Tesla CEO Elon Musk first revealed a few weeks ago that the company was working on a major upgrade to the Autopilot system. The update was officially announced by the company over a week ago, confirming that the semi-autonomous driving system will now rely more on radar. Tesla has developed this Autopilot update as the system has recently come under fire after it was accused of being at fault in several accidents, Tesla maintains that Autopilot is not to be blamed.
Elon Musk just announced via Twitter that Autopilot version 8.0 is going to be released tonight and that it’s going to be a “gradual” rollout to ensure that there are no problems with the release.
The update makes Autopilot rely more on the radar system that was introduced in 2014. It has been designed to function as a supplementary sensor to the primary camera and image processing system which powers the Autopilot feature.
The radar was designated as a supplementary sensor because there are several issues with radar detection as people and non-metallic objects appear translucent to it, and how small metallic objects like a soda can appear large and dangerous to it.
Tesla believes to have addressed this problem in Autopilot version 8.0 with a mix of a geocoded whitelist of objects and “fleet learning,” which involves using data from other cars to reduce false positives.
V8.0 starts downloading tonight. Release will be gradual to make sure there aren't small regressions. Many car configs, many environments.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 21, 2016