A new Tesla video shows how the electric car company’s forthcoming autonomous hardware might avoid crashing into objects when it’s launched at the end of 2017.
On Saturday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk shared a video that showed how Tesla’s Hardware 2 will utilize the radar detection system to “see” the world and identify other cars and objects on the road.
Leaving your life in the hands of a computer might sound like a risky proposition to some, but there’s a lot of technology at play to make the experience as safe as possible. When Musk announced the feature in October, he explained that the Hardware 2 platform would combine advanced radar and cameras to see things even the human eye could not detect.
The feature is an expansion of the existing Autopilot mode, which allows for simple highway driving and lane switching, but the advanced nature of full autonomy means the company is holding off releasing the self-driving mode until it can perfect it with as much data as possible.
Set to the tune of “Paint It Black” by the Rolling Stones, the split-screen video offers a view of how a Tesla will navigate a highway:
As shown in the video, the system is working in real-time to distinguish between objects in and out of the path of the car, as well as road signs, lane markers, direction of travel, road flow, and the car’s direction of motion.
That’s a lot of data to crunch through, so although the detection system is working fine in the video, it’s understandable that Tesla doesn’t want to rush the feature out the door.
