Christmas came early for some Tesla owners thanks to the new High-fidelity Park Assist that was part of the Holiday Update. Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s Autopilot Software Director, took to X to show off Tesla’s latest technology, a complete overhaul of the parking experience, blending advanced 3D visualization with real-time environmental mapping.
High-fidelity park assist is shipping this weekend to Tesla customers without ultrasonic sensors as part of the holiday release!pic.twitter.com/MEHL6w003r
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) December 17, 2023
First, the bad news. The new technology is initially available only to customers with Tesla models that do not have ultrasonic sensors. Elluswamy says models with USS will get the new park assist “eventually” - insert your two-week joke here.
Future
Any time more than one sensor is used to create an output it gets more complicated because the output from each sensor won’t match exactly. Ultrasonic sensors are extremely good at what they do and produce extremely accurate output of distances where they’re aimed, but they can also miss things that are lower to the ground or higher up, things that Tesla Vision may be able to see.
It’s not clear whether Tesla will fuse the two sensor outputs into one or whether they’re planning on disabling USS completely when an improved version gets rolled out to vehicles with USS.
Requirements
The requirements for this new feature are still up in the air as well. All the vehicles that have received the new park assist have Tesla’s latest Ryzen-based infotainment CPU (MCU 3), however, we don’t know whether that will be required for these new visualizations.
Enhanced 3D Surroundings Reconstruction
Elluswamy's posts revealed that the new High-fidelity Park Assist is replacing the older 2D obstacle detection system with a sophisticated 3D reconstruction of the Tesla's surroundings. This breakthrough is an extension of Tesla's Occupancy Network, now boasting much higher resolution, thereby aiding drivers in navigating tight parking spots with unprecedented precision. The engineer posted: “In addition to obstacles, we also predict painted lines on the ground, also in 3D. Together, these help perform the full parking maneuver just by looking at this one screen.”
First Release and Upcoming Enhancements
Acknowledging that this is the initial version, Elluswamy teased future updates to the technology. These updates will likely include improved geometric consistency with the cameras and enhanced tracking of occluded obstacles. Even in its emergent stage, this technology significantly improves upon previous parking assistance systems. He stated: “This is the v1 release of this technology, and will have follow up releases that have even better geometric consistency with the cameras, better persistence of occluded obstacles, etc.”
The visualizations provided by this updated Park Assist system are impressively accurate. The 3D models, which change color based on proximity to the vehicle, offer a new level of awareness and interaction for drivers. This system, which uses vision technology to render 3D models in a way typically associated with LiDAR, is a significant step forward in Tesla's software development.
