Elon Musk Says Pending Tesla Updates Could Have Prevented Fatal Crash

Tesla Motors is readying improvements to its Autopilot technology that might have prevented an accident in May that took the life of an Ohio man, Tesla’s chief executive said on Sunday. The man was killed when his Model S car driving in Autopilot crashed into a tractor-trailer.

The improvements, to be released in the next week or two, include changes that require drivers to refrain from taking their hands off the steering wheel for long periods and more precise use of radar to recognize potential obstacles in the road.

In a conference call with reporters, the head of Tesla, Elon Musk, said he believed the upgrades would have prevented the accident on May 7.

“These things cannot be said with absolute certainty, but we believe it is very likely that, yes, it would have,” he said. The new version of Autopilot, with its improved radar, “would see a large metal object across the road” and be able to determine that the object is not an overpass or overhead road sign that poses no threat, he said. “Impact probability would be assessed as high and it would probably brake.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/12/business/elon-musk-says-pending-tesla-updates-could-have-prevented-fatal-crash.html

The shift to emphasizing radar processing vs. visual image processing may really improve autonomous driving capabilities in lousy weather conditions.