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Interestingly, I saw a white "Apple Maps" branded van in my city recently, with four (Velodyne?) LiDAR heads on the roof, one on each corner, along with cameras
by tomkinstinch 9y ago
Interestingly, I saw a white "Apple Maps" branded van in my city recently, with four (Velodyne?) LiDAR heads on the roof, one on each corner, along with cameras in the center. Such a system would produce way more LiDAR data than they need for routine mapping, but perhaps enough to build a database for autonomous driving. I live far from Silicon Valley, so they must be confident that data will be useful eventually—enough so to justify the cost of driving around the country and storing an immense volume of LiDAR data.
- michaelt 9y agoQuite a few mapping companies have some LIDAR on their vehicles these days. Tele Atlas: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tele_Atlas_camera_automobile_2008-02-29_1.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tele_Atlas_camera_au... TomTom: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mapping_van_tomtom_with_five_lidars.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mapping_van_tomtom_w... and of course Google: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Google_Maps_Car_at_Googleplex.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Google_M... While detailed LIDAR data is valuable for self-driving vehicles, you can also put it to more mundane uses. For example detecting where the kerbs are relative to the mapping vehicle; and detecting whether that featureless concrete-coloured thing the cameras captured was a barrier or not.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]