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"Since Tesla is not using Lidar and they have one of the most advanced self-driving systems, i wonder about this too." Who says? The chattering masses on HN?
by timr 10y ago
"Since Tesla is not using Lidar and they have one of the most advanced self-driving systems, i wonder about this too."
Who says? The chattering masses on HN?
Tesla has certainly deployed a lot of assisted driving systems, but then again, so have a lot of car companies. Lane-keeping and auto-braking are not new, and to date, that's all Tesla has actually shipped.
People who know better have serious doubts that you can do full autonomy with only video/radar input under real-world driving conditions (like darkness). That's why most of their competitors are using LIDAR.
- nojvek 10y agoLidar makes a ton of things easy. Visually extracting 3d world from cameras is a very hard and computationally intensive problem. I really hope velodyne delivers. Quanergy seems to have a nice site but seems vaporware in the sense you can't actually buy it. A $100 light weight Lidar is truly game changing for robots, self driving cars and drones.
- TillE 10y ago> and computationally intensive problem Not an exact analogy, but this reminds me of ancient "software modems", which shaved off a few chips and offloaded processing to the CPU. They were cheap, but had a real impact on your computer's performance. The trouble with image processing is that it seems basically impossible to perfect with the level of certainty you'd need for 100% autonomy, whereas LIDAR gives you very straightforward data to act on. You'd still need the cameras for recognizing traffic lights and such, of course.
- cr0sh 10y ago> A $100 light weight Lidar is truly game changing for robots, self driving cars and drones. This is probably going to end up like the Oculus Rift; it won't be $100.00 - it will probably end up north of $500.00, possibly north of $1000.00. If it were easy, SICK or Hokuyo would have done it already. The fact that neither have can mean many things, of course, but I bet one of the big ones is that it isn't easy to pack a 3D LIDAR into a small package and make it robust and cheap. Both of those companies 2D LIDAR solutions already hit the robust portion; Hokuyo's offerings hit the small package portion (SICK's 2D systems are mostly the size of a coffeemaker - I own a couple), but neither company hits the low price mark. That could also mean that they have a niche market that's willing to pay those prices, but given the interest and want for fast 3D LIDAR for self-driving vehicles and other uses, the fact that they don't have anything out is telling. Now doing it all solid-state? Well - there are companies that have these systems as well (supposedly at least) - called "flash LIDAR"; essentially firing a laser to "flash" the scene, then using a grid-array of CCD-like high-speed elements to gather a 3D delay-time between the flash and reception. From what I've seen, for even the low-resolution modules, they make the former two companies offerings look dirt-cheap in comparison...
- MertsA 10y ago$1000 is still game changing. $1000 is something that's downright cheap to throw a few of on a car if it allows for a true NHTSA level 4 self driving car.
- kayoone 10y agoeven north of $1000 would still be cheaper than most of the in-car navigation/entertainment systems that a lot of people order. In relation to a car, $1000 is really not a lot of money. Heck, i just replaced a mirror for 450 EUR...