Thought you’d seen everything that’s in the latest Tesla software update? Don’t be so sure: Tesla hacker @greentheonly has discovered some 3D models for stop signs and stop lights hidden and ostensibly unused in the latest firmware.
Presumably, these models will be used to draw stop signs and stop lights into the Autopilot driving visualization. The fact that these models have already made their way into the publicly released software hints that Autopilot will soon be able to stop the car in response to a yellow/red light or stop sign. This feature has been hotly anticipated for years. In addition to being one, the last features remaining before Autopilot reaches feature complete status, shipping stop light and stop sign recognition will also allow Tesla to book a chunk of deferred revenue and slightly bump gross margins on all cars sold with FSD.
Here’s what the 3D models look like:
Another small step closer to feature complete Autopilot…
Damn! Their visualization will be so neat… Better than a video game.
The assets only mean that those things will soon show up in the visualisation — which doesn’t necessarily imply that the software will actually act on them any time soon…
More importantly though — and I’m surprised how little this gets discussed — stops sign and traffic light recognition seems only a trivial precondition compared to the complexity of actually navigating intersections…