He painted the wall to look like a continuation of the road, then tested Tesla's autopilot - footage shows what happened

Former NASA engineer and popular YouTuber Mark Rober has published a video that clearly and simply shows the main problem with Tesla's reliance solely on cameras for autonomous driving.

Unlike the competition that uses LIDAR and radar sensors to detect objects, Tesla completely rejected these technologies, relying only on visual data from cameras.

Elon Musk previously called LIDAR "dumb as hell, expensive and unnecessary," the Telegraph reports.

However, Rober proved in his video how problematic this approach is. His experiment showed that Tesla's Autopilot fails to recognize obstacles in conditions of dense fog, heavy rain, or even illusions - such as a painted wall that looks like an extension of the road.

In one of the tests, Rober placed a child's dummy on the road and compared the response of a Tesla vehicle to that of a Lexus SUV equipped with LIDAR sensors from Luminar.

Tesla recorded the child in the software, but the automatic braking system did not react in time, causing Rober to hit the doll.

When the scene was covered in artificial fog, Tesla failed to detect the obstacle in time. The same thing happened during simulated heavy rain.

The test in which the Tesla was tricked by a painted wall as a continuation of the road attracted the most attention – the car hit the wall without hesitation, while Luminar's Lexus recognized the trick and stopped safely.

"For the first time in the history of the world, I can definitely say that Tesla's optical camera system would drive through a false wall without any hesitation, without even touching the brakes," Rober said.

Rober's video comes at a critical time, as Tesla plans to launch an "unsupervised" version of its full self-driving system later this year.

Critics warn that this could further increase drivers' false sense of security.

Musk also plans to launch a robotaxi service that will rely on the same software, which could further exacerbate safety concerns.

US regulators have already linked Tesla's assisted driving systems to dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries, and Rober's test further confirms that the current hardware in Tesla vehicles is not ready for fully autonomous driving.

The question is whether Tesla will reconsider its approach in the future, and return to using radar and LIDAR sensors or continue with the risky strategy of purely visual perception. /Telegraph/