Things Tesla won’t tell you about Robotaxi (Highlights)

Driving Performance

🚗 Q: How does Tesla's Robo Taxi handle distance judgment?
A: Tesla's Robo Taxi has issues judging distance to the front of the car, struggling in situations with ample clearance and relying on the front bumper camera.

🌧️ Q: How does the Robo Taxi perform in rainy conditions?
A: Tesla's Robo Taxi has made significant improvements in handling rain and hydroplaning, driving confidently and smoothly in heavy rain without requiring assistance.

🛑 Q: How does the Robo Taxi handle blocked routes?
A: The Robo Taxi demonstrates impressive rerouting capabilities, finding new paths when exits are blocked and making right-hand turns to circumvent blocked left-hand turn lanes.

Adaptive Behavior

🚦 Q: How does the Robo Taxi adapt to traffic situations?
A: It shows human-like behavior by slowing down dramatically to enter the right-hand lane when a slower vehicle is ahead, and can accelerate and speed up to overtake slower vehicles.

💧 Q: How does the Robo Taxi handle standing water?
A: The Robo Taxi demonstrates adaptability by avoiding standing water in parking lots, performing three-point turns to navigate around obstacles.

🔄 Q: How flexible is the Robo Taxi in changing its driving approach?
A: It shows impressive adaptability by altering its method to slow down when encountering slower vehicles and changing again to make right-hand turns around blocked left-hand turn lanes.

Technical Considerations

📷 Q: Is the front bumper camera crucial for the Robo Taxi's operation?
A: The front bumper camera is not as crucial as believed, with its absence not being a deal-breaker for unsupervised operation, as humans have similar blind spots.

🚘 Q: What's more important than specific sensors for a self-driving car's success?
A: The overall behavior and interpretation of road users are far more critical than the presence of specific sensors like the front bumper camera.

Safety and Monitoring

👀 Q: Who controls the Robo Taxi's stops in unclear situations?
A: The safety monitor in the passenger seat likely stops the car from moving forward when hazards are present, as seen when objects are placed in front of the car.

Lane Management

🛣️ Q: How does the Robo Taxi handle lane changes?
A: The Robo Taxi has issues with lane changes, sometimes entering turn lanes too early and correcting itself at the last moment.

User Experience

🎯 Q: How does the Robo Taxi perform in terms of user expectations?
A: Tesla's Robo Taxi has shown impressive behavior, doing exactly what people expect with confidence in various driving scenarios.

Autonomous Capabilities

🚗 Tesla's Robo Taxi operates as a fully driverless and unsupervised autonomous vehicle, utilizing advanced full self-driving technology.

🧠 The Robo Taxi demonstrates real intelligence by predicting scenarios and smoothly controlling for unexpected human driver behaviors better than most human drivers.

🌧️ Robo Taxi can confidently navigate heavy rain and flooded streets without requiring assistance, showcasing a major improvement over current full self-driving versions.

Adaptive Behavior

🔄 Robo Taxi can dynamically adjust pickup locations and find spots to avoid blocking traffic, displaying more advanced behavior than current autonomous vehicles.

🛣️ The vehicle can reroute before updating navigation when encountering blocked exits, demonstrating a significant advantage of the technology.

🚦 Robo Taxi exhibits human-like behavior in difficult situations, such as performing a full crawl to enter a right-hand lane without disrupting traffic flow.

Safety and Implementation

👁️ The front bumper camera is not currently utilized in Robo Taxi operations, as confirmed through testing with a carry-on placed directly in front of the vehicle.

🛡️ A safety monitor is present in the passenger seat to ensure safe technology rollout, but may be removed once the front bumper camera is implemented.

Technological Insights

🔧 The Robo Taxi's full self-driving version is essentially an improved version of version 13, which can run on all Tesla models, including those without the front bumper camera.

📸 The absence of a front bumper camera is not crucial for unsupervised operation, as humans have similar blind spots and are still allowed to drive.

Learning and Improvement

📚 Robo Taxi demonstrates the ability to learn from mistakes and avoid repeating them in the same location, indicating ongoing improvement in handling difficult situations.

Human Factors

🚶 During a 4-day testing period in Austin, human drivers were identified as the primary danger on the road, often engaging in unsafe behaviors like running red lights or swerving into lanes.

• 00:00 🚗 A YouTube creator stress-tested Tesla's Robotaxi, revealing its impressive adaptability, navigation capabilities, and quirks, showcasing both its potential and areas for improvement.
  • The speaker took 69 rides in Tesla's Robotaxi, stress testing its capabilities and identifying weaknesses, even temporarily banning a pickup location and confirming theories about its technology.
  • The creator had a surreal experience testing Robotaxi, finding it more polished than expected, particularly with impressive on-the-fly pickup and drop-off adjustments.
  • Tesla's Robotaxi demonstrates impressive adaptability by adjusting its pickup location on the fly when faced with obstacles, such as blocked roads or no parking, to find a safe and suitable alternative.
  • The Tesla Robotaxi navigates traffic flow well, avoiding situations that put the rider in harm's way or obstruct traffic, even outperforming human-driven ride-share vehicles in some instances.
  • The speaker discovered and tested several quirks in Tesla's Robotaxi, including automatic window roll-up, unlocked driver's door, and passenger behavior when falling asleep, which can potentially be fixed with software updates.
• 04:28 🤖 Tesla's Robotaxi showcases advanced AI capabilities, handling complex driving scenarios and prioritizing passenger safety, even addressing and checking on them during rides.
  • Riding a Robotaxi instills trust as it has a consistent, reliable "driver" that can predict scenarios better than most human drivers, allowing passengers to feel safe enough to even fall asleep during the ride.
  • The RoboTaxi smoothly handles complex driving scenarios, such as merging vehicles and lane changes, by anticipating and reacting to human driver behavior.
  • The speaker pretended to be asleep in a Robotaxi to test its reaction, and after 2 minutes, the vehicle's system addressed them with a simple "Hello".
  • A Tesla Robotaxi stops and inquires when a passenger fails to exit at their destination, showing concern for their well-being.
• 08:09 🤖 Tesla's Robotaxi is nearing true autonomy but still has issues with judging distances, navigating tight spaces, and misinterpreting surroundings.
  • The speaker shares a personal experience with Delete Me, a service that removes personal information from data broker websites, and finds their dedication to keeping data deleted impressive.
  • The video sponsor, Delete Me, offers 20% off consumer plans using a special link or QR code.
  • Tesla's RoboTaxi still requires a safety monitor in the passenger seat, but the speaker feels safe even without one, suggesting it's nearing true autonomy.
  • Tesla's Robotaxi has trouble judging distances, misinterpreting its surroundings, and sometimes refuses to enter certain spaces, even when cameras show clear room to maneuver.
  • Tesla's Robotaxi struggles with simple situations, such as navigating around obstacles in tight spaces, despite having sufficient clearance and competent performance in other areas of driving.
• 12:19 🤖 Tesla's Robotaxi has safety and navigation issues, relying on its safety monitor rather than cameras to detect obstacles, and exhibiting problems with lane changes and navigation.
  • The experimenter believes the Tesla Robotaxi relies on the safety monitor, not the front bumper camera, to detect obstacles, as demonstrated by its behavior in response to a carry-on being placed in front of the car.
  • The safety monitor of a Robotaxi experiment witnessed the creator's test, who apologized for it and theorized that a button serves as an emergency stop.
  • Tesla's Robotaxi likely has similar issues as version 13, including incorrect lane changes and navigation problems, such as entering the wrong lane too early or making unnecessary lane changes.
• 15:03 🤖 Tesla's Robotaxi is a advanced full self-driving system that can work on all cars, even without a front bumper camera, and navigates complex traffic situations confidently like a human driver.
  • The Robotaxi version of full self-driving may be compatible with all cars, including those without a front bumper camera, like some Model Y's, at least on hardware 3.
  • Robotaxis can exist without a front bumper camera, as evidenced by its current functionality, and its absence is not a deal-breaker.
  • Tesla's Robotaxi behaves confidently and interpretably, similar to human drivers, rarely surprising or annoying other road users, likely due to its training on human driving data.
  • Tesla's Robotaxi navigates complex traffic situations by adjusting its speed and lane positioning to safely maneuver around slow-moving vehicles.
  • Tesla's Robotaxi demonstrates advanced navigation by rerouting in real-time to avoid obstacles, such as blocked exits and congested lanes, without hesitation.
• 19:37 🤖 Tesla's Robotaxi showcases impressive autonomous driving capabilities in challenging conditions, but exhibits unusual behavior suggesting possible remote operation and imperfect AI decision-making.
  • Tesla's Full Self-Driving technology impressively handled a difficult driving situation and performed well in rain, showcasing advancements made by the Tesla AI team.
  • The speaker observed a Tesla Robotaxi navigate through heavy rain and flooded streets, showcasing its capability, and also shared some minor issues with geofencing and drop-off locations.
  • Tesla's Robotaxi exhibits unusual behavior, such as backing up consistently and stopping short of a drive-thru, suggesting possible remote operation rather than fully autonomous driving.
  • Tesla's Robotaxi autonomous car made a mistake by reversing through a drive-thru but handled it perfectly by slowly reversing out and never repeated the mistake in multiple subsequent attempts.
  • The speaker believes Robotaxi's seemingly improved full self-driving capabilities between updates may be due to randomness in its decision-making process, a byproduct of neural networks.
• 24:37 🚗 Tesla's Robotaxi shows impressive capabilities in handling difficult situations, but also reveals inconsistencies and safety concerns, particularly with human error and technical issues.
  • Tesla's Robotaxi can detect and avoid areas marked as hazardous, such as standing water, and can also be manually programmed to avoid certain areas.
  • Tesla's remote support team experienced technical difficulties while trying to assist a Robotaxi issue, resulting in a lengthy wait with no communication.
  • The conversation considers alternatives to a Robotaxi ride, including canceling and reordering the ride or having it recover the vehicle.
  • Tesla's Robotaxi system sometimes requires safety monitors to intervene, but in this case, it eventually figured out a way to exit a parking lot without one, possibly through remote operation.
  • Tesla's Robotaxi had issues navigating through water, taking a 220ft route, and despite improvements, still showed inconsistent behavior on subsequent rides.
  • The speaker was impressed with Tesla's RoboTaxi, citing its ability to handle difficult situations, but noted that the biggest threat to its safety is other humans on the road who are not paying attention or driving recklessly.
• 31:00 🤖 Tesla's Robotaxi may not be perfect, but it's promising to be much safer than average human drivers despite FSD's struggles with certain scenarios.
  • Tesla's Full Self-Driving struggles to recognize and avoid cars drifting into its lane, particularly those driven by inattentive drivers.
  • Robotaxi doesn't need to be perfect to be much safer than average human drivers, and its ability to handle random events on the road is promising.

WatchUrl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVqIkyDtxxo