WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF
- With over sixty percent of the American public either against, or nervous about getting into a self driving car more manufacturers are trying to demystify them by showing them what’s going on under the hood
Tesla recently released a video that demonstrates, in real time, what the company’s Autopilot software ‘sees’ when it’s driving without any driver involvement. While we often talk about self-driving cars and a future where humans will be able to read books while their car whisks them off to work, it’s easy to overlook the incredible amount of advanced technology that goes into self-driving automotive software.
Tesla’s latest video, though, helps show us what an Autopilot trip looks like from the car’s perspective. As you’ll see in the video below, we see a Tesla navigate in and around local roads while the right-hand pane of the video provides us with three live feeds of the car’s many camera systems, including leftward and rightward cameras on the back and a medium range camera on the front.
What makes Tesla’s new video particularly enthralling though is that they specifically demonstrate what the company’s vaunted Autopilot software sees in real time. We see how a Tesla in Autopilot mode is able to identify upcoming objects, whether they’re pedestrians, cars or even street signs. All the while, as you can see, the Tesla Model S is more than capable of efficiently handling sharp turns and staying on route with ease.