# vehicle icons jerking erratically on traffic display



## Moozeekie (Aug 11, 2018)

My Model 3 display was working fine but after Version 9 update, the vehicle icons surrounding my car icon on the left side in the traffic display are jerking around erratically. Often bumping into my car’s icon, and lurching over it at times.

Are other users having this issue? Any idea if this is in a future bug fix?
my thanks,
Moo


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## CaribbeanKing (Aug 13, 2018)

Yep, same issue. I'm not even sure what would cause it either. I actually captured it on video once while I was stopped at a light. See attached. Very strange. I have to assume this is a known issue and will work itself out via updates.

Video:


http://imgur.com/a/GWWIW2f


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## JWardell (May 9, 2016)

Have you tried turning down your music so they stop dancing along to it?

This is just like the bouncy lane lines in early v8 and will improve over time with software updates.


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## twm01 (Jul 30, 2018)

They are doing the 'Tesla cha-cha', and when they bump your car, they are giving it the 'Tesla kiss'. I imagine they will fix it in short measure, but no harm to the self driving


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## Jayc (May 19, 2016)

Does autopilot depend on thermal imaging at all? Just wondering whether the truck had an exhaust blasting hot air towards your AP cameras.


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## Bokonon (Apr 13, 2017)

twm01 said:


> when they bump your car, they are giving it the 'Tesla kiss'.


I keep meaning to share a video clip I took the other day, when the Camry next to me seemed to be doing something far more intimate...


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## Rich M (Jul 28, 2017)

Bokonon said:


> I keep meaning to share a video clip I took the other day, when the Camry next to me seemed to be doing something far more intimate...


A couple times now I've had 'SUV icon' in the next lane directly on top of 'car icon' in the next lane humping away.


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## Trebonius (Sep 6, 2018)

My theory, which I have no way of verifying, is that it is because the side and rear cameras haven't been used before, and their machine learning system doesn't have as much training data to consistently determine the precise location of those cars. They made a ton of changes to the neural net, so while it may be better in many respects, its ability to consistently determine a car's relative location visually is not necessarily better.

Actually, another thing just occurred to me. In front, a Tesla has stereo vision. It may be able to use that to more precisely determine vehicle location. On the sides and rear, it's one camera, so it has to guess whether it's a small car that's close, or a big car farther away. 

I don't know anything about computer vision, so this is all probably way off base.


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## Bernard (Aug 3, 2017)

Trebonius said:


> My theory, which I have no way of verifying, is that it is because the side and rear cameras haven't been used before, and their machine learning system doesn't have as much training data to consistently determine the precise location of those cars. They made a ton of changes to the neural net, so while it may be better in many respects, its ability to consistently determine a car's relative location visually is not necessarily better.
> 
> Actually, another thing just occurred to me. In front, a Tesla has stereo vision. It may be able to use that to more precisely determine vehicle location. On the sides and rear, it's one camera, so it has to guess whether it's a small car that's close, or a big car farther away.
> 
> I don't know anything about computer vision, so this is all probably way off base.


Here is a possible partial explanation based on Tesla hardware: 
Tesla has both cameras and proximity sensors, but the proximity sensors work only at very close distances. A single camera can easily estimate the distance from the size of the object (that's what we do ourselves for anything beyond 100ft, when stereo vision does not help much), but that means relying on object identification and I doubt that the Tesla system distinguishes subcompact, compact, intermediate, full-size, etc., so its estimates of distance may be too large for smaller cars and too small for larger cars.
So, for a bigger-than average or smaller-than-average car that is just at the limit of the proximity sensors' range, it could result in jumping back and forth, as the proximity sensors kick in and out. I noticed that a small Civic and a little Kia were jumping around a lot, but family sedans seemed more stable (except when they metamorphosed into SUVs ;-)
This could occur even if all cars were stopped, because of inherent noise in the readings of the proximity sensors and intrinsic uncertainty in the position of ICE vehicles. Indeed, I am curious whether this occurs as much when the cars around you are all BEVs -- ICE cars vibrate constantly, thus constantly changing their distances from a fixed observer (the change is tiny, but it may just be enough to push some of the neural net's nodes over/under their threshold), but BEV cars sit perfectly still.


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## TrevP (Oct 20, 2015)

The new neural net in V9 is way more powerful but so far they haven't put in any smoothing filters. What you're seeing is the raw output from the _vehicle detection bounding boxes_.

Over time they should smooth out the display a bit so it won't be as jerky.

If you haven't seen the raw output of what the vision system sees here's what I'm talking about so you understand


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## babula (Aug 26, 2018)

Everyone on V9 has this so its just something thats going to improve with time, not a big deal.

IMO being able to see all the cars around you is superior to V8 + the better car view UI.


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## Rich M (Jul 28, 2017)

babula said:


> IMO being able to see all the cars around you is superior to V8 + the better car view UI.


Yup! I don't care if the vehicles on the display are jittery or the wrong type of vehicle. So far, if it shows a vehicle in my blind spot, it's there. (Or to put it from a safety perspective, there's never been a vehicle in my blind spot that hasn't shown on the display)


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## Diamond.g (Jun 26, 2017)

in the rain I have noticed the cars jump around more. A couple of times I also noticed that the car didn’t see a car coming up at speed in an adjacent lane while I was stopped.


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## Spiffywerks (Jul 30, 2017)

Watching that video, makes you really appreciate how much data they have to program the car to interpret every millisecond. It’s a crazy amount of data for a computer. For humans, sure it doesn’t seem like much when you are looking about, but real time visual data like this for a computer to process is amazing!


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## Guy Weathersby (Jun 22, 2016)

Most companies would wait until they had the graphics smoothed out before releasing the feature. I am glad that, on non safety related code, Tesla is willing to let us watch it improve.


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## kort677 (Sep 17, 2018)

Instead of watching the screen and icons focus on the road ahead of you


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## JustTheTip (Jun 7, 2018)

kort677 said:


> Instead of watching the screen and icons focus on the road ahead of you


When I am at a stop light, I will be obsessing over the spazzy cars around me on the screen, thank you very much.


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## Karl Sun (Sep 19, 2018)

kort677 said:


> Instead of watching the screen and icons focus on the road ahead of you


 Unfortunately one cannot operate a Model 3 that way. Veiwing the center screen is REQUIRED to operate the car.


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## Moozeekie (Aug 11, 2018)

Thx all for the reassurance, I was afraid it was just my car doing that. I have to admit seeing the truck next to me hump, and then eat the car in front of it, was quite entertaining.


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## Rick Steinwand (May 19, 2018)

My experience is the truck to my right is pushing cars out into traffic, similar to throwing someone onto the path of an oncoming train.


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## Gunn (Jul 29, 2016)

If you want some fun out of this issue, put the Santa mode on...

The reindeer tap dance... 

Found that out 10 minutes after getting my 3 back in June and its' still my sons favorite Easter egg (more so now Christmas is coming!!)


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## Bear on the job (Jul 9, 2018)

Yeah this is just how new neural networks operate, before they get really large data sets for training. Every frame, the neural net is making a guess about the environment it sees - what objects are in view, how far each one is, the boundaries of the road, and changes from the previous frame(s) to estimate motion. When a neural net is young, the guesses vary widely and are often incorrect. But as the neural net matures, those bad guesses are discarded, and correct guesses are rewarded with stronger weighting. Eventually it will smooth itself out, it just takes time.

Think of a baby learning to walk, and transitioning to toddler, then child.

Also, with the camera setup on Teslas, a single vehicle can transition from one camera to another, 360 degrees around the car without losing sight of it. When the neural net is eventually trained, it will be _very _ good.

The one thing that does bother me though, is there seems to be little or no bounding on the neural net for some things. Like when I'm at a stop light, much of the time other cars around me will float inside my car on the screen. The system should know that obviously another vehicle has not come in contact (and especially not entered) my vehicle. There should be a boundary on the screen where other vehicles simply aren't rendered within the space of your own car.

But then again Tesla may not be restricting the visual display as the neural net builds. If the neural net thinks the other car is inside your car...so be it, and render it that way. It will fix itself eventually.


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## Gunn (Jul 29, 2016)

Gunn said:


> If you want some fun out of this issue, put the Santa mode on...


… and true to form I tried this last night only to find that (I am assuming) V9 car recognition of what vehicle around yours is overriding the reindeer image.
Long explanation short, it doesn't work for me, you get the song, car turns into Santa's sleigh but no tapdancing reindeer 

Needless to say I issued a report of the lack of 'fun'


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## kort677 (Sep 17, 2018)

Karl Sun said:


> Unfortunately one cannot operate a Model 3 that way. Veiwing the center screen is REQUIRED to operate the car.


Sarcasm doesn't play well in print on forums


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## Karl Sun (Sep 19, 2018)

kort677 said:


> Sarcasm doesn't play well in print on forums


No sarcasm intended or implied.


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## JustTheTip (Jun 7, 2018)

No reindeer for me either under Santa mode.


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## VoltageDrop (Sep 16, 2018)

I had to laugh at this because after you guys pointed out the funny business that some of the cars were doing on the screen....I decided to really pay attention and saw some craziness going on....felt like I needed to get some of them a hotel room......


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## SimonMatthews (Apr 20, 2018)

Rich M said:


> Yup! I don't care if the vehicles on the display are jittery or the wrong type of vehicle. So far, if it shows a vehicle in my blind spot, it's there. (Or to put it from a safety perspective, there's never been a vehicle in my blind spot that hasn't shown on the display)


I have seen motorbikes zoom past me (they were lanesplitting) that were never displayed.


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## Rick Steinwand (May 19, 2018)

A person briefly showed up behind me in the car wash more than once. I found that very creepy.

Since I was updated on Friday, I decided to check it out more today while at a red light. 
I thought the truck next to me had a touch of Mississippi leg hound:


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## Flashgj (Oct 11, 2018)

Updated to 42.4 yesterday and while driving today the icons for other vehicles around me seemed much more stable and not much,if any, jerking around was going on. Maybe it was just the situation I was in but I will be paying attention the next few days to see if they have in fact made some improvements on this issue.


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