Elon Musk: AI Vision Is Key to Solving Self-Driving

Elon Musk: AI vision is the way to go for self-driving, as the entire road network is designed for vision.

“The entire road network is designed for passive optical, essentially vision. In order to make a car drive properly, you have to solve vision. At the point at which you solve vision, you really don't need any other instruments.

A careful human driver can drive with an extremely good track record. [But] unlike a human, the computer does not get tired, it has 360-degree surround cameras, it's got three cameras pointing forward. It's like being able to see with eyes in the back of your head. Vision is the way to go.

There's some value to active optical for a wavelength that's occlusion-penetrating, so it can see through fog, or rain, or dust. But it has to be high resolution, such that you can rely on it, for example, for radar at roughly a four-millimeter wavelength. This is good for occlusion penetration.

But it needs to have enough resolution to know that you're braking for a real object and not just a bridge or a manhole cover or something like that.”

Axel Springer Pioneers Talk, December 1, 2020