New tesla radar teardown

[HammaMan]

From

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[Pedaldude]

A little context from someone who doesn’t really keep up with this stuff:

HW4 stands for hardware 4, or the 4th iteration of the Tesla self driving computer.

Radar is a revelation that defies the Tesla vision only approach to self driving.

Vision only is a shortsighted method, as there’s the problem with both a giant orange thing in the sky that changes position during the day and can cause glare, as well as obscurement from sand, rain, snow, smoke and other environmental factors. Which is why radar is used for commercial air traffic.

Many speculated that Tesla stubbornly stuck with the retarded ‘vision only’ method because of litigation from accidents caused by glare and low contrast situations as well as the fact that it’s pretty cheap compared with other solutions that use frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum more useful at highway speeds like Radar, Lidar, and near infrared (FLIR/thermal imaging).

 

[HammaMan]

A little context from someone who doesn’t really keep up with this stuff:

HW4 stands for hardware 4, or the 4th iteration of the Tesla self driving computer.

Radar is a revelation that defies the Tesla vision only approach to self driving.

Vision only is a shortsighted method, as there’s the problem with both a giant orange thing in the sky that changes position during the day and can cause glare, as well as obscurement from sand, rain, snow, smoke and other environmental factors. Which is why radar is used for commercial air traffic.

Many speculated that Tesla stubbornly stuck with the retarded ‘vision only’ method because of litigation from accidents caused by glare and low contrast situations as well as the fact that it’s pretty cheap compared with other solutions that use frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum more useful at highway speeds like Radar, Lidar, and near infrared (FLIR/thermal imaging).

The move to vision was a copout cost cutting measure that proved to be ineffective as it can't see through smoke / fog / snow / rain. This new 'high resolution' radar is supposed to be extremely good. It's got 6 transmitters and 8 receiving antenna elements. Its usable beam at 3dB drop is 48 degrees wide and 14 degrees high. This is hiding what I believe to be true capabilities as most of the info is buried under NDA right now. The chip itself is fully capable of beam steering and touts 48 'virtual' elements resulting in what's being called '4D radar' with 300m range. Able to measure size via elevation, azimuth, range, and speed.

Such a sensor would be great for towing where the vehicle could be given trailer or other accessory / add-on item dimensions and provide the driver with fitment warnings well in advance of encountering a situation. It can also detect curbs / tires / other road debris.

Here's a similar sensor powered by the same radio.
https://www.xilinx.com/publications/presentations/continental-ARS540-powered-by-xilinx.pdf

This is the processor in the radar unit itself....

 

[powerboatr]

now it makes sense
you made my head hurt in first post
then the extra helped with the pain.

?
if it can track 20 targets simultaneously

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