One of the features of Tesla cars would be its Autopilot feature where it is more of an enhanced cruise control feature that also has the ability for the car to steer itself, meaning that it can be used on curved roads where the sensors on the car would allow it to continue to remain in its lane without driver input.
Unfortunately it seems that Tesla’s engineers still have quite a bit of work to do on improving the feature because according to researchers from Tencent Keen Security Lab (via Boing Boing), they have discovered that they were able to successfully trick the car’s Autopilot system and have the car steer itself off-course by using nothing but small stickers placed on the ground.
This is done by adding noise to lane-markings, meaning that it tricked the system into thinking that there are no lanes. Stickers could also be added to trick the car into steering into the opposite lane, which means that in theory fake lanes could be created to get the car to steer itself into the direction and destination that the attackers want.
That being said, the researchers have since disclosed their findings to Tesla who claims to have eliminated these issues in recent patches, but if anything it does seem to highlight how there is still a lot about autonomous technology that we have yet to figure out.
Filed in . Read more about Hack, Safety, Self-Driving Cars, Social Hit and Tesla.