What is Tesla Full Self-Driving (FSD)?

Tesla Full Self-Driving (FSD) is an advanced driver assistance system that uses cameras, neural networks, and AI to navigate complex driving scenarios. Unlike traditional autonomous driving approaches that rely on lidar and HD maps, FSD uses a vision-based system powered by Tesla's custom AI chips. The system can handle highway driving, city streets, lane changes, parking, and traffic navigation. FSD operates as a supervised system requiring driver attention and has been deployed on hundreds of thousands of Tesla vehicles worldwide.

What is the Tesla Dojo supercomputer?

Tesla Dojo is a custom-built AI supercomputer designed specifically for training Tesla's neural networks using video data from its fleet of vehicles. Dojo uses Tesla's custom D1 chips, which are designed for optimal performance on the company's video training workloads. Each D1 chip delivers 362 teraflops of performance, and Dojo systems connect thousands of these chips in a distributed training architecture. The supercomputer is designed to process the massive amounts of video data generated by Tesla's vehicle fleet, accelerating the development of FSD and other AI capabilities.

What is the Tesla Optimus robot?

Tesla Optimus, also known as the Tesla Bot, is a humanoid robot designed to perform tasks that are dangerous, repetitive, or boring for humans. Standing approximately 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighing about 125 pounds, Optimus uses many of the same AI systems and sensors developed for Tesla's vehicles, including cameras and neural networks for visual perception. The robot is designed to navigate human environments, manipulate objects, and perform physical tasks. Tesla has demonstrated Optimus prototypes walking, sorting objects, and performing simple assembly tasks, with the goal of producing a commercially available humanoid robot.

How does Tesla Autopilot differ from Full Self-Driving?

Tesla Autopilot is the standard driver assistance system included in all Tesla vehicles, providing features like traffic-aware cruise control, automatic lane centering, and lane change assistance on highways. Full Self-Driving (FSD) is a more advanced paid upgrade that adds capabilities for city street navigation, automatic parking, traffic light and stop sign recognition, and the ability to navigate complex urban driving scenarios. While Autopilot handles highway driving tasks, FSD extends autonomous capabilities to a much wider range of driving situations.

What AI technology powers Tesla's self-driving system?

Tesla's self-driving system is powered by a custom AI stack that relies primarily on computer vision using cameras as the main sensor. Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors from its vehicles in favor of a vision-only approach, arguing that human-like visual perception is sufficient for driving. The system uses custom neural networks running on Tesla's HW3 and HW4 custom AI chips, with training performed on the Dojo supercomputer and NVIDIA GPU clusters. The AI processes real-time video from eight cameras to create a 3D understanding of the vehicle's surroundings and make driving decisions.

Tesla AI: From Self-Driving Cars to Optimus Robots