Changes! 2018.21.9
Over the weekend, my Model X, Pensive, received its latest update, to 2018.2.19. This continues the recent trend in Auto-Pilot updates, and marks the first time ever, that Pensive has actually shown new release notes.
The new release notes call-out that the car now behaves closer to the advertised behaviour when using Auto-Pilot on a highway. The car was advertised as slowing for an exit ramp, at which point it requests for the driver to take-over on the secondary roads; in practice, the car just keeps speed in the lane (prior to 2018.21.9).
The car also now shows vehicles detected in adjacent lanes. This is not just for roads which it knows are multi-lane highways, but even in secondary roads, or when in a turn lane. Presumably this means the car should be better at switching lanes automatically (checking for when it is safe), but it's not clear to what degree there is any functional difference versus merely displaying data which it was already calculating. Regardless, it shows that the car's perception is far from great. On my way home from work today, with clear sky, bright (harsh) sun, and no traffic the car thought it saw a car going parallel in the other lane, which all that was there was the shadow of some trees. I'd assume that SONAR would be coming into play, but it could be that this is all coming from visual cameras, at least for the UI and possibly verified via SONAR afterwards.