• 6 hours ago
Never underestimate the power of freakin' lasers! Have fun learning to think like an engineer and get 2 FREE boxes at: http://crunchlabs.com/Lidar

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Thanks to Luminar for letting us test their lidar car: https://www.luminartech.com/

Thanks to Harrison @IndianaDrones from Rock Robotic for helping with his very cool lidar. You can check out scans from the project and a 3d tour of CrunchLabs by visiting https://www.rockrobotic.com/

Thanks to these folks for providing some of the music in the video:
Ponder- @Pondermusic
Laura Shigihara - @supershigi
Andrew Applepie - https://soundcloud.com/andrewapplepie
Blue Wednesday - https://soundcloud.com/bluewednesday
Danijel Zambo - https://open.spotify.com/intl-de/artist/1ZD9ri2wmZZPL4qs92sXZX?si=iI7jkn-qSY-6NKo931314Q

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Category

😹
Fun
Transcript
00:00I'm in my Tesla on autopilot going 40 miles an hour towards a fake Wiley car owning roadrunner
00:05painted wall.
00:06Please stop.
00:07Please stop.
00:08Holy...
00:09And I'm doing this to see if Tesla's autopilot can be tricked.
00:12Because it famously only relies on simple cameras to navigate the world, as opposed
00:16to much more expensive tech.
00:18In fact, we're out here today to run a bunch of tests in extreme conditions to see how
00:22those simple cameras on a Tesla stack up against other fancy cars that use more advanced technology.
00:28Wow!
00:29And the story of how I ended up as a crash test dummy in my own car started six months
00:35back at Disneyland as I was sneaking onto the famously pitch black ride called Space
00:39Mountain.
00:40And while I might look a little plus-sized in that jacket, as you can see from this infrared
00:44camera shot, that's no ordinary jacket because it's hiding some of that fancy car technology.
00:51Yeah, baby!
00:53Yeah!
00:5543 million people ride Space Mountain every year, but unlike a famous ride like Colossus,
01:02Space Mountain is in near total darkness, meaning no one knows what the ride actually
01:07looks like.
01:08Which, as far as I'm concerned, needed to be fixed with a special undercover operation.
01:13True story, I had been wanting to make this video for over 20 years, way before I had
01:17a YouTube channel.
01:18Because I would come to Disneyland and just be like, someday the technology will be there
01:22so we could map out what Space Mountain actually looks like.
01:25So this is a very big moment for me.
01:27Now, as common knowledge, every good undercover operation worth its salt needs a three-step
01:31plan.
01:32For me, step one would just be getting into Disneyland with my tech through their famously
01:36tight security.
01:37And if I managed to do that, step two would be making it through the park, avoiding any
01:40security guards on my way to Space Mountain.
01:43And finally, for step three, I would need to sneak onto the ride itself while avoiding
01:47any suspicion to make my childhood dream come true.
01:50And if all this seems like overkill, let's just say I have a bit of history getting kicked
01:55out of amusement parks in the name of science.
01:57I'm following you, man.
01:58Why are you doing this to me?
01:59For step one, I took an oversized jacket and made a little pocket inside where I could
02:04hide my secret tech inside it.
02:05It's like the slight limp shuffle lock that really sells it, I think.
02:09Because they make you walk through metal detectors, I disguised and temporarily placed my device
02:13with a bunch of gear in my camera bag.
02:15And just had to hope it wouldn't get discovered.
02:19We'll just wait until your leg is fully free, in case you have an item that you want to
02:24put on here.
02:25And even though this moment of truth was terrifying, I knew I just needed to play it cool.
02:30Like that.
02:31Excuse me, can we not record?
02:32And the security was, in fact, extremely tight.
02:35But our alibi was tighter.
02:37Alright, we're in.
02:38One down, two to go.
02:40Once inside, I immediately made my way to a bathroom to properly suit up.
02:43Now I just had to make it all the way over to Space Mountain without arousing the suspicion
02:47of any of the park security.
02:48Which is a lot harder than you might think, because it's a well-kept secret, Disney employs
02:52a bunch of security officers dressed up in plain clothes as normal park goers, so I could
02:57trust no one.
02:59So in an attempt to blend in and look like a normal park goer, I took a corndog break.
03:03I'm doing this for the integrity of the mission.
03:06You're not supposed to do that!
03:08Not because they're incredibly vicious.
03:10Back on track after a close call or two, I had made it inside the building.
03:14Alright, two down, now for the hard part.
03:17Now that we're inside, it's probably a good time to explain why my jacket looks like
03:20this when you view it with an infrared camera.
03:22Because that is a really tiny portable LiDAR scanner.
03:25So it's shooting out 640,000 laser pulses per second to fully map the surroundings.
03:30Now as for the legality of this, if you check the back of your ticket, it says you have
03:34to obey all the park rules.
03:36And if you check their website for the rules on forbidden items, it says you can't bring
03:39in shoes with wheels, or stun guns, or cremated remains.
03:43Ew.
03:45But you'll notice the forbidden items list makes no mention of chest-mounted LiDAR scanners.
03:49So technically, I'm not breaking any laws by precisely mapping out this entire ride
03:54down to the nearest half inch.
03:56Don't blow this, Rover!
03:57We got this!
03:58And so after seeking past the last of the ride's security, I was finally in place.
04:02And this is probably a good time to point out that the final boss here in this control
04:05room watching all the infrared see-in-the-dark cameras was the one I was most afraid would
04:09shut down the whole operation.
04:11Because when we tested this out to see how inconspicuous the LiDAR would be, as you can
04:15see here, not very, as it lights up the whole place like a Christmas tree.
04:19By the way, you should know LiDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging, whereas Radar
04:24is Radio Detection and Ranging.
04:26Basically, it's like having a bunch of laser pointers inside this shell, shooting all around
04:30the room.
04:31And each time you fire one of them, you then see how long it takes for you to see it hit
04:35the object it's pointed at.
04:36And since we know the speed of light, if we measure that time, it will tell us how far
04:39away the object is.
04:41For example, it will take twice as long to detect the laser point on an object that's
04:4420 feet away, as opposed to an object that's 10 feet away.
04:47But how could the sensor possibly keep track of 640,000 laser pulses firing all out at
04:52once?
04:53Well, it turns out, amazingly, they actually happen one after another.
04:57So the sensor only has to keep track of one pulse at a time.
05:00And this works because the speed of light is so fast, in fact.
05:03If you slow time way down, so the time it takes a laser to hit an object is 4 slow-mo
05:07seconds, then you can wait 30 minutes on that slow-mo time scale before sending the
05:12next pulse.
05:13So it's actually really easy for the sensor to know exactly which laser pulse it's measuring,
05:19even if that happens 640,000 times in a single second.
05:22And with that, it was time for the execution phase of Secret Undercover Operation Mousetrap.
05:27Let's go!
05:29Woo!
05:30Woo!
05:31Woo!
05:32Woo!
05:33Woo!
05:34Let's go!
05:36It felt so good to cross off a 30-year-old bucket list item.
05:40Yeah!
05:41Oh!
05:42But just as I feared, as our exact cart pulled back into the station, they stopped the ride
05:48and announced it was being locked down.
05:50All flights have been put on hold.
05:52He stopped the ride.
05:53Which meant I was about to have an unscheduled appointment with a bunch of dudes with muscles
05:56much bigger than mine.
05:58But as it turns out, it was an unrelated power issue.
06:02Which meant this was a mission accomplished.
06:05It's like a dream come true.
06:06Before I even had a YouTube channel, I wanted to do that.
06:09And the only critical oversight of the whole operation was forgetting they took those dumb
06:12keychain photos at the end of the ride, leaving behind some very incriminating evidence at
06:17the scene.
06:18I forgot to put it away.
06:19That's so awesome.
06:20That's Harrison, by the way.
06:22And he started the company that makes these super small portable lidars.
06:25After mapping out a few more rides like Haunted Mansion, and continuing my painstaking efforts
06:31to blend in, we headed home so Harrison could process all the data.
06:34And a few days later, he did not disappoint.
06:37This is from the lidar you were wearing on your chest.
06:39Get out of here.
06:40All of this is totally in the dark.
06:41Now what's really cool is we could visualize what was recorded as the ride progresses.
06:45And so as you can see here, you get a sense of what the lidar was seeing in real time
06:49as the ride progressed on.
06:50But what's even cooler though, is we can now use that data to make an actual tabletop
06:543D model of Space Mountain with the help of our army of 3D printers.
06:59Which meant for the first time ever, this question mark's days were numbered.
07:07Got it.
07:08So while all the 3D printers were hard at work, we also reviewed the data we captured
07:10from the Haunted Mansion ride, where we made two super interesting discoveries.
07:14The first is that the initial room they take you in is really just a fancy elevator so
07:18they can get you underground to transport you to the real ride, which actually isn't
07:23in this house at all.
07:24Because when you go down this hallway, you're walking under this hill you see here.
07:27So by the time you load onto the ride, you're totally outside the park.
07:31But if that's true, there should be some evidence for this besides our scan.
07:34And sure enough, there is.
07:36Because if you look back at this shot of the hill, you can actually see just the corner
07:41of some kind of large building.
07:42And if you check that answer on Google Maps, you can see this entire massive above ground
07:46warehouse where the ride actually takes place that matches up perfectly with our lidar scan.
07:52Which is just super clever engineering by the super talented Disney Imagineers.
07:56And the second discovery is they use a lot of super thin, nearly invisible curtains they
08:00project on that create a lot of the illusions like these flying ghosts.
08:05And while your eye might get fooled as you can see here, there's no hiding from the
08:08lidar scan.
08:09And so you can imagine, there are some incredible real world applications for this lidar technology.
08:15Like everyday when your phone scans your face to unlock itself, or when archaeologists use
08:20it to find lost ancient cities from the sky.
08:23Or for example, in cars.
08:28And as you might have guessed, this car automatically saved itself from crashing because it uses
08:31a lidar sensor.
08:32Which as you can imagine, would have saved Wile E. Coyote a lot of pain over the years.
08:39And the reason it works so well is because it's updating that point cloud of 640,000
08:43laser measurements every second to the brain of this car, showing exactly what's in front
08:48of it.
08:49And it works so well, as you can see here, I can maneuver all around these obstacles
08:53in real time with all the windows blacked out, looking just at that point cloud in a
08:58VR headset.
08:59Okay, easy bike guy.
09:00My Tesla, on autopilot however, only relies on simple cameras and it's image processing
09:05to navigate the world.
09:06So to see if that tech is just too simple, we came up with a six part lidar versus camera
09:10head to head face off, culminating in a history making first, Tesla versus cartoon physics
09:16test.
09:17So we're starting out with a car with the lidar first test is just kids standing in
09:21the road.
09:22Not sure why he's doing that.
09:23It's very unsafe.
09:24So we want to be extra careful.
09:25Okay.
09:26Hit it.
09:27The testing speed was 40 miles an hour, which meant the lidar would have to detect the kid
09:31and then slam on the brakes at least 60 feet in front of it.
09:35And it turned out that's all it needed.
09:39Now it was Tesla's turn.
09:41This is a terrible feeling driving straight at a kid, but it's just for science.
09:45All right.
09:46We are up to speed and with just simple cameras, the Tesla was speeding fast, but did detect
09:53the kid just not in time to fully hit the brakes.
10:00Oh no.
10:01He was even a Crunchlands fan.
10:04Now if you're a Tesla owner, there is a silver lining because we were relying on the automatic
10:10emergency braking system to stop for the car.
10:12And because it assumes the driver's paying full attention while fully driving the car,
10:16it only hits the brakes when it's a hundred percent sure there's a problem in order
10:19to avoid false positives.
10:21So the alternative is to use autopilot and that assumes the driver isn't paying much
10:25attention.
10:26And while the downside is you get way more phantom braking and false positives, that
10:31was ridiculous.
10:32The upside is you're less likely to be charged with vehicular manslaughter because you can
10:36see here on autopilot, it actually stopped in time.
10:39So I decided to be nice and call the score one to one.
10:42And then I'd be even nicer by using the more conservative autopilot on the Tesla for
10:47all the remaining tests, such as this one, where we would now simulate the kid dashing
10:51out from behind a parked car, using some clever engineering, giving the cars less than a second
10:55to identify the mannequin and stop themselves.
10:57Here we go.
10:58Getting up to speed.
10:59Oh, a ball came out.
11:00I wonder why that happened.
11:01Oh, kid.
11:02Another life saved.
11:04Now it was the Tesla's turn on autopilot.
11:0740 miles an hour.
11:08There goes the ball.
11:09And impressively, it stopped with plenty of room to spare.
11:12Good job, Tesla.
11:13Which meant we were all tied up heading into round three, the fog round.
11:17Optically, with my own eyes, I can no longer see that there's a kid through this fog.
11:23The LiDAR has no issue.
11:25This will be interesting.
11:26Okay, here we go.
11:28Wall of fog.
11:29After which, we saw the mannequin was not only still standing, but it was casting a
11:33really cool long shadow, because the lasers don't pass through solid objects, just like
11:37how you can cast a long shadow with the sun, because light doesn't pass through solid
11:41objects.
11:42I don't have high hopes here.
11:43But would the kid look just as cool after the Tesla test?
11:46Oh, oh, oh, fuck.
11:49Oh, fuck.
11:50Oh, fuck.
11:51Oh, fuck.
11:52Oh, fuck.
11:53Oh, fuck.
11:54Oh, fuck.
11:55Oh, fuck.
11:56Oh, fuck.
11:57Oh, fuck.
11:58Oh, fuck.
12:02I mean, Lolo does make everything look sort of cool.
12:05But that wasn't the only shock.
12:07I actually hit the brakes there.
12:09That was on autopilot?
12:11The cameras didn't even hit the brakes at all.
12:15The only thing still on is the pants.
12:17That was a bad one.
12:19And now that LiDAR had taken another W.
12:21It's time to make it rain!
12:23The next test would see if the cars could spot the kid under a torrential downpour made up
12:28Maybe too much water
12:30This is really interesting see the Tesla can see the kid
12:34But as soon as it starts raining the kid is gone
12:36And it was similar in the LIDAR car where you first got a clear image of the kid and the shadow
12:41Once we started the hose. Oh, you see all the water going in LIDAR might struggle here
12:46Okay, here we go. And as the wall of water started LIDAR seemed to not slow down at all
12:54Oh
12:55So the last possible second other W now, I just need the rain to stop, you know any good rain dances
13:03That's actually a good idea
13:05Now the LIDAR it surprised me it was time to see if Tesla could as well. Oh boy. Oh boy
13:16Sadly it did not and though I did everything I could yeah, he's no longer with us
13:21So it was on to the penultimate round five where we had six of the brightest lights that money could buy
13:26Simulate either sunset or sunrise or a truck in the road having its bright lights on with these lights
13:31Keep the cars from detecting the kid lining trucker light test
13:34Let's go LIDAR could immediately see much more than my eyes could when the lights turned on. Oh, that's a bright light
13:41Question remained if it would see the kid. Come on LIDAR
13:44Oh
13:46And it did it no problem just always waits to the last minute it gets me every time that's very bright time
13:54blinded by the light
13:57And it's true these lights were so bright
13:59I wouldn't have seen this kid on my own and at this point I really doubted that the Tesla could either
14:04But when it pulled to a stop
14:06Okay, we stopped for the kid with the bright light a W for the Tesla and that W meant
14:12These were the scores headed into the painted brick wall ultimate grand finale
14:16Scientific papers have actually been written on this exact scenario debating theoretically what the Tesla would do
14:21But we were here once and for all to silence all the debates with cold hard data
14:25All right, so LIDAR is perfect and Tesla is 3 for 5
14:29But as far as I'm concerned at this point, this one's the only one that matters
14:36All right hit it
14:38Now as you can see as a human driver while that looks sort of convincing the image processing in our brains is advanced enough that
14:44We pick up on minor visual inconsistencies and we wouldn't hit it as for the LIDAR
14:48It isn't looking at what image is printed on the wall
14:50So this sort of just looks like a wall which would make this the easiest test of the day and as I suspected
14:57Handled it with no problem
14:58So the question was would the Tesla detect and stop for this Wile E. Coyote style painted wall that was hiding yet another child staring at
15:05Nothing during what might be his last minutes on earth the one way to test that hypothesis
15:10I was actually supposed to go but I chickened out
15:14The car may not know it's a wall, but I know it's a wall everything in your body says
15:20Don't drive into a wall. Oh boy. All right, here we go
15:25And so I steeled myself and accelerated the Tesla up to the 40 miles an hour and as the wall crept closer and closer
15:32without moving an inch
15:34Question was if the Tesla would detect it in time to step on the brakes and it turned out
15:48So I can definitively say for the first time in the history of the world Tesla's optical camera system would
15:54Absolutely smash through a fake wall without even a slight tap
15:59Oh
16:00My heart is gonna beat out of my chest
16:06Turns out my Tesla's more Wile E. Coyote and less Roadrunner. Sorry little fella
16:11It's like we lost two arms and a head not sure that's salvageable. I
16:15Think I might uber home, but that's not all folks because while I'd approve itself the superior car technology
16:21Could it actually deliver on the dream of 14 year old Mark Rober and map out Space Mountain well enough for me to make a scaled
16:283d printed model and after 30 years of waiting
16:30I'm happy to report for the first time ever. This is what the Space Mountain track actually looks like
16:38This is so cool, oh, there's me
16:46I
16:48Recognize every single one of these turns you go up right there then you come down
16:54And then it's all the right turns right turns right turns right here's where they take your picture
17:02This is why I'm 14 year old me would be so proud right now
17:06This is it Space Mountain has been revealed and thanks to Harrison's mapping technology
17:11This means you can now actually see what it would look like to write Space Mountain with all the lights on in crunch labs
17:17Even if at this size you'd be way below the rides 5-foot minimum height requirement and all of this is why I love being
17:25An engineer you get to shape the future
17:27Potentially save a bunch of lives and accomplish even the most ridiculous 30 year life goals
17:35If you're a teenager or adult and you've always wanted to make and build cool stuff
17:39But just haven't figured out that first step
17:41This is it. It's called the crunch labs hack pack and it's basically a series of really fun
17:46programmable robots that get delivered right to your door where we build it together and learn step-by-step the kinds of
17:52Engineering skills that go into making the bills on my youtube channel and they all work with no programming required
17:57But since my goal is to take you from wherever you're at and level you up
18:00You can easily hack the microcontroller brains of any of these robots in a bunch of ways to completely level up the functionality
18:07There's also a community where you can share your builds or post questions as well as an AI chat bot named mark robot that will
18:13Check your code for you and help you implement your most creative ideas
18:17On top of all that each box has a chance to contain a platinum diploma if your box has it
18:22Congratulations college is now free for you or a loved one
18:25You want to transfer it to plus you get to come out here and brainstorm one of your own ideas with me and my team
18:30For a day
18:31So if you want to enhance or even just take the first step of unlocking the really fun and rewarding hobby of making stuff
18:37Just go to crunchlabs.com or use the link in the video description. We're to say. Thank you
18:41We're giving away that free box as an early subscriber special. Thanks for watching