Tesla is stepping up its in-car driver monitoring because it begins to rely yawns, blinks, and extra to maintain observe of how drowsy the driving force is.

Through the years, Tesla has been criticized for not placing lots of emphasis on driver monitoring with its superior driver-assist options below the Autopilot and Full Self-Driving packages.

For years, Tesla solely was in a position to detect torque on the steering wheel, and due to this fact, drivers needed to transfer the wheel to let the system know they nonetheless had their fingers on the wheel.

That is nonetheless Tesla’s main technique to carry out driver monitoring, however the automaker has additionally began utilizing its cabin-facing digital camera in 2021. Tesla makes use of the digital camera to verify the driving force is watching the highway and never utilizing handheld units.

Now Tesla is taking its driver monitoring to an entire new stage. Inexperienced, a Tesla hacker recognized for revealing new options present in Tesla’s software program, has found that the automaker is now monitoring different issues like yawns and blinks:

Apparently, it’s not simply being achieved when utilizing Autopilot or FSD Beta. Inexperienced says that Tesla can be monitoring these metrics when drivers are themselves driving:

It additionally seems like they’re planning to use this even when not on AP (which is a really proper transfer!) by seeing how well-centered the driving is, what number of lane hold help warnings and corrections occurred currently.

However Inexperienced couldn’t discover something about what Tesla plans to do with this info or if it reaches a sure threshold.

Electrek’s Take

That is an fascinating improvement and definitely a step in the proper route.

Tesla appeared bored with driver monitoring as a result of it’s extra helpful for stage 2 and three autonomy and the automaker was all the time assured that it may ship stage 4 and 5 autonomy shortly.

This has clearly not been the case and now Tesla is adapting.

Effectively-executed driver monitoring can enhance security, however the factor that Tesla drivers have been wishing for is that it will cut back the variety of alerts to use stress to the steering wheel, which is usually known as “Autopilot nag”.

It nonetheless hasn’t been the case, however possibly this new improvement may finally result in much less nag.