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!
Youtube mad scientist
Okay come on, Styropyro fits the bill way better for “mad scientist”
NurdRage ticks the box for me. Also NileRed before he moved out of a garage lab. Still cool though.
Yes! Also Photonic Induction, maybe. Big Clive would be hard to label mad, though some of his experiments are in pretty interesting territory.
Big Clive is great for interesting electronics/deathtraps 🙂
Styropyro genuinely has a screw loose, explosions and fire also fits the bill. And he’s Australian.
Aw come on, I thought the lasers versus watermelons demo was a lot of fun, and if that isn’t mad science, I don’t know what is
Don’t get me wrong, I love Mark, but his content is kind of, tailored to the masses, you know what I mean? Fun stuff you can do at home! A mad scientist might do something more insane, such as connect 100 car batteries together to rival the power of lightning…
To any artists in Austin,TX: you have your work cut out for you. Godspeed.
They sound like they’re perfect for red states
I love that one of the largest YouTubers is the one that did this. Surely, somebody near our federal government will throw a hissy fit if he hears about this but Mark’s audience is ginormous
Honestly I think Mark should be more scared of Disney coming after him for mapping out their space mountain ride.
He probably just made Disney admissions and security even more annoying for everyone else.
Judging by the fact that he has an imagineer-video out (effectively) at the same time as the space-mountain mapping, I’d expect that Disney was fully aware of what he was doing, and the whole sneaky-thing was just to make it more appealing to viewers.
A fitting metaphor for Musky and their involvement with the US government.
can someone do this to trumps tesla please
Trump will never be in it. His security detail could never allow him to drive in it. Nor would the back seat ever be as comfortable as what he usually drives in so he wouldn’t want to be in it unless it was for press purposes. There’s a reason the Cadillac cost over a million dollars that the presidents usually drive around in.
In silicon valley there is an episode where a bunch of phones explode because of a software problem. A lot like the pager attack trump got a trophy for. And musk could take any of these cars and “self drive” them to where ever, and “update” their discharge parameters or something, then boom. The trucks are 10k lbs too. Bet you could take a small building down with one without much fuss. They are pretty fast. Scary shit. Musk is a huge problem. Watch all gov envoys being his swasticars and then he can take people out russian style. opps, accident, again.
TIL Mark Rober is a domestic terrorist
The question is could this fool a human
Also I went and watched the video and he doesn’t seem to even use full self driving for the wall test
As a human who watches the video, I can say no. The wall would not have fooled me.
Are you sure though?
If you knew to expect a wall it is pretty obvious but if you aren’t expecting a wall it might prove confusing.
I probably would stop either way.
I watched the video. The wall would not fool a human with object permanence.
Anyone who is fooled, is likely impaired enough that they are not legal to drive.
There’s no way the wall would look real as your perspective shifts while yoi over closer to it. Most humans would react to that by at least slowing down.
Many people tend to doze off so much they would absolutely get fooled. I admit I might, too, especially if the wall is made of a material that needs no guy wires to prop it up. They either used digital effects or a very good color grading job, it’s uncanny.
“Wile E Coyote was here”
I tried Waymo when I was visiting LA a few months ago. Genuinely terrific stuff.
I do not trust Teslas one bit though.
waymo’s have almost hit me like three times, and if i were slower, they would have. you are part of the problem. those are killing machines.
almost. Human driver would hit you in similar scenarios probably.
almost because I dodged.
If these vehicles don’t need to obey the procedural laws that are supposed to keep me safe, why should I refrain from smashing them with a hammer, or taking them apart and selling the pieces, or making cool sculptures out of them?
aside from being profoundly lazy, of course.
Where were you that you had to dodge a Waymo? Were you walking down the middle of the road or something?
yeah it has to be the victim’s fault. they totally respect crosswalks. how much do they pay you?
We’ve heard one side of the story, about a very unlikely series of events. I do think that person is leaving out a few details.
how much do they pay you? you’re all over these responses.
data > your personal anecdotes. Get real dude.
these companies do not provide data. they provide blatantly doctored ad copy.
and the engineers that design them have said there’s no way to make them follow traffic rules perfectly. that they do often sacrifice safety for efficiency when the choice can be made.
What are you even on about tin foil. Waymos are on the road - how is this data doctored? You can literally see that it’s safer than human driving in this exact environment.
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No
How? Do you just walk into the road without looking or something?
yeah, only way it could have happened; has to be the victim’s fault because they totally always respect crosswalks.
how much do they pay you?
Yeah, I definitely think you’re leaving some details out here.
You’re right; I was dressed kinda slutty at least one of those times, so yeah, maybe it was my fault. how about what you’re leaving out? how much do they pay you? you’re all over these responses with similar lines.
Tesla doesn’t use lidar for its sensing, living on the prayer that AI will just get good enough soon enough. Absolutely galaxy brained decision.
This is like the crash on a San Francisco bridge that happened because of a Tesla that went into a tunnel and it wasn’t sure what to do since it went from bright daylight to darkness. In this case the Tesla just suddenly merged lanes and then immediately stopped and caused a multi car pile up.
You’d think they have cameras with higher dynamic range and faster auto exposure in their cars by now. Nope, still penny pinching.
If only elon hadn’t insisted on not using lidar or anything other than just visible light cameras
Yeah, pulling radar from the cars was the beginning of the end. Early teslas had radar, and that was what led to all of the “car sees something three vehicles ahead and brakes to avoid a pileup that hasn’t even started yet” type of collision avoidance videos. First, pulling radar was a cost cutting thing. Then Elon demanded that they pull out the lidar too, and that’s when their crash numbers skyrocketed.
They never had lidar, as far as I know.
They never had lidar, in addition to radar they removed the ultrasound sensors for parking, which is stupid because they cost like $2 and for parking they’re much better than cameras. Same for the rain sensor. Why use a $1 rain sensor that always works reliably all the time in any visibility when you can do that with cameras and complex algorithms?..
It’s been about 7 years of model 3 on the market, maybe 8, and the rain detection still doesn’t work reliably. Or the traffic sign recognition (in Europe). My car fortunately still has the ultrasound sensors. Phantom braking is still an issue, too. Thank God for stocks for blinkers and drive/reverse.
I like the car in general, but it has the dumbest fails, things everyone else seems to have figured out.
Other cars also have dumb mistakes, like electric cars with no frunk. Literally bolted down hoods. Looking at you, German auto industry…
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I would say that it’s a good idea to paint more tunnels on walls, but then I remember how dumb human drivers are too
You’d be horrified how many people drive off a bridge that has collapsed, it’s happened multiple times in multiple different incidents.
I’d be horrified that physical barriers with bright reflectors weren’t put up before the bridge that was out.
This has typically been seconds after the bridge collapsed, before emergency services could reach the site.
Did you really think someone just demolished a bridge without putting up a sign?
So to stop robotaxis, all we have to do is paint a fake road directly into a rock wall with a painted on tunnel.
Even a few non-robotaxi people.
+1…a classic!
Can this be solved with just cameras, or would this need additional hardware? I know they removed LIDAR, but thought that would only be effective short range, and would not be too helpful at 65 km/h.
Can this be solved with just cameras
Theoretically yes, but in reality, not with current technology.
but thought that would only be effective short range
LIDAR actually has quite a long range. You can look up some of the images LIDAR creates, they’re pretty comprehensive.
Teslas never had LIDAR. They did have ultrasonic sensors and radar before they went to the this vision only crap.
Theoretically, yes. A human would be smart enough not to drive right into a painted wall, using only their eyeballs combined with their intelligence and sense of self-preservation. A smart enough vision system should be able to do the same.
Using something like LIDAR to directly sense obstacles would a lot more practical and reliable. LIDAR certainly has enough distance (airplanes use it too), though I don’t know about the systems Tesla used specifically.
LIDAR certainly has enough distance (airplanes use it too)
As I understand it, this is uncommon and mostly used for topological mapping.
Most commercial aircraft use a radar, augmented with a GPS-based terrain map, for their ground proximity warning (EGPWS, “Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System”).
I could be wrong though, I’m not a pilot.
Good question. I don’t know if they ll succeed but they have a point that humans do it with just vision so why can’t ai do at least as well? We’ll see. I’m happy someone is trying a different approach. Maybe lidar is necessary, but until someone succeeds we won’t know the best approach, so let’s be happy there’s at least one competing attempt
I gave it a try once and it was pretty amazing, but clearly not ready. Tesla is fantastic at “normal” driving, but the trial gave me a real appreciation how driving is all edge cases. At this point I’m no longer confident that anyone will solve the problem adequately for general use.
Plus there will be accidents. No matter how optimistic you may be, it will never be perfect. Are they ready for the liability and reputation hit? Can any company survive that, even if they are demonstrably better than human?
It works pretty well as a highway assist. I never use it on city streets because its so slow and hesitant which is worse.
For me the biggest downside was really poor road maintenance: lines worn off, long cracks that could be interpreted as lines, offset intersection where you can’t go straight across and no lines … or at night not enough cleared space so the side camera decides it’s obscured.
I have this one really narrow windy road that too many humans have trouble with. I really wanted to see what it would do but decided there wasn’t enough room for me to take over if I needed to
If for some bizarre reason you would want to stick to cameras only, you could use 2 cameras and calculate the distance to various points based on the difference between the images. Thats called stereoscopy and is precisely what gives our brains depth perception. The issue is that this process is expensive computationally so I’d guess that it would be cheaper to go back to lidar.
