In its efforts to accelerate the development of self-driving technology, Tesla has started collecting videos from its huge fleet of vehicles as part of a new software update.
Tesla says it is doing so to continue its advancements of vehicles equipped with the second-generation Autopilot hardware introduced last year. That includes a suite of 8 cameras, a forward-facing radar and ultrasonic sensors.
In a statement, the company said that to “make self-driving a reality for you as soon as possible…we need to collect short video clips using the car’s external cameras to learn how to recognize things like lane lines, street signs, and traffic light positions. The more fleet learning of road conditions we are able to do, the better your Tesla’s self-driving ability will become.
“We want to be super clear that these short video clips are not linked to your vehicle identification number. In order to protect your privacy, we have ensured that there is no way to search our system for clips that are associated with a specific car,” Tesla said.
Although Tesla provides owners with the option to opt-out of this type of data sharing, users at Electrek says owners that do so won’t receive access to software updates.
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