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!

    • towerful@programming.dev
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      12 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
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      19 hours ago

      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
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        18 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.