Self-driving car is indeed a thing of the future, but Elon Musk together with his company, Tesla, has been trying to cut the wait into half. Tesla has been preparing their self-driving car and trying to go beyond a public beta of it. With its drive to make their own self-driving car safer on and for the road, Tesla Motors formally launched last Wednesday their self-driving car's Autopilot feature, giving tesla cars a higher degree of autonomy.
You might think that the Autopilot feature of Tesla's self-driving car is not that surprising. However, though other tech giants such as Apple and Google have same concept in mind, Tesla's prototype is considerably unique among others. The Autopilot of Tesla is unique because of high precision digital maps of the Earth using GPS. You might even think that GPS is not something new that Tesla should brag about. But to note, Tesla's GPS is distinct for the maps used were acquired through drivers.
Tesla used their Tesla Model S, with or without Autopilot, to collect data and instantly linking it to a database. This would mean that whatever a single car would see or gather as it traverse through highways and streets; it would be automatically stored in a map data base and then be shared towards other cars. Elon Musk dubbed the process as "fleet learning network," where Tesla vehicles contribute to a shared database, thus literally mapping out the streets.
Musk believes that the method of Tesla mapping the streets and highways for GPS and Autopilot use separates them from competitors like that of Uber, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Tesla believes that their high-precision digital maps of the Earth using GPS are quite developed compared to what others have been developing. And what remains a challenge now for this innovator is to perfect their cars automatic steering, lane changes, parking and other critical auto maneuver.
