data that could be analyzed and used in court.

 

[powertoold]

Since the car manufacture is liable they will likely impose a strict speed limits since any accident in which the car was speeding opens them up to HUGE lawsuits.

I understand, but this is a theoretical risk. For example, if the car is able to perceive the environment with high reliability and low latency, then there should be a very low risk of a situation where the car is involved in an accident where it is both speeding and at fault for the accident.

Almost all human speeding-related accidents where the human is at fault is related to human perceptual issues. And when they were grossly speeding. You rarely (me never) hear a news story about speeding accidents where the car is driving only 5 above the limit (where the reporter or the cop specifically points out that speeding was a cause).

 

[VanFriscia]

No. It shouldn't take the vehicle half a mile to slow down from 55 to 35, for example. I frequently force a disengagement due to this so I don't run the risk of getting stopped for speeding. It's quite ridiculous how long this has been this way. I really like how aggressive regular AP is with responding to speed changes, detected or user-defined.

I'd personally prefer something between standard AP & FSDb, leaning towards AP's performance. I've always thought AP was a bit too aggressive in making adjustments - there's no need to feel the slowdown/acceleration to the point where it actually moves your body. It should be able to quickly get to speed in a smooth manner. Unfortunately, FSDb hasn't made a whole lot of progress on "smooth" since its inception.

 

[kabin]

If I'm not mistaken, today might be the end of the week when V11 was to be limited released. At the least I would guess a communication update is pending.

 

[Knightshade]

Is there any precedent on strict enforcement of speed limits for level 3+ cars?

What level 3+ cars do you think have been on the roads in the past to provide one?

The only ones I'm aware of are the various robotaxis from Waymo and friends- all of which to my knowledge strictly obey speed limits.... and indeed the regulations allowing them to operate at all require them to

I don't see the government ever enforcing this because in some situations, the car may need to drive faster than the limit for safety.

For example, Cruise was approved for up to 30mph roads in general (keep in mind that most of SF is 15-25mph limit), nothing to do with the actual speed limit of the car:

Uh... what?

Your link says "The vehicles are designed to operate on roads with posted speed limits not exceeding 30 miles per hour"


Which tells us they expect the car to obey the speed limit but that it's designed to operate at all on any road with a limit above 30.

The fact most roads are lower has nothing to do with anything in the above info other than to tell us it'll be able to operate on most roads. Just not the ones with higher limits. There's NOTHING AT ALL saying it's ok to exceed any posted limit.

Because that's illegal.

There is no "I needed to speed" defense in a court- barring things like medical emergencies.

I understand, but this is a theoretical risk. For example, if the car is able to perceive the environment with high reliability and low latency, then there should be a very low risk of a situation where the car is involved in an accident where it is both speeding and at fault for the accident.

In most states, if the other guy did something wrong to cause the accident, but you were ALSO doing something wrong, you ALSO take on some liability.


Which is- besides the fact it's flat out illegal for them to speed at all- why self driving systems are designed not to speed.

"it's ok for me to break the law because it's totes safe, trust me bro" is ALSO not a valid legal defense.

 

[powertoold]

Your link says "The vehicles are designed to operate on roads with posted speed limits not exceeding 30 miles per hour"

Yes, it is approved to operate on roads with speed limit signs of 30mph less. This has nothing to do with the actual speeds allowed for the car software. It would have been very simple for the DMV to include "not allowed to exceed any posted speed limits" in the stipulations.

Once again, I don't think the government will enforce actual speed limits in the software. They'll let the company decide its risk tolerance and let police enforce limits if needed.

 

[Goose66]

If 11.3 is actually close and already incorporates all/some of the "remedy," Tesla doesn't need to waste time on another 10.69.x release to be replaced soon by 11.x.

The problem is that when and what will be released to all FSDb in the v11 family is still an unknown to Telsa (yes, even the almighty Elon doesn't know), so rolling out a point release on 10.69.x is more predictable and can be done in parallel with ongoing internal v11 "testing" and phased rollout. I expect to see a 10.69.x point release here, assuming Tesla just doesn't punt and disable FSDb (temporarily, I would assume) for all non-internal testers.