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

 

[Gbills]

Today it’ll touch that yellow line on some maneuver, and tomorrow it won’t. On the same stretch of road sometimes it’ll take the very slight curve a little too close to the curb and concrete median on the left or conversely swing too far into the bike lane on the right side and I end up taking over; other days it drives through perfectly. The unpredictability is the real safety issue IMO. I doubt v11 will improve much on that and we’ll all need HW4 with higher-res cameras and faster processing for improved predictability

And cameras repositioning to eliminate blind spots etc etc

 

[JulienW]

Now that it is Friday what are the odds of V11.3 being released this weekend? I'm putting my money on a SURE thing. "Next week or so".

 

[aronth5]

Now that it is Friday what are the odds of V11.3 being released this weekend? I'm putting my money on a SURE thing. "Next week or so".

My guess is you'll see a few YouTube influencers get the update prior to investors day next week.

 

[willow_hiller]

My guess is you'll see a few YouTube influencers get the update prior to investors day next week.

If Teslascope's last announcement on v11.3 is correct, they're expecting to release it as a part of the current mainstream 2023.2 branch. That fact doesn't give us an exact indication of when it might release, but it does mean it's likely it's the very next thing the AP team is planning on releasing. And if FSDb gets merged back into the mainstream firmware versions at this point, it might be the next firmware release overall.

 

[kabin]

There's a very simple explanation: yellow lines don't matter unless there's a safety risk. If fsdb simply touches a yellow line with no cars around, that's a non-issue. Humans do it all the time in all sorts of situations (turns, sharp curves, passing, avoiding debris, etc. etc.).

If we're going to critique fsdb's every nuance, we'll never get anywhere. We should be pointing out real safety issues.

Tesla even mentions V11's new ability to bias all over the lane for all sorts of reasons: turns, debris, road blockage, etc. You can definitely expect V11 to be less "centered" and more free-flowing, which is a welcome change for some and a regression for others.

Let me see if I can wrap the irony of those thoughts. It some how makes sense for FSD to shift within a lane to maximize distance from a safely driven truck in an adjacent lane and yet be unable to maintain a safe distance from the road edge in a turn with stationary fixed concrete obstacles at near freeway speeds. Nope, that doesn't come close to passing the sniff test.

There's nothing wrong with critiquing the slop of an effort that's been FSD.

 

[legendsk]

Now that it is Friday what are the odds of V11.3 being released this weekend? I'm putting my money on a SURE thing. "Next week or so".

That seems like upping the urgency a little? And here I was just getting used to "two weeks. . . . . . . . .".

 

[GSP]

There's a very simple explanation: yellow lines don't matter unless there's a safety risk. If fsdb simply touches a yellow line with no cars around, that's a non-issue. Humans do it all the time in all sorts of situations (turns, sharp curves, passing, avoiding debris, etc. etc.).

If we're going to critique fsdb's every nuance, we'll never get anywhere. We should be pointing out real safety issues.

Tesla even mentions V11's new ability to bias all over the lane for all sorts of reasons: turns, debris, road blockage, etc. You can definitely expect V11 to be less "centered" and more free-flowing, which is a welcome change for some and a regression for others.

This.

Many customers ask for Tesla to improve their FSD experience, but this can come later. For now, improving safety as much as possible is a better goal. I too would like FSD to drive better, especially to be more comfortable for passengers. However, patience is a virtue, and a necessary one with FSD.

My working hypothesis is that Tesla’s FSD team is focused on improving the safety statistics of drivers using FSD, and carefully releasing features with the goal of increasing safety compared to previous sw release, and non-FSD driving. They share the statisitcs with NHTSA and other regulators, and frame the overarching goal of FSD to reduce accidents and injuries. Again, this is just my working hypothesis.

Behaviors that annoy drivers can help them stay hyper-attenitive. This helps safety vs. normal driving, where drivers often ”tune out” and pay only minimal attention to driving.

GSP

 

[GSP]

We're starting to see videos of V11 in traffic. His camera seems to be overexposed as the sun doesn't seem to be low enough to cause terrible glare. There was a quick transition from brightness to shadow but is it enough to fail to negotiate a turn? Maybe they need to add more turn offset magic pixie dust. More likely it's an indication of system latency.

It appeared to me that at the end FSD handeled an intersection with a non-functional stoplight. It seemed to handle it well.

GSP

 

[powertoold]

I don't know how Tesla will be able to solve this speed limit issue with the NHTSA breathing down their necks.

I was driving to and from San Francisco yesterday, and there were stretches entering and exiting the city where everyone was driving 15-20mph over the limit (if you've driven 101 into and out of SF, you know what I'm talking about).

 

[MarcG]

I was driving to and from San Francisco yesterday, and there were stretches entering and exiting the city where everyone was driving 15-20mph over the limit (if you've driven 101 into and out of SF, you know what I'm talking about).

Yeah the speed limit goes from 65 to 50 mph, and my AP under recent FSD beta releases always slows down a LOT at that point, which is super annoying as everyone else still goes well above the limit.

 

[powertoold]

Yeah the speed limit goes from 65 to 50 mph, and my AP under recent FSD beta releases always slows down a LOT at that point, which is super annoying as everyone else still goes well above the limit.

Yea and there are people here (and NHTSA) complaining about how fsdb reduces speed too slowly.

 

[boonedocks]

I don't know how Tesla will be able to solve this speed limit issue with the NHTSA breathing down their necks.

I was driving to and from San Francisco yesterday, and there were stretches entering and exiting the city where everyone was driving 15-20mph over the limit (if you've driven 101 into and out of SF, you know what I'm talking about).

true everywhere not just the 101 SF.

 

[dramsey]

Now that it is Friday what are the odds of V11.3 being released this weekend? I'm putting my money on a SURE thing. "Next week or so".

I'd say...zero, especially with the NHTSA thing.

If there's one thing I've learned owning Teslas since 2013, it's when Elon says something's a week or so away, it literally never is.

 

[aronth5]

Yea and there are people here (and NHTSA) complaining about how fsdb reduces speed too slowly.

They are often complaining about local speed traps not highways, where police park just after the speed limit sign to up their revenue kitty.

 

[Gbills]

Yea and there are people here (and NHTSA) complaining about how fsdb reduces speed too slowly.

I don’t feel a bit sorry for any driver going 15 to 20 mph over the speed limit.

 

[VanFriscia]

I don’t feel a bit sorry for any driver going 15 to 20 mph over the speed limit.

Yeah, there's a lot of that where I live too. All the more reason to get to AV's sooner! Honestly, if we could just flip a switch and take all human drivers off the road, autonomous driving would be an infinitely easier problem to solve. Then, nobody would need to be concerned about how fast they were going, or how fast the car in front of them was going, or get mad about who had the right of way, etc. This awkward middle ground where both try to coexist sucks. You can't please everybody.

 

[Supcom]

Yeah, there's a lot of that where I live too. All the more reason to get to AV's sooner! Honestly, if we could just flip a switch and take all human drivers off the road, autonomous driving would be an infinitely easier problem to solve. Then, nobody would need to be concerned about how fast they were going, or how fast the car in front of them was going, or get mad about who had the right of way, etc. This awkward middle ground where both try to coexist sucks. You can't please everybody.

It would be interesting to see some videos showing how well multiple Teslas on FSDb play together.

 

[Scott Chapman]

I'm going to venture a guess that 2023.2.12 contains at lest some of the fixes NHTSA is requesting since it seems like Tesla is just flooding download with it at the moment. If that's the case then I guess I would expect the release of V11 broadly to be based on that release.

 

[MP3Mike]

I'm going to venture a guess that 2023.2.12 contains at lest some of the fixes NHTSA is requesting since it seems like Tesla is just flooding download with it at the moment. If that's the case then I guess I would expect the release of V11 broadly to be based on that release.

2023.2.12 is going to non-FSD owners, so it wouldn't have anything to do with the fixes that NHTSA requested.

 

[sleepydoc]

Yeah the speed limit goes from 65 to 50 mph, and my AP under recent FSD beta releases always slows down a LOT at that point, which is super annoying as everyone else still goes well above the limit.

Yea and there are people here (and NHTSA) complaining about how fsdb reduces speed too slowly.

In this case, FSDb’s tendency to reduce the speed too slowly would actually be a benefit. Areas where the expectation is to break the law pose a quandary for FSD. On one hand it’s probably safer not to follow the law, on the other hand programming the system to intentionally break the law isn’t good, either.