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!

  • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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    23 minutes ago

    To be fair, the roadrunner it was following somehow successfully ran into the painting.

  • Kane@femboys.biz
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    41 minutes ago

    Can this be solved with just cameras, or would this need additional hardware? I know they removed LIDAR, but thought that would only be effective short range, and would not be too helpful at 65 km/h.

    • toddestan@lemm.ee
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      21 minutes ago

      Theoretically, yes. A human would be smart enough not to drive right into a painted wall, using only their eyeballs combined with their intelligence and sense of self-preservation. A smart enough vision system should be able to do the same.

      Using something like LIDAR to directly sense obstacles would a lot more practical and reliable. LIDAR certainly has enough distance (airplanes use it too), though I don’t know about the systems Tesla used specifically.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      21 minutes ago

      Good question. I don’t know if they ll succeed but they have a point that humans do it with just vision so why can’t ai do at least as well? We’ll see. I’m happy someone is trying a different approach. Maybe lidar is necessary, but until someone succeeds we won’t know the best approach, so let’s be happy there’s at least one competing attempt

      I gave it a try once and it was pretty amazing, but clearly not ready. Tesla is fantastic at “normal” driving, but the trial gave me a real appreciation how driving is all edge cases. At this point I’m no longer confident that anyone will solve the problem adequately for general use.

      Plus there will be accidents. No matter how optimistic you may be, it will never be perfect. Are they ready for the liability and reputation hit? Can any company survive that, even if they are demonstrably better than human?

  • arankays@lemmy.ca
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    3 hours ago

    I tried Waymo when I was visiting LA a few months ago. Genuinely terrific stuff.

    I do not trust Teslas one bit though.

    • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      25 minutes ago

      waymo’s have almost hit me like three times, and if i were slower, they would have. you are part of the problem. those are killing machines.

    • Ken Oh@lemm.ee
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      51 minutes ago

      Tesla doesn’t use lidar for its sensing, living on the prayer that AI will just get good enough soon enough. Absolutely galaxy brained decision.

  • cmhe@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    I am a bit disappointed to not see the Tesla crash into a real wall. I feel a bit click baited here.

    Also, they prepared the polystyrene wall to break this cartoonishly, but still played on being surprised.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      15 minutes ago

      I’m a bit disappointed they painted identical to the actual road. Probably a lot of humans will get fooled by that one. We should send a challenge back: how looney toons can you get? Will something more cartoonish fool it? Will a different landscape fool it? How about drawing an oncoming train?

    • tiramichu@lemm.ee
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      5 hours ago

      The purpose of the video is to test a hypothesis, not to total a car.

      Mark Rober is a youtuber sure, and some of the stuff he does is to feed the algorithm. But he’s also an engineer, and that involves experimentation and a good dose of science.

      Engineers won’t set up tests that intentionally destroy their expensive test equipment if they can conduct an equivalent test non-destructively.

    • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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      3 hours ago

      Yeah, do YTers not have the money to kill one Tesla?
      That seemed like an expensive production, sadly one totaled car couldn’t make it.

    • KayLeadfoot@fedia.ioOP
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      8 hours ago

      The scientists in Ireland calling their data set to prevent this exact fucking thing “Coyote” sent me over the moon.

  • Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    I saw the video pop up in my Youtube recommended, but didn’t bother watching because I just assumed that any cars tested would be using LIDAR and thus would ignore the fake road just fine. I had no idea Tesla a) was still using basic cameras for this and b) actually had sophisticated enough “self driving” capabilities that this could be tested on them safely.

    • Lukas@feddit.org
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      8 hours ago

      They are not still using cameras but removed LIDAR and radar from their cars during the chip shortage 2020/21. The story they were telling was “humans don’t have LIDAR but can drive cars as well, so the cars also only need ‘eyes’ like humans”.

      • baggachipz@sh.itjust.works
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        3 hours ago

        Small correction here: they never had LIDAR. Cars with LIDAR have big racks on top with a spinny thing measuring the surroundings. Teslas had radar but removed during the chip shortage (and disabled it on existing cars) and acted like it was an improvement. The radar was used for distance keeping on cars and could actually detect the car in front of the car by bouncing signals off the ground, it was really slick.

      • Undaunted@feddit.org
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        5 hours ago

        That statement of him is not entirely wrong. But we humans have a very powerful bio computer that is perfectly tuned to process those visual inputs in realtime. Until a comparable performance is possible, removing LIDAR is very stupid.

        • jj4211@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          Besides that, in the fog and rain tests a human likely would have killed a kid anyway, and why settle for human limitations when you could be safer?

          We absolutely should also have lidar or analogous tech as part of a solution here, even if cameras did manage to get to human level safety.

      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Humans cannot, in fact, drive cars well. Humans kill tens of thousands of other humans with cars every year in the US alone.

        • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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          6 hours ago

          Yup, cameras and humans share various exploits. Self-driving is going to work better than humans once every car has it and communicates with each other, allowing for minimal gaps even at high speeds, once roads are all very standardized and in a database, and-

          Wait, that’s trains

          Fucking build more electrified high-speed rail and forget tech bros’ shitty promises

          • frank@sopuli.xyz
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            6 hours ago

            I was getting mildly outraged and ready to comment how you were re-deriving the train at first. Well played.

          • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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            5 hours ago

            Trains don’t go from my driveway to my destination exactly when I feel like going there, while carrying all my luggage.

            I get that it’s fun to be smug on the Internet, but private vehicles aren’t going away any time soon.

            • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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              4 hours ago

              It’s not a binary decision between all cars and no cars. If trains and public transit have enough capacity and convenience to make most trips feasible by them, car infrastructure will no longer have to be added (in fact can be converted into bus and bike lanes) while shortening trip duration (less cars = less jams) and improving safety.

              Also, you barely have luggage for most trips. 99% of my trips are made with luggage I can carry to the nearest stop and board the bus with.

              • Kaboom@reddthat.com
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                2 hours ago

                Yeah it’s not a binary decision, but trains are almost never the answer for a lot of people. If I’m going less than a couple hours, then I’m driving that distance. If I’m going much further than that, I’m flying. If I need to move a ton of stuff, I’m either taking my car or renting a uhaul. If I’m taking a lot of people, I’m taking my car. Trains never enter the picture unless I’m looking for variety in my mode of transport.

                And trains do not shorten the trip duratiion, not without absolutely kneecapping the roads. And over long distances, they’re absolutely slow compared to planes. In the short distance, they’re slow compared to cars.

                • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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                  2 hours ago

                  Depends on where you live. In most of Europe, trains are frequent and direct between city centers.

                  My parents tend to prefer the car for the 3-hour trip (also 3 hours by train and bus) to Grandma’s when at least 3 people go because it’s cheaper. A higher toll on the highway could change the threshold, and we’d go more comfortably. Politicians can smoothly adjust the number of people for which public transport wins out with taxes and investments. You’re more likely to cling to the car and they’ve accounted for that in their models, maybe making you switch for a specific kind of trip is not worth the investment. There are lots of factors, such as political alignment, culture, wealth distribution, existing infrastructure etc. that make some jurisdictions able to move the threshold faster than others. Still, the majority of people using cars is unsustainable for lots of reasons:

                  • noise, smoke, particulate matter pollution
                  • high energy use per unit of distance per person regardless of drivetrain and resulting climate change
                  • cost of road maintenance
                  • waste of space for parking, resulting in poor land use and sprawl
                  • accident fatalities
                  • unwalkable areas ruin business opportunities, resulting in towns that simply go broke

                  so there is an obligation to eventually push the threshold in favor of public transit for most trips.

                • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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                  4 hours ago

                  So you’ll keep using it. And enjoy narrow but way less jammed streets. Maybe you’ll be incentivized/required to join the self-driving network, but in decades, not years, after positioning markers have been added to every road in the last repaving, while infrastructure funds have been directed towards making the city traversible for non-drivers.

        • gnutrino@programming.dev
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          4 hours ago

          And the really dumb thing is that lots of modern non-selfdriving cars now have lidar sensors to help the humans not crash into things. Musk apparently wants the AI to be working at a disadvantage.

      • RobotToaster@mander.xyz
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        7 hours ago

        I’ll add that every other self driving car company has a pretty good safety record, specifically because they do use LIDAR and RADAR so they can see better than humans.

      • heavydust@sh.itjust.works
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        7 hours ago

        IIRC Musk said it would rely on AI using the footage from all the Teslas and it’s better than LiDAR. That idiot was proven wrong once again.

    • KayLeadfoot@fedia.ioOP
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      8 hours ago

      They tested a LiDAR rigged car, and it stopped just like you predicted. As of 2021, Tesla uses only cameras for FSD, and not even radar (which my stupid fine Toyota truck has).

      They tested the idea safely by building the wall out of styrofoam, or at least that’s what it looks like when it blows apart :)

    • vin@lemmynsfw.com
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      2 hours ago

      Forget lidar, they don’t even have mature tech like radar for emergency braking. Edit: +even

      • blady_blah@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Why do you think lidar is not mature? It is radar, except it uses light and can get much more resolution than an RF radar. Or was that a joke… That was probably a joke… if it was then nm.

        • vin@lemmynsfw.com
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          2 hours ago

          Lidar is mature but its automotive application is not. Radar is basic by now in comparison.

        • davidgro@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          That comment just missed the word ‘even’ - as in they don’t even have radar, and that’s on regular non-self-driving cars, and lidar would be a step above that.

          • jj4211@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            As far as I’ve seen, any system would be additive. If it has lidar, it would also have cameras and radar. So that you get the best of all the technologies (e.g cameras are the only only of the three that can follow lane markings)

    • KayLeadfoot@fedia.ioOP
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      8 hours ago

      “But humans can do it with their eyes!” - says the man not selling a human brain to go with the optical sensors

      • FiskFisk33@startrek.website
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        7 hours ago

        “But humans can do it with their eyes!”

        That’s the best part, they kinda can’t.
        There are videos from before they pulled the sensors of some pretty cool stuff where teslas slammed the breaks before anything visibly happened, based on lidar sensors sensing trouble a couple cars up the road, completely blocked to vision.

        super cool safety tech, and then they pulled it…

        one example here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIcC2ZMePKI

      • BastingChemina@slrpnk.net
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        6 hours ago

        The thing is, yes humans can do it with their eyes. But even with the giant amount of progressing power from the brain they are still not great at it.

        So of the ultimate goal is to the minimum/cheapest to be almost as good as human then yes, optical sensors only are enough.

        Of the goal is to prevent deaths and significantly reduce the number of accidents compared to then lidar is the best option.

    • cm0002@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      The day I heard that was the day I realized he’s a fucking idiot and I wanted nothing to do with his cars/tech.

      Judging by how things have turned out…damn was that a good decision lmao

    • aname@lemmy.one
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      6 hours ago

      I tried watching it and it forces a horrible dubbing over it so I didn’t want to watch it. Apparently only way to chage it is to change my whole youtube account language

      • jet@hackertalks.com
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        6 hours ago

        for the youtube website interface click on the gear wheel, and you can select the audiotrack you want