Automotive Hot News

Tesla autopilot will soon recognize traffic signals

SIM racing now, driverless Robo race cars next
SIM racing now, driverless Robo race cars next

Tesla CEO Elon Musk retweeted a tweet saying “The next Autopilot update will stop for red lights and stop signs automatically" — this was a reference to the following short video by Out of Spec Motoring that shows a Tesla Model 3 Autopilot display showing the car stopping for red lights and stop signs.

Tesla teased the stop signs and red lights visualizations in the final software update of last year i.e. the feature-packed 2019.40.50 firmware version — this was just the ‘preview’ of this FSD feature that is now due in the next update.

An offshoot of F1 has been the Robo Race cars where development teams are experimenting with driverless race cars. F1 cars are already 99% engineer and 1% driver. Each year autonomous software takes another step toward their end game of eliminating the 1% driver and making the sport 100% engineering.

The Tesla Model 3 showing the actual function in the below video must have been enrolled in the Tesla Early Access Program (EAP) that allows a select group of Tesla owners to experience and test the latest firmware updates before they go on wide release to the entire Tesla fleet, however, several FSD features are limited to the United States and North American due to regulatory issues in Europe and elsewhere.

We can witness that the Tesla vehicle in the below video sees the red lights from a good distance and shows a red line approaching the car way before reaching the red or green lights and automatically brakes at the red signal resulting in a complete stop.

If Tesla deploys the “Recognize and respond to traffic lights and stop signs" feature in the next over-the-air software update, there will only one feature left in the list of the FSD features which is “Automatic driving on city streets" and this one will be the toughest but whenever it rolls out Elon Musk’s dream of a Robotaxi fleet will be closer than ever, a final disruption sentence to legacy auto manufacturers.