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!
To be fair, I’d be surprised if half the humans driving didn’t do the same.
I mean you’re watching from a recorded video. I really doubt that it wouldn’t be anything but obvious to actual humans eyes. i mean our depth perception alone would tell us something is wrong. You’re just not watching this in 3D.
Maybe at 55 or 65 mph on a foggy day. But I doubt any person paying attention isn’t seeing the obvious anchors holding the wall up and the incorrect perspective at 40 mph.
That’s doing a lot of heavy lifting
this. watching the video, I had some trouble telling the difference. sure, from some angles it is obvious, but from others it is not.
That said, other cars, with more types of sensors, would probably have “seen” the obstruction on the road.
Well yeah, that’s sort of the entire point of the video. He ran the test with a lidar-equipped vehicle, and it saw the wall right away. Hell, a radar-equipped car (like early teslas) probably would have seen the “kid” behind the wall as well. But since Musk has decided that cars should be able to self-drive with only cameras, the newer teslas will just plow straight into the wall without braking.
I would have liked to see how a more typical car with automatic cruise control /braking functioned. I think they use ultra sonic sensors and would have done better than the Tesla.
I think the human brain hasthe edge in processing visuals since out brains are so much better at adapting than any computer system. We can improvise much better since we have our whole life experience to draw on.