This Tesla’s Autopilot System Would Have Been Fine If It Wasn’t For A Pesky Moth
While happily letting Autopilot take care of the driving, a Model S driver was shocked when the autonomous system stopped working. He described the incident on Reddit, saying: “my driver console flashes red and commands me to take control of the vehicle. AP drops off. Cruise control drops off and I get the ominous warning, ‘Radar visibility has been reduced.’”
Pulling into the next fuel station, he soon found the issue: the front radar sensor had been almost entirely covered by a disgustingly large moth. One “quick scrape with the window squeegee” later (not something we want to picture), and Autopilot was resurrected.
The ladies and gents at Tech Insider got in touch with Tesla to see what the company made of the bug splat. Firstly, the company told Tech Insider that hitting such a weirdly large insect in exactly the right place to disable the sensor is an unlikely occurrence (we’re thinking Luke Skywalker Death Star torpedo shot levels of improbability), and secondly, that it wouldn’t happen with one of the new facelifted cars. The reason? Because the sensor now sits behind the redesigned, fake grille-less bumper instead of in front of it, safe from any moth strikes.
Source: Reddit via Tech Insider
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
#blamethemoth
I’d have a hard time seeing too if a moth that big hit my windshield.
So true but still… It’s just a moth.
So what they are saying is, if you don’t want this to happen again, then buy a new Tesla…
The moth was behind it all…
Actually the moth was in front of everything. :)
Seems like the tesla autopilot has many bugs
I’ve heard beta software having problems with bugs but this is ridiculous
You joke, but that’s actually literally where the term “bugs in the software” comes from. Back in the early computing days, when you had to manually set on/off switches as 1s and 0s, a professor noticed she was getting strange results and found a moth on one of the switches causing it and removed it. She later wrote on her journal “found the problem and debugged it”, and that’s where we get the phrase.
Nobody here got the joke he wrote bugs as in a problem but meant the insect type of bug.
I don’t think this will ever get old
lol I’m getting one soon, so I need to get a bumper sticker that says “warning: might hit people when leaving car meet” (I won’t but the comedic value would be pretty good)
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I don’t get guys from Tech insider. Why contact tesla? Why this is such a news? Isn’t this obvious that if one of the sensors is faulty the thing would not work? How this was a risk to anything? It worked fine requesting user to take control…
I would have expected it to go “aaaah, CAR!” and slam on the brakes. So yeah, I really don’t see what the fuss is about. Especially since Tesla must have realised this already considering the fact they moved the sensor.
slow clap
Although the moth blocked the sensor causing the autopilot to stop working, Tesla is still amazing because it told the driver to regain control of the car before disengaging the autopilot, and sent several warnings and commands to the driver to unsure there safety, great job Tesla!
Exactly what I was thinking, seems like everything worked as designed.