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Tesla is patenting a clever way to train Autopilot with augmented camera images
Tesla is currently tackling what could only be described as its biggest challenge to date. In his Master Plan, Part Deux, CEO Elon Musk envisioned a fleet of zero-emissions vehicles that are capable of driving on their own. Tesla has made steps towards this goal with improvements and refinements to its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving suites, but a lot of work remains to be done.
As noted by Tesla during its Autonomy Day presentation last year, attaining Full Self-Driving is largely a matter of training the neural networks used by the company. Tesla adopts what could be described as a somewhat organic approach for autonomy, with the company using a system that is centered on cameras and artificial intelligence — the equivalent of a human primarily using the eyes and brain to drive.
Tesla’s camera-centric approach may be quite controversial due to Elon Musk’s strong stance against LiDAR, but it is gaining ground, with other autonomous vehicle companies such as MobilEye developing FSD systems that rely primarily on visual data and a trained neural network. This approach does come with its challenges, as training neural networks requires tons of data. Tesla emphasized this point as much during its Autonomy Day presentation.
With this in mind, it is pertinent for the electric car maker to train its neural networks in a way that is as efficient as possible with zero compromises. To help accomplish this, Tesla seems to be looking into the utilization of augmented data, as described in a recently published patent titled “Systems and Methods for Training Machine Models with Augmented Data.”
Teslas are equipped with a suite of cameras that provide 360-degree visual coverage for the vehicle. In the patent’s description, Tesla noted that images used for neural network training are usually captured by various sensors, which, at times, have different characteristics. An example of this may lie in a Tesla’s three forward-facing cameras, each of which has a different field of view and range as the other two.
Tesla’s recent patent describes a system that allows the company to process these images in an optimized manner. Part of how this is done is through augmentation, which opens the doors to flexible and widespread neural network training, even when it involves vehicles equipped with differently-specced cameras. The electric car maker describes this process as such:
“Augmentation may provide generalization and greater robustness to the model prediction, particularly when images are clouded, occluded, or otherwise do not provide clear views of the detectable objects. These approaches may be particularly useful for object detection and in autonomous vehicles. This approach may also be beneficial for other situations in which the same camera configurations may be deployed to many devices. Since these devices may have a consistent set of sensors in a consistent orientation, the training data may be collected with a given configuration, a model may be trained with augmented data from the collected training data, and the trained model may be deployed to devices having the same configuration.”
Among the most notable aspects of Tesla’s recent patent is the use of “cutouts,” which allow Tesla’s neural networks to be trained using an optimized set of images. This was something that was discussed by former Tesla Autopilot engineer Eshak Mir in a Third Row Podcast interview, where he hinted at a system adopted in the electric car maker’s ongoing Autopilot rewrite that helped lay out “all the camera images” from a vehicle “into one view.” Such a process has the potential to help Tesla with 3D labeling, especially since the images used for neural network training are stitched together. Tesla’s patent seems to reference a system that is very similar to that described by the former Autopilot engineer.
“As a further example, the images may be augmented with a“cutout” function that removes a portion of the original image. The removed portion of the image may then be replaced with other image content, such as a specified color, blur, noise, or from another image. The number, size, region, and replacement content for cutouts may be varied and may be based on the label of the image (e.g., the region of interest in the image, or a bounding box for an object).”
Tesla is aiming to release a feature-complete version of its Full Self-Driving suite as soon as possible. Elon Musk remains optimistic about this, despite the company missing its initial timeline that was set at the end of 2019. That being said, Elon Musk did mention previously that Tesla is working on a foundational rewrite of Autopilot. In a tweet early last month, Musk stated that an essential part of the rewrite involves work on Autopilot’s core foundation code and 3D labeling. Once done, the CEO indicated that additional functionalities could be rolled out quickly. This recent patent, if any, seems to give a glimpse at how these improvements are being done.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s AI Grok Bot can now handle banking while your Tesla FSD handles the road
Elon Musk says Grok Bot can manage your finances through linked bank and investment accounts.
Grok Bot now wants access to your wallet, with SpaceXAI rolling out a new Finance integration for its agent platform that lets users link bank, credit card and investment accounts thereby letting their Bots help manage spending, investments and more. Elon Musk amplified the announcement on X with a short endorsement, “Grok Bot can manage your finances.”
The feature builds on two earlier steps. In early September, Grok gained the ability to answer questions about spending, savings, investments and cash flow using accounts connected through Plaid, starting with users in the U.S. Before that, on August 28, SpaceXAI let Grok Bot buy things online through Link, with users approving every spend request and the Bot receiving a single use card for each payment.
Musk has already shown how far he wants users to push it. In late August, when Tesla investor account Teslaconomics said he was weighing whether to give Grok Bot access to his bank accounts, Musk replied, “Try it out. If Grok Bot messes up, we will make you whole.” That promise goes beyond SpaceXAI’s consumer terms, which make users responsible for what their agents do and generally cap the company’s liability at the greater of fees paid or $100. SpaceXAI’s own documentation recommends requiring approval for purchases and financial transfers.
For Tesla owners, the update lands five days after Tesla brought Grok Bot into its vehicles, letting drivers hand off errands by voice while FSD (Supervised) handles the road. Bot access inside the car is currently limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers, though Connectors are open to anyone signed into Grok. With Finance linked, a driver could ask for a spending summary or a check on upcoming bills during the commute.
Grok’s role in the car has grown quickly since Tesla’s Summer Update let it control cabin features by voice. We have been using Grok Bot in our own Tesla for several weeks, and here’s how our latest test went.
Elon Musk
SpaceX just got the green light Starship has waited years for
The FAA has cleared Starship Flight 14, setting up SpaceX’s first orbital attempt on Monday.
SpaceX has cleared the last regulatory hurdle standing between Starship and its first trip to orbit. The Federal Aviation Administration issued the launch license for Starship Flight 14 late Saturday, keeping the mission on track for liftoff Monday, September 28, from Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas.
The 75 minute launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. Central, and Boca Chica Beach closures are also scheduled for September 29 and 30 as backup dates. This will be Starship’s first revenue generating mission.
The license was the missing piece after SpaceX completed a full wet dress rehearsal with Booster 21 and Ship 41 on September 24. At the time, the company said the flight remained on track pending regulatory approval. Because Flight 14 flies an orbital profile, the FAA had to sign off on a modified license that met its safety, payload and financial responsibility requirements.
Observers combing through the new FAA paperwork also noticed that lightning no longer appears among Starship’s listed launch hazards. If that holds, it matters more for where Starship is headed than for Monday’s attempt. Florida and Louisiana, home to LC-39A and the planned Starbase Louisiana site, see some of the most frequent lightning in the United States.
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
Flight 14 is the mission SpaceX has been building toward for months. Ship 41 will carry 26 Starlink V3 satellites, the first operational V3 units to be deployed, and attempt roughly six orbits at about 275 kilometers over a flight lasting just under 10 hours. SpaceX says the ship will only perform its orbital insertion burn after flight controllers confirm enough hardware redundancy remains for the deorbit burn at the end of the mission. Ship 41 is targeting a splashdown in the Pacific west of Chile, while Super Heavy will return to the Gulf of Mexico.
The date carries some symbolism as well. A Monday launch would come 10 years and one day after Elon Musk first presented the Interplanetary Transport System, the design that became Starship, at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.
SpaceX has not announced what comes next, but air traffic planning slides reported this week, list Flight 15 no earlier than October 19 and a first Starship launch from LC-39A in Florida no earlier than October 30. Both dates depend on how Monday goes.
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SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
SpaceX launched the classified USSF-385 mission from Vandenberg, landing its booster on a tenth flight.
SpaceX launched another classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from California early Saturday morning, and the Falcon 9 booster that carried it landed on a drone ship in the Pacific for the tenth time. The USSF-385 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:00 a.m. PT.
Booster B1100 touched down on Of Course I Still Love You roughly eight and a half minutes after liftoff. It was the booster’s tenth flight and tenth successful landing, following the NROL-95 national security mission and eight Starlink launches. Its previous flight, a Starlink Group 15 mission on August 22, came just 35 days earlier. SpaceX ended its livestream shortly after the landing, which is standard for classified payloads, and neither the company nor the Space Force has said what the rocket carried.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-385 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/CAdbx85Ydy
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 26, 2026
USSF-385 is the fourth Space Force launch from the same Vandenberg pad in roughly six weeks, following USSF-366 on August 15, USSF-153 on September 10, and USSF-259 on September 17. When SpaceX flew USSF-366 in August, independent trackers noted that the rocket’s stage drop zones matched SpaceX’s Starlink Group 15 missions, pointing to Starshield, the government version of the Starlink satellite bus. The Space Force later cataloged 23 satellites after both USSF-366 and USSF-153, while USSF-259 placed 17 satellites into a different orbital plane, per KeepTrack. Launch databases describe USSF-385 the same way, though the payload remains officially unidentified.
The cadence lines up with the contracts, because in July, the Space Force awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion in task orders for 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027. SpaceX also holds contracts to build pieces of that same network, which pushed its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion.
Saturday’s flight was also the sixth and final Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg in September, according to Spaceflight Now, while only one Falcon 9 flew from the East Coast this month as SpaceX shifts its Florida infrastructure toward Starship. Launch trackers list it as SpaceX’s 112th mission of 2026 and the 108th Falcon 9 flight of the year, with SLC-4E turned around about six and a half days after its previous launch.
The West Coast pad will not stay quiet for long, considering SpaceX has another Starlink mission scheduled from SLC-4E on September 30. Meanwhile, in Texas, the company is two days away from Starship Flight 14, which is targeting Monday at 7:15 a.m. CT for the vehicle’s first attempt to reach orbit.
Elon Musk’s AI Grok Bot can now handle banking while your Tesla FSD handles the road
SpaceX just got the green light Starship has waited years for
