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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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[-] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 271 points 4 months ago

OMFG someone test to see if Teslas stop to eat free bird seed.

[-] GratefullyGodless@lemmy.world 104 points 4 months ago
[-] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 45 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

So many Acme products we need to test, I saw one guy already successfully tested an Olmec statue.

[-] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 50 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Or a badly painted sign that says "Free charging"

[-] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 33 points 4 months ago

Somebody with better animation skills than me make a cartoon where Wile E. Coyote is hunting cybertrucks using his old tricks and every single one of them works in his favor.

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[-] Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 172 points 4 months ago

It got fucking wile e coyoted

[-] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 84 points 4 months 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 107 points 4 months 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 146 points 4 months 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".

[-] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 98 points 4 months ago

And let me just add, Musk ordered the LIDAR removed against the engineers better judgement.

[-] jj4211@lemmy.world 23 points 4 months ago

Did he have lidar removed? I thought it was radar. I didn't think any Tesla vehicle ever took on the cost of lidar.

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[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 96 points 4 months 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 83 points 4 months 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 33 points 4 months ago

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

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[-] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 39 points 4 months 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.

[-] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 30 points 4 months 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.

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[-] Undaunted@feddit.org 20 points 4 months 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.

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[-] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 60 points 4 months 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 :)

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[-] Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org 76 points 4 months ago

TIL Mark Rober is a domestic terrorist

[-] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 73 points 4 months ago
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[-] conicalscientist@lemmy.world 72 points 4 months ago

Anyone with half a brain could tell you plain cameras is a non-starter. This is nearly a Juicero level blunder. Tesla is not a serious car company nor tech company. If markets were rational it would have been the end for Tesla.

[-] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Austin should just pull the permits until all the taxis have lidar installed and tested. Or write a bill that fines the manufacturer $100 billion for any self driving car that kills a person and puts the proceeds 50% to the family and 50% to infrastructure. One of the first rules of robotics was always about not harming humans.

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[-] rational_lib@lemmy.world 62 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The rain test was far more concerning because it's much more realistic of a scenario. Both a normal person and the lidar would've seen the kid and stopped, but the cameras and image processing just isn't good enough to make out a person in the rain. That's bad. The test portrays it as a person in the middle of a straight road, but I don't see why the same thing wouldn't happen at a crosswalk or other place where pedestrians are often in the path of a vehicle. If an autonomous system cannot make out pedestrians in the rain reliably, that alone should be enough to prevent these vehicles from being legal.

[-] PlaidBaron@lemmy.world 24 points 4 months ago

Who owns the White House right now?

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[-] blackluster117@sh.itjust.works 53 points 4 months ago

Still think LIDAR is inferior to computer vision, Elon?

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[-] happydoors@lemm.ee 50 points 4 months ago

I love that one of the largest YouTubers is the one that did this. Surely, somebody near our federal government will throw a hissy fit if he hears about this but Mark’s audience is ginormous

[-] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 29 points 4 months ago

Honestly I think Mark should be more scared of Disney coming after him for mapping out their space mountain ride.

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[-] fubarx@lemmy.world 48 points 4 months ago

There's a very simple solution to autonomous driving vehicles plowing into walls, cars, or people:

Congress will pass a law that makes NOBODY liable -- as long as a human wasn't involved in the decision making process during the incident.

This will be backed by car makers, software providers, and insurance companies, who will lobby hard for it. After all, no SINGLE person or company made the decision to swerve into oncoming traffic. Surely they can't be held liable. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Once that happens, Level 4 driving will come standard and likely be the default mode on most cars. Best of luck everyone else!

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[-] MidsizedSedan@lemmy.world 48 points 4 months ago

All these years, I always thought all self driving cars used LiDAR or something to see in 3D/through fog. How was this allowed on the roads for so long?

[-] Feersummendjinn@feddit.uk 54 points 4 months ago

They originally the model S had front facing radar and ultrasonic sensors all round, the car combined the information to corroborate it's visual interpretation.
According to reports years ago the radar saved Tesla's from multiple pileups when it detected crashes multiple cars ahead (that the driver couldn't see).
Elmo in his infinite ego demanded both the radar and ultrasonics be removed, since he could drive with out that input so the car should be able to.. also it is cheaper.

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[-] teuto@lemmy.teuto.icu 45 points 4 months ago

According to Ol' Elon the robo-taxi service has been a couple months away since 2017 or so. I can't imagine it's much closer now than then.

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[-] nichtburningturtle@feddit.org 45 points 4 months ago
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[-] blady_blah@lemmy.world 42 points 4 months ago

Honestly all the fails with the kid dummy were a way bigger deal than the wall test. The kid ones will happen a hundred times more than the wall scenario.

Some sort of radar or lidar should 100% be required on autonomous cars.

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[-] King3d@lemmy.world 42 points 4 months ago

This is like the crash on a San Francisco bridge that happened because of a Tesla that went into a tunnel and it wasn’t sure what to do since it went from bright daylight to darkness. In this case the Tesla just suddenly merged lanes and then immediately stopped and caused a multi car pile up.

[-] fallingcats@discuss.tchncs.de 26 points 4 months ago

You'd think they have cameras with higher dynamic range and faster auto exposure in their cars by now. Nope, still penny pinching.

[-] Strawberry 22 points 4 months ago

If only elon hadn't insisted on not using lidar or anything other than just visible light cameras

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[-] pjwestin@lemmy.world 37 points 4 months ago

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

[-] CPMSP@midwest.social 37 points 4 months ago
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[-] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 32 points 4 months ago

To any artists in Austin,TX: you have your work cut out for you. Godspeed.

[-] Halosheep@lemm.ee 31 points 4 months ago

Very surprised Mark isn't... Super supportive of musk and Tesla.

He owns a Tesla and is rather wealthy at this point. Not to mention that he's Mormon. I'd expect him to be very conservative and all in on the grift.

[-] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 28 points 4 months ago

(Edit: Ope, I think I misunderstood you, my bad. Disregard my reply.)

What a world we're living in!

Observing a technical deficiency in a robotics platform requires political considerations. Even when a car drives into a fucking wall at 40MPH on camera, people are asking about the camera man's political party affiliation and not what's wrong with the car.

Wild!

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[-] cmhe@lemmy.world 28 points 4 months 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.

[-] tiramichu@lemm.ee 60 points 4 months 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.

[-] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 35 points 4 months ago

Did anyone seriously expect it to be a real wall with Rober sitting in the driver's seat?

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[-] Rozauhtuno 25 points 4 months ago

The war against AI will be fought with Looney Tunes bits.

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[-] arankays@lemmy.ca 24 points 4 months ago

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

I do not trust Teslas one bit though.

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[-] rumba@lemmy.zip 24 points 4 months ago

Mark Rober is about to be listed as FBI public enemy #1 :(

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[-] ladicius@lemmy.world 23 points 4 months ago

The real test starts at 11 minutes and shows frightening problems of the Nazi clown cars.

[-] guynamedzero@sh.itjust.works 20 points 4 months ago

Youtube mad scientist

Okay come on, Styropyro fits the bill way better for “mad scientist”

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this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
1701 points (100.0% liked)

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