Tesla recently introduced its Full-Self Driving (Supervised) system in China. The system is supposed to ensure drivers keep their eyes on the road while using Autopilot.
However, some Tesla owners in China have figured out a workaround involving miniature plastic doll heads that trick Tesla’s driver-monitoring system into thinking they are actually watching the road.
For anywhere from $10 to $40, a Tesla driver can use one of these plastic doll heads – celebrities like Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, and The Rock are among the most popular – to trick Tesla’s in-cabin camera, allowing them to look away from the road, at their phones, and even sleep.
Tesla employs a tiny camera above the rearview mirror, in contrast to most automakers, which mount driver-monitoring devices on the A-pillar or behind the steering wheel. However, Chinese Tesla owners have discovered that they can trick the camera into mistaking the miniature plastic doll head for a genuine human head when placed in front of it.
According to Wired, Tesla owners position these heads on the car’s ceiling, windshield, or rearview mirror to obstruct the driver’s head.
Tesla owners have found other workarounds to the driver-monitoring system
Small doll heads aren’t the only way Chinese Tesla drivers are tricking the driver-monitoring system. Some owners position photographs in front of the camera or employ lenticular images that appear to blink when viewed from different angles. Others use small display panels that play looping films of a person’s face blinking and moving naturally to subvert the Tesla safeguards.
One driver told Wired he used a tiny replica of The Rock’s head on a road trip and said he could go 30 minutes without interruptions. In a video from the trip, he used one hand to snack on sunflower seeds and the other to film.
“You should buy a toy head about the size of a ping pong ball,” the driver said on a Chinese video platform where Tesla drivers were sharing tips with one another. “If it’s too small, the camera won’t be able to focus on the toy.”
So far, Tesla has not made any public statement regarding the use of these tiny doll heads or whether software updates will try to identify and prevent such workarounds.