Tesla Autopilot: All information on the functions, advantages and areas of application of the software, which, according to Tesla, can reduce accidents and form the basis for self-driving cars.
The company name Tesla pays homage to the brilliant inventor
Nikola
Tesla
.
Tesla stands for the mission to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy and break the dependence on fossil fuels.
Tesla Autopilot
was developed as an assistant with semi-autonomous driving and parking functions and, according to Tesla, was not originally designed for
self-driving cars
.
California - The US company Tesla Inc. is headquartered in the city of Palo Alto. It was founded in 2003 by
Marc Tarpenning
and
Martin Eberhard
to promote sustainable energies.
The key role is played by electric vehicles, which, according to CEO
Elon Musk
, who has been Tesla's managing director since 2008, are expected to become affordable for the mass market.
The
Tesla Autopilot
driver assistance
system was developed
to increase their performance while
minimizing
accidents
.
Tesla Autopilot - on the way to the self-driving car
Tesla Autopilot
was first discussed in public in 2013 when
Elon Musk
pointed out the benefits of autopilots in airplanes.
He advocated using these assistance systems in cars to reduce
accidents
caused by human error.
Its functions include:
Traffic-adapted
speed control
Lane centering and automatic lane change
semi-autonomous navigation on motorways
Self parking
Driverless remote control of cars in garages and parking lots
The evolution of Tesla Autopilot
The first version of
Tesla Autopilot was
developed by Tesla Inc. with
Mobileye
, the Israeli subsidiary of the US technology company
Intel Corporation
.
The Tesla vehicles produced between September 2014 and October 2016 were equipped for the first time with hardware HW1, which supports Tesla Autopilot.
Tesla released
software
7.0 for activating autopilot
in October 2015
and
stated
self-driving cars
as a goal.
The software version 7.1 has been extended by the remote parking function Smart Summon.
In 2016, Tesla announced the Autopilot 8.0, which processes radar signals similar to lidar for navigation in poor visibility conditions.
From October 2016, all Tesla vehicles were equipped with HW2 hardware - the basis for self-driving cars.
The "Enhanced Autopilot" received new functions such as an automatic lane change when leaving the motorway;
the software for this was introduced in February 2017.
In March 2019, Tesla brought the hardware HW3 and an update for the Enhanced Autopilot for independent driving of the car over motorway junctions on the market.
In April 2020, Tesla introduced a beta function for recognizing stop signs and traffic lights.
Tests
for automatic driving on city streets took
place in October 2020 as part of the Early Access Program
.
It was already based on the Full Self-Driving-Software (FSD) for completely independent driving.
Tesla Autopilot - autonomous driving from level 1 to 5
From driver assistants like the original
Tesla autopilot
to
self-driving cars
, five levels are defined:
Level 1: Assisted driving in which the driver is supported by a lane departure warning system and cruise control
Level 2: Semi-automated driving with independent lane keeping, acceleration and braking, supplemented by an overtaking and a parking assistant
Level 3: Highly automated driving in which the car takes over driving tasks autonomously under certain conditions and for a limited period of time
Level 4: Fully automated driving on motorways and in parking garages
Level 5: Autonomous driving of the car on all routes and surfaces
Elon Musk announced at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai that the Level 5 technology would be completed by the end of 2021.
If Tesla achieves this goal, experts calculate a technological lead of ten years over the automotive industry in
Germany
.
Tesla Autopilot - what tests say about accidents
While critics note that the Tesla autopilot would
lead
to
accidents
if
the driver overestimated himself
,
tests
speak
for the opposite.
According to calculations by the Duisburg-based CAR Institute, the use of the Tesla Autopilot
would have reduced road accidents by 90 percent
in
Germany
in 2019
: If the system had been used, only 29,413 accidents would have occurred instead of 281,849.
