this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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Mark Rober just set up one of the most interesting self-driving tests of 2025, and he did it by imitating Looney Tunes. The former NASA engineer and current YouTube mad scientist recreated the classic gag where Wile E. Coyote paints a tunnel onto a wall to fool the Road Runner.

Only this time, the test subject wasn’t a cartoon bird… it was a self-driving Tesla Model Y.

The result? A full-speed, 40 MPH impact straight into the wall. Watch the video and tell us what you think!

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[–] bufalo1973@lemm.ee 7 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I have another idea: echolocation and laser measurement.

[–] towerful@programming.dev 5 points 7 hours ago

Echolocation is specifically audio based.
Lidar is a similar technique, but much more accurate and precise.
Project a grid of laser beam, read when the laser bounces back, you know the distance to that part of the grid.

[–] Jeffool@lemmy.world 4 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I don't know the value of echolocation in this case, as I'm generally ignorant here, but it's straight wild to me that they went purely on visuals.

[–] dan@upvote.au 8 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Tesla used to also have radar (and maybe lidar?) but they removed it as a cost cutting measure. If you ever see older videos of a Tesla slowing down or stopping due to a potential collision a few cars ahead, that's from before they switched to only relying on cameras. The collision avoidance was significantly better back then.