7 ms·

Velodyne Plans a Lidar Megafactory

88 points by codewithcheese 10y ago

jayjay71 10y ago
This is great news. Quanergy was supposed to be selling solid state sensors by now, but they missed their deadline and have changed their answer to "soon." Regardless, so long as somebody is selling the sensors for cheap, it's fantastic news for robotics. It also opens up possibilities for selling to consumers as there could be phones that include these sensors (or more likely they're sold separately as dongles). Suddenly your phones would be able to do SLAM and make 3D maps of your surroundings. That would make furniture shopping a lot easier. I could also see some cool applications with augmented reality.
- alex_hirner 10y ago
  I wonder which "SLAM for the masses" technology will become dominant. Do you have any thoughts what's missing in google's project Tango?
  - zump 10y ago
    Range.
  - pierotofy 10y ago
    Accuracy. The drift is too large.
  - tgb 10y ago
    I'm still disappointed that Kinect didn't usher in that era already.
    - Symmetry 10y ago
      Apple bought the company making those sensors and they aren't available any more unless you know where in China they tend to "fall off the backs of trucks".
      - robotresearcher 10y ago
        Equivalent sensors are available from various mainstream manufacturers retail for cheap.... https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Kinect-Sensor-for-Xbox-One/productID.2267482500 https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Kinect-... https://www.asus.com/ca-en/3D-Sensor/Xtion_PRO_LIVE/ https://www.asus.com/ca-en/3D-Sensor/Xtion_PRO_LIVE/ (launching soon:) http://click.intel.com/intel-realsense-developer-kit-r200.html http://click.intel.com/intel-realsense-developer-kit-r200.ht...
    - robotresearcher 10y ago
      Texture projectors don't work outdoors in bright sunlight. It's a fundamental limitation of the tech.
- michaelt 10y ago
  there could be phones that include these sensors Maybe at some point, but mobile phone applications need sensors that are small, light, low-power, less than $100 - wheras automotive LIDARs have different requirements (range like the stopping distance of a car, powerful enough lasers to operate in direct sunlight, scanning a mostly-flat surface, can use several watts and weigh a kilo or more, can cost $200+ if they need to). If you have a great business plan that needs 3D consumer-priced 3D scanning, I'd start with a Kinect if I were you :)
- donquichotte 10y ago
  The Quanergy website also no longer contains any information about the price of their modules, originally quoted at a ridiculously low 250$ (100k batch size), making me afraid that their product might be vapourware. Nonetheless, progress appears to be made in the area. The article states that "Google originally had to pay US $73,000 for each unit, itself a rotating array of 64 laser beams". Today a hobbyist can just buy an 1D LIDAR for 150-200$ or a 2D LIDAR for 450$ on seeedstudio.
  - cr0sh 10y ago
    > Today a hobbyist can just buy an 1D LIDAR for 150-200$ or a 2D LIDAR for 450$ on seeedstudio. If yer not picky, you can generally pick up a cheap "repair part" or "surplus" Neato 2D Lidar unit from ebay, for about $100.00 or so. They are generally pulled from broken Neato vacuum robots. Alternatively, a used Neato (or sometimes even a new one) can generally be had for under $450.00 (plus you get a ton of other robot experimenting parts!). Another option for hobbyists are used SICK serial-port lidars; I've picked those up for around $300.00 off ebay. They run on 12-24 volts (great for vehicles and electric wheelchair-based platforms), and use RS-232 or RS-422 for communications (where it becomes a PITA is when they are set to the RS-422 protocol - because then you need a special adaptor - and not all of the adaptors work - to reprogram it - using a piece of software that runs on Windows NT4). They are very robust units, though. Big, and heavy (not for small robots - not at all; these units are about the size of a coffee maker). There are three main types - each with a different color case (yellow, blue, and grey). One of them is an "area coverage" only sensor (and doesn't have a way to output scan data), while the other two are more generalized (at least, this is what I recall - I probably have some details mixed up). These are on the used market because companies are phasing them out, I believe, for the newer ethernet based models.
  - frik 10y ago
    the 2D LIDAR is of a vacuum cleaning robot, it has a range of 5m, a toy that cannot be compared with a automotive LIDAR that has 150+m range
zump 10y ago
Software engineer here, is it too late to join Velodyne and make $$$? Asking cause, they seem established, and their engineers must be now feeling like they found a pot of gold.
- joeblau 10y ago
  Join our team — we have cookies.
- makmanalp 10y ago
  Yep, but I bet pressure has been jacked up too - now that people know this stuff is useful in self-driving cars and not just research projects, I bet investment money is pouring in like rivers. How long till SICK or Hokuyo comes up with a competitor? I think there are already some on the market.
  - cr0sh 10y ago
    > How long till SICK or Hokuyo comes up with a competitor? I'm really surprised that one of them hasn't done it already. Hokuyo especially - one of their sensors is already relatively small, and USB based; I wish I could get my hands on a used one (so far, all I've seen on the market are older SICK units). It's probably because they are all entrenched in the niche industrial market; they may not be able to make a lower priced sensor without cutting into that market (but if they don't, they might see that market erode anyhow).
    - zump 10y ago
      But in revenue terms, is it making an impact or is it just hype? Similar to how NVIDIA is selling GPUs to researchers, gamers must still account for most of their revenue.
- Schwolop 10y ago
  Actually I feel for the original engineers who loved being in a tiny company making high quality speakers and audio amplifiers, and now find themselves in a wholly world of massive investment and interest.
joeblau 10y ago
They really need this. The calibration on their Lidar sensors is all over the place and for their sensors to be reliable enough to use off the shelf, they a factory.
yoodenvranx 10y ago
I know almost nothing about Lidars and I was unable to find an answer to my question: What happens if you have a few dozen Lidar-equipped cars in the same spot? Is there something like crosstalk, scatter or noise between the cars which result in Lidar artifacts?
- andreareina 10y ago
  According to [1] mutual interference would be unlikely because the beam and sensor are tightly-focused, and there's a very short time window in which a spurious beam would affect the measurement. [2] mentions that radar units modulate the waveform to identify the one it sent out, I imagine the same thing could be done for lidar if interference becomes a problem. [1] http://ideas.4brad.com/tricking-lidars-and-robocars http://ideas.4brad.com/tricking-lidars-and-robocars [2] http://www.aiqus.com/forum/questions/22373/using-multiple-lidars-at-the-same-time http://www.aiqus.com/forum/questions/22373/using-multiple-li...
- ptero 10y ago
  Highly unlikely unless such interference is very carefully, deliberately planned. If one did want to think adversarial one could explore a system receiving Lidar, say from a car behind, figuring out its transmission and doing your own illumination to confuse or jam the other car system. But the chances for this state arising naturally are astronomically small. My 2c.
  - abakker 10y ago
    seems like you could make a material that would absorb most of the light, rather than rebounding it? Lidar uses NIR, or UV lasers, so if you could engineer a material that had good absorption properties maybe you could prevent the beams from rebounding and confuse it that way?
    - blensor 10y ago
      You don't need to engineer it. In our lab tests we accidentially realized that one of our desktop computers was "invisible" to the Velodyne, because it had a black case. Every material that is black could be a good candidate. I am wondering if the google cars do have a problem with cars that have a matte black finish (those PVC foils). But you have to keep in mind that they are not invisible in the real sense, because you get a hole in your scan where you don't have points in your pointcloud. This could be detected, because the Velodyne usually has many beams pointing downward which eventually would hit the road, but would leave a hole instead if there is an NIR absorbing material. And if you use sensor fusion, you can use a camera to check for dark colors in those areas that might help you to detect such cases
igravious 10y ago
Really interesting comment (by TheRadicalModerate (cute handle)) attached to that IEEE Spectrum article. Posits that we don't need each and every auto manufacturer to be building and developing these systems (sensors + AI). Just a handful or two of large players (and they need not necessarily be auto manufacturers themselves) all building and developing to minimum national standards. Basically like the driver theory test these pieces of software must all pass the same criteria and standards. They can do better, they can set the bar higher for themselves, but there needs to be an pretty exhaustive check-list of compliance. That way when you're buying a car you're not wondering which edge-case is going to get you or someone else killed. There are going to be fatalities and injuries along the way, that's for sure, but so long as the number of fatalities and injuries is well below the current horrific rate this tech will be beyond revolutionary.
jrockway 10y ago
I'm looking forward to seeing the first company that uses the binary SI prefixes to describe their factory. "SpaceX's new Kibifactory plans to build 1024 rockets per year," for example.
- 50CNT 10y ago
  What's wrong with base10 SI prefixes? DeciFactory to build 10 rockets per year. CentiLaunchpad set to do 100 launches.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    Those would be a DecaFactory and an HectaLaunchpad. A DeciFactory would build a rocket every 10 years.
    - 50CNT 10y ago
      Whoops, mentally went in the wrong direction.
  - zardo 10y ago
    It's already been done.
decktech 10y ago
Velodyne is having major production issues. Our latest order with them has been pushed back months, and our last new order was quoted at 30-40 weeks. They keep citing yield issues. I'm hoping this opens up the market for reasonably-priced competition.
- blacksmith_tb 10y ago
  I see Velodyne is predicting that economies of scale would lower prices "below $50" which is impressive, at the same time I haven't heard anything more about Osram's $5 lidar[1], which would certainly turn up the pressure... 1: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/15/new-lidar-package-makes-it-easier-to-add-smarts-to-your-smart-car/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/15/new-lidar-package-makes-it...
stcredzero 10y ago
Is this the same Velodyne that makes subwoofers?
- bradyd 10y ago
  Yes it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velodyne_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velodyne_Inc.
  - dllu 10y ago
    They also make stabilized boats. [0] Truly fascinating company. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8553204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8553204
Bedon292 10y ago
This is not a criticism, just trying to understand better. The article's use of the word Lidars confused me. Lidar, as I understand it, is Light Detection and Ranging. A radar like system. But the it says 'Lidars' plural. Lidar is a technique not something to have multiple of. You can have multiple Lidar Arrays, or Systems or something like that but Lidars seems off to me. Is this a common way to talk about the systems?
- findthewords 10y ago
  Precedent: "The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging[1][2] or RAdio Direction And Ranging.[3][4] The term radar has since entered English and other languages as a common noun, losing all capitalization." -Wikipedia on Radar
  - Bedon292 10y ago
    Right I understand the acronym going down to a word. Totally makes sense. But its still don't see it pluralized as Radars, its radar arrays or radar dishes, or something along those lines. At least from what I have seen.
    - ucaetano 10y ago
      https://www.google.com/search?q=radars https://www.google.com/search?q=radars And https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=radar%2C+radars&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cradar%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cradars%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=radar%2C+radar...
cr0sh 10y ago
As much as I like LIDAR sensors, and as much as I'd like to see lower cost units, I have a suspicion that they are ultimately going to be unneeded for self-driving vehicles. There's been plenty of demonstrations by various players that self-driving vehicles can get a great amount if not nearly all needed information from camera-based systems, and drive well using them. Other sensors will be needed, of course - and maybe LIDAR can even play a part there; the more data you have, from more sources, the better - this has always been true in robotics. I just think that LIDAR won't play a primary role, but rather as a backup or accessory system component.
- 05 10y ago
  It's a question of reliability. When you market an 'autopilot' that periodically crashes into stationary vehicles, you are probably fine using just a camera. If you, on the other hand, are Google, and want to provide an actual hands-off Level 4 self-driving car, well.. you need an actual 3D point cloud and not just some neural network's educated guess about what the distance is.
  - ajross 10y ago
    > not just some neural network's educated guess about what the distance is But that's precisely the mechanism that's been working and accepted since the invention of the directed machine... (Also, just to clarify: a stereoscopic distance determination isn't meaningfully a "guess". That's been a solved problem for a long time.) The goal can't ever be perfect safety. The machines themselves aren't perfectly safe even if they aren't driven into anything. It just has to be measurably safer than a human driver.
    - petra 10y ago
      It's easier to certify a lidar depth map and prove it's reliability, than a complex algorithm that builds depth maps from camera, under all lighting conditions . And in any case , sensor fusion seems to be a common approach, so we'll probably need both lida and cameras.
    - 10y ago
Animats 10y ago
I read that, and was puzzled. Their press release says "Velodyne LiDAR’s new approach to the development of solid-state LiDAR sensors reflects the application of a monolithic gallium nitride (GaN) integrated circuit, developed in partnership with Efficient Power Conversion (EPC)." That's just a new drive circuit for the laser diode emitter.[1] Only 5ns pulses, too, which means depth resolution around 2 feet. There are other vendors with 1.5ns pulses. This is all on the output side; it doesn't improve the detector side. Velodyne is still doing this with rotating machinery. The more advanced concepts are true solid state devices. Continental, the auto parts maker, bought Advanced Scientific Concepts' expensive, but successful technology (Space-X uses it to dock with the ISS) and is trying to make it cheaper. If they can get the cost down, that's probably the best technology around. Quantergy announced a no-moving-parts LIDAR last year, but is having trouble delivering. (Despite that, their site says "Quanergy is the leading provider of solid state LiDAR sensors." No, they're not, not until they ship the product.) Quantergy recently announced a mechanical scanner, which is apparently shipping, and now claims that their solid state unit will ship in volume in 2017. We'll see if they deliver. Somebody is going to get this working soon, now that there's a market. I first saw a flash LIDAR as a demo on an optical bench at ASC back in 2012. That was clearly the right approach, but it was a long way off commercially. [1] http://epc-co.com/epc/EventsandNews/News/ArtMID/1627/ArticleID/1765/EPC-Development-Board-Shows-the-Ultra-Fast-Transition-Capability-of-eGaN-FETs-over-MOSFETs-Giving-Superior-LiDAR-System-Performance-When-Used-in-Autonomous-Vehicles.aspx http://epc-co.com/epc/EventsandNews/News/ArtMID/1627/Article...
- 8f6aee757bfeb6 10y ago
  Even with longer pulses, if you know the shape of the pulse, you can use a matched filter to get sub 5 ns resolution on the detector side. [0] A drawback of flash lidar is that the light spread out with an inverse square law. With diffuse reflection, the returned power decays in an inverse zenzizenzic fashion [1]. Lidars with a collimated laser beam are far less affected by the inverse square law on the emission side, therefore getting better range and signal-to-noise ratio. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matched_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matched_filter [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zenzizenzic https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zenzizenzic
- 10y ago

This is great news. Quanergy was supposed to be selling solid state sensors by now, but they missed their deadline and have changed their answer to "soon." Regardless, so long as somebody is selling the sensors for cheap, it's fantastic news for robotics. It also opens up possibilities for selling to consumers as there could be phones that include these sensors (or more likely they're sold separately as dongles). Suddenly your phones would be able to do SLAM and make 3D maps of your surroundings. That would make furniture shopping a lot easier. I could also see some cool applications with augmented reality.

alex_hirner 10y ago
I wonder which "SLAM for the masses" technology will become dominant. Do you have any thoughts what's missing in google's project Tango?
- zump 10y ago
  Range.
- pierotofy 10y ago
  Accuracy. The drift is too large.
- tgb 10y ago
  I'm still disappointed that Kinect didn't usher in that era already.
  - Symmetry 10y ago
    Apple bought the company making those sensors and they aren't available any more unless you know where in China they tend to "fall off the backs of trucks".
    - robotresearcher 10y ago
      Equivalent sensors are available from various mainstream manufacturers retail for cheap.... https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Kinect-Sensor-for-Xbox-One/productID.2267482500 https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Kinect-... https://www.asus.com/ca-en/3D-Sensor/Xtion_PRO_LIVE/ https://www.asus.com/ca-en/3D-Sensor/Xtion_PRO_LIVE/ (launching soon:) http://click.intel.com/intel-realsense-developer-kit-r200.html http://click.intel.com/intel-realsense-developer-kit-r200.ht...
  - robotresearcher 10y ago
    Texture projectors don't work outdoors in bright sunlight. It's a fundamental limitation of the tech.
michaelt 10y ago
there could be phones that include these sensors Maybe at some point, but mobile phone applications need sensors that are small, light, low-power, less than $100 - wheras automotive LIDARs have different requirements (range like the stopping distance of a car, powerful enough lasers to operate in direct sunlight, scanning a mostly-flat surface, can use several watts and weigh a kilo or more, can cost $200+ if they need to). If you have a great business plan that needs 3D consumer-priced 3D scanning, I'd start with a Kinect if I were you :)
donquichotte 10y ago
The Quanergy website also no longer contains any information about the price of their modules, originally quoted at a ridiculously low 250$ (100k batch size), making me afraid that their product might be vapourware. Nonetheless, progress appears to be made in the area. The article states that "Google originally had to pay US $73,000 for each unit, itself a rotating array of 64 laser beams". Today a hobbyist can just buy an 1D LIDAR for 150-200$ or a 2D LIDAR for 450$ on seeedstudio.
- cr0sh 10y ago
  > Today a hobbyist can just buy an 1D LIDAR for 150-200$ or a 2D LIDAR for 450$ on seeedstudio. If yer not picky, you can generally pick up a cheap "repair part" or "surplus" Neato 2D Lidar unit from ebay, for about $100.00 or so. They are generally pulled from broken Neato vacuum robots. Alternatively, a used Neato (or sometimes even a new one) can generally be had for under $450.00 (plus you get a ton of other robot experimenting parts!). Another option for hobbyists are used SICK serial-port lidars; I've picked those up for around $300.00 off ebay. They run on 12-24 volts (great for vehicles and electric wheelchair-based platforms), and use RS-232 or RS-422 for communications (where it becomes a PITA is when they are set to the RS-422 protocol - because then you need a special adaptor - and not all of the adaptors work - to reprogram it - using a piece of software that runs on Windows NT4). They are very robust units, though. Big, and heavy (not for small robots - not at all; these units are about the size of a coffee maker). There are three main types - each with a different color case (yellow, blue, and grey). One of them is an "area coverage" only sensor (and doesn't have a way to output scan data), while the other two are more generalized (at least, this is what I recall - I probably have some details mixed up). These are on the used market because companies are phasing them out, I believe, for the newer ethernet based models.
- frik 10y ago
  the 2D LIDAR is of a vacuum cleaning robot, it has a range of 5m, a toy that cannot be compared with a automotive LIDAR that has 150+m range

zump 10y ago

Software engineer here, is it too late to join Velodyne and make $$$? Asking cause, they seem established, and their engineers must be now feeling like they found a pot of gold.

joeblau 10y ago
Join our team — we have cookies.
makmanalp 10y ago
Yep, but I bet pressure has been jacked up too - now that people know this stuff is useful in self-driving cars and not just research projects, I bet investment money is pouring in like rivers. How long till SICK or Hokuyo comes up with a competitor? I think there are already some on the market.
- cr0sh 10y ago
  > How long till SICK or Hokuyo comes up with a competitor? I'm really surprised that one of them hasn't done it already. Hokuyo especially - one of their sensors is already relatively small, and USB based; I wish I could get my hands on a used one (so far, all I've seen on the market are older SICK units). It's probably because they are all entrenched in the niche industrial market; they may not be able to make a lower priced sensor without cutting into that market (but if they don't, they might see that market erode anyhow).
  - zump 10y ago
    But in revenue terms, is it making an impact or is it just hype? Similar to how NVIDIA is selling GPUs to researchers, gamers must still account for most of their revenue.
Schwolop 10y ago
Actually I feel for the original engineers who loved being in a tiny company making high quality speakers and audio amplifiers, and now find themselves in a wholly world of massive investment and interest.

joeblau 10y ago

They really need this. The calibration on their Lidar sensors is all over the place and for their sensors to be reliable enough to use off the shelf, they a factory.

yoodenvranx 10y ago

I know almost nothing about Lidars and I was unable to find an answer to my question: What happens if you have a few dozen Lidar-equipped cars in the same spot? Is there something like crosstalk, scatter or noise between the cars which result in Lidar artifacts?

andreareina 10y ago
According to [1] mutual interference would be unlikely because the beam and sensor are tightly-focused, and there's a very short time window in which a spurious beam would affect the measurement. [2] mentions that radar units modulate the waveform to identify the one it sent out, I imagine the same thing could be done for lidar if interference becomes a problem. [1] http://ideas.4brad.com/tricking-lidars-and-robocars http://ideas.4brad.com/tricking-lidars-and-robocars [2] http://www.aiqus.com/forum/questions/22373/using-multiple-lidars-at-the-same-time http://www.aiqus.com/forum/questions/22373/using-multiple-li...
ptero 10y ago
Highly unlikely unless such interference is very carefully, deliberately planned. If one did want to think adversarial one could explore a system receiving Lidar, say from a car behind, figuring out its transmission and doing your own illumination to confuse or jam the other car system. But the chances for this state arising naturally are astronomically small. My 2c.
- abakker 10y ago
  seems like you could make a material that would absorb most of the light, rather than rebounding it? Lidar uses NIR, or UV lasers, so if you could engineer a material that had good absorption properties maybe you could prevent the beams from rebounding and confuse it that way?
  - blensor 10y ago
    You don't need to engineer it. In our lab tests we accidentially realized that one of our desktop computers was "invisible" to the Velodyne, because it had a black case. Every material that is black could be a good candidate. I am wondering if the google cars do have a problem with cars that have a matte black finish (those PVC foils). But you have to keep in mind that they are not invisible in the real sense, because you get a hole in your scan where you don't have points in your pointcloud. This could be detected, because the Velodyne usually has many beams pointing downward which eventually would hit the road, but would leave a hole instead if there is an NIR absorbing material. And if you use sensor fusion, you can use a camera to check for dark colors in those areas that might help you to detect such cases

igravious 10y ago

Really interesting comment (by TheRadicalModerate (cute handle)) attached to that IEEE Spectrum article. Posits that we don't need each and every auto manufacturer to be building and developing these systems (sensors + AI). Just a handful or two of large players (and they need not necessarily be auto manufacturers themselves) all building and developing to minimum national standards. Basically like the driver theory test these pieces of software must all pass the same criteria and standards. They can do better, they can set the bar higher for themselves, but there needs to be an pretty exhaustive check-list of compliance. That way when you're buying a car you're not wondering which edge-case is going to get you or someone else killed. There are going to be fatalities and injuries along the way, that's for sure, but so long as the number of fatalities and injuries is well below the current horrific rate this tech will be beyond revolutionary.

jrockway 10y ago

I'm looking forward to seeing the first company that uses the binary SI prefixes to describe their factory. "SpaceX's new Kibifactory plans to build 1024 rockets per year," for example.

50CNT 10y ago
What's wrong with base10 SI prefixes? DeciFactory to build 10 rockets per year. CentiLaunchpad set to do 100 launches.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  Those would be a DecaFactory and an HectaLaunchpad. A DeciFactory would build a rocket every 10 years.
  - 50CNT 10y ago
    Whoops, mentally went in the wrong direction.
- zardo 10y ago
  It's already been done.

decktech 10y ago

Velodyne is having major production issues. Our latest order with them has been pushed back months, and our last new order was quoted at 30-40 weeks. They keep citing yield issues. I'm hoping this opens up the market for reasonably-priced competition.

blacksmith_tb 10y ago
I see Velodyne is predicting that economies of scale would lower prices "below $50" which is impressive, at the same time I haven't heard anything more about Osram's $5 lidar[1], which would certainly turn up the pressure... 1: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/15/new-lidar-package-makes-it-easier-to-add-smarts-to-your-smart-car/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/15/new-lidar-package-makes-it...

stcredzero 10y ago

Is this the same Velodyne that makes subwoofers?

bradyd 10y ago
Yes it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velodyne_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velodyne_Inc.
- dllu 10y ago
  They also make stabilized boats. [0] Truly fascinating company. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8553204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8553204

Bedon292 10y ago

This is not a criticism, just trying to understand better. The article's use of the word Lidars confused me. Lidar, as I understand it, is Light Detection and Ranging. A radar like system. But the it says 'Lidars' plural. Lidar is a technique not something to have multiple of. You can have multiple Lidar Arrays, or Systems or something like that but Lidars seems off to me. Is this a common way to talk about the systems?

findthewords 10y ago
Precedent: "The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging[1][2] or RAdio Direction And Ranging.[3][4] The term radar has since entered English and other languages as a common noun, losing all capitalization." -Wikipedia on Radar
- Bedon292 10y ago
  Right I understand the acronym going down to a word. Totally makes sense. But its still don't see it pluralized as Radars, its radar arrays or radar dishes, or something along those lines. At least from what I have seen.
  - ucaetano 10y ago
    https://www.google.com/search?q=radars https://www.google.com/search?q=radars And https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=radar%2C+radars&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cradar%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cradars%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=radar%2C+radar...

cr0sh 10y ago

As much as I like LIDAR sensors, and as much as I'd like to see lower cost units, I have a suspicion that they are ultimately going to be unneeded for self-driving vehicles. There's been plenty of demonstrations by various players that self-driving vehicles can get a great amount if not nearly all needed information from camera-based systems, and drive well using them. Other sensors will be needed, of course - and maybe LIDAR can even play a part there; the more data you have, from more sources, the better - this has always been true in robotics. I just think that LIDAR won't play a primary role, but rather as a backup or accessory system component.

05 10y ago
It's a question of reliability. When you market an 'autopilot' that periodically crashes into stationary vehicles, you are probably fine using just a camera. If you, on the other hand, are Google, and want to provide an actual hands-off Level 4 self-driving car, well.. you need an actual 3D point cloud and not just some neural network's educated guess about what the distance is.
- ajross 10y ago
  > not just some neural network's educated guess about what the distance is But that's precisely the mechanism that's been working and accepted since the invention of the directed machine... (Also, just to clarify: a stereoscopic distance determination isn't meaningfully a "guess". That's been a solved problem for a long time.) The goal can't ever be perfect safety. The machines themselves aren't perfectly safe even if they aren't driven into anything. It just has to be measurably safer than a human driver.
  - petra 10y ago
    It's easier to certify a lidar depth map and prove it's reliability, than a complex algorithm that builds depth maps from camera, under all lighting conditions . And in any case , sensor fusion seems to be a common approach, so we'll probably need both lida and cameras.
  - 10y ago

Animats 10y ago

I read that, and was puzzled. Their press release says "Velodyne LiDAR’s new approach to the development of solid-state LiDAR sensors reflects the application of a monolithic gallium nitride (GaN) integrated circuit, developed in partnership with Efficient Power Conversion (EPC)." That's just a new drive circuit for the laser diode emitter.[1] Only 5ns pulses, too, which means depth resolution around 2 feet. There are other vendors with 1.5ns pulses. This is all on the output side; it doesn't improve the detector side. Velodyne is still doing this with rotating machinery. The more advanced concepts are true solid state devices. Continental, the auto parts maker, bought Advanced Scientific Concepts' expensive, but successful technology (Space-X uses it to dock with the ISS) and is trying to make it cheaper. If they can get the cost down, that's probably the best technology around. Quantergy announced a no-moving-parts LIDAR last year, but is having trouble delivering. (Despite that, their site says "Quanergy is the leading provider of solid state LiDAR sensors." No, they're not, not until they ship the product.) Quantergy recently announced a mechanical scanner, which is apparently shipping, and now claims that their solid state unit will ship in volume in 2017. We'll see if they deliver. Somebody is going to get this working soon, now that there's a market. I first saw a flash LIDAR as a demo on an optical bench at ASC back in 2012. That was clearly the right approach, but it was a long way off commercially. [1] http://epc-co.com/epc/EventsandNews/News/ArtMID/1627/ArticleID/1765/EPC-Development-Board-Shows-the-Ultra-Fast-Transition-Capability-of-eGaN-FETs-over-MOSFETs-Giving-Superior-LiDAR-System-Performance-When-Used-in-Autonomous-Vehicles.aspx http://epc-co.com/epc/EventsandNews/News/ArtMID/1627/Article...

8f6aee757bfeb6 10y ago
Even with longer pulses, if you know the shape of the pulse, you can use a matched filter to get sub 5 ns resolution on the detector side. [0] A drawback of flash lidar is that the light spread out with an inverse square law. With diffuse reflection, the returned power decays in an inverse zenzizenzic fashion [1]. Lidars with a collimated laser beam are far less affected by the inverse square law on the emission side, therefore getting better range and signal-to-noise ratio. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matched_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matched_filter [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zenzizenzic https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zenzizenzic
10y ago