What a self-driving car sees — using only cameras
A car has six cameras pointing in every direction. Each one takes a flat photo, and none of them can tell how far away anything is.
This model takes those six photos and builds a map of the world around the car, seen from above — with a box around every vehicle and person it finds.
No lasers. No radar. No pre-made map of the street. Just the cameras — the same approach Tesla uses.
Walks through a real drive in Boston, step by step. Takes about 30 seconds.
Reading the map on the right:
⬜ the white rectangle in the middle is the car itself, arrow pointing forward ⭕ the rings are distance — 10 m, 20 m, 30 m, 40 m, 50 m away ▫️ dashed white outlines are where objects really are 🟦 filled colour is where the model thinks they are
The closer the colour sits to the dashes, the better it did.
Press ▶ Play
You will see the four steps the model takes, one at a time, then the rest of the drive with a running commentary of what it found and which camera spotted it.