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There are a lot of people here very confidently stating that LIDAR isn't necessary but seemingly forgetting to link to any actual evidence of fully autonomous v

There are a lot of people here very confidently stating that LIDAR isn't necessary but seemingly forgetting to link to any actual evidence of fully autonomous vehicles that work without it. The issue is that human vision isn't just vision, it's vision linked with a ridiculous general intelligence that we're no where close to reproducing. So humans are great at categorising the objects they see, and reasoning and how they'll behave, which is why we don't generally need LIDAR. So it's just as much about how humans can reason from sight as it is about how good their sight actually is. It's very possible that by the time you've built a computer capable of the same sort of reasoning that humans do, you've actually solved, well, artifical general intelligence and you're no longer designing a car at all - because the AGI took that job ages ago.

nikanj 7y ago
According to your average SV pitch deck, we are 6-10 months away from reproducing general intelligence. Add in a sprinkling of Pascal's Wager, and your funding is almost guaranteed.
- Piskvorrr 7y ago
  Which goes back all the way to the Dartmouth workshop, which hoped to get most of the work done in 6-8 weeks. That was in 1956. Is most of the work done? Well there you go. (Your hint that it's a good way to get paid for such work holds, of course, but the expectation that Problems will get Solved...unlikely)
vbezhenar 7y ago
I'm not sure that human uses that general intelligence when driving and when decisions must be made quickly. I think that brain uses shortcuts and does not really reason about things. And those shortcuts are likely work similar to trained neural networks. That's one reason why novice drivers have problems: they don't have those shortcuts in their brains yet, so they have to reason and that takes valuable time and attention. Though I think that robotic automobiles must perform better than humans, so equipping them with better sensors makes perfect sense, regardless of algorithms.
- mardifoufs 7y ago
  I think it's always best to avoid comparing neural nets with biological neurones and their networks. The comparison just doesn't hold since they are completely different in almost every way. Also I think that it actually proves that humans use their general intelligence to drive, since Humans can learn on the go and add almost any type of new knowledge and act upon it without even realizing it. The brain is not looking for anything in particular, just any type of information that would be relevant to driving.
cosmodisk 7y ago
We,humans,are very good at some things that will probably take decades for computers to get anywhere near such a level. For instance, you driving a car and there's a huge truck ahead of you transporting big logs. There isn't much traffic and eventually you get close enough to the truck to see that the structure holding the logs is somewhat loose.Your brain can instantly create a scenario of what would happen if the logs would start falling on the road.This alone gives you enough info to act upon.What you do( slow down or try to take over and warn the driver at the same time) is different question.In probably less than a second your brain recognised the type of cargo the truck had, it's physical properties, some outcomes should parts of the truck fail and so on. For us it's easy,for computer this would probably take days worth computation.
- Valgrim 7y ago
  Not just humans, bit even the tiniest of insects are capable of navigating with ease in complex environments at a speed and adaptability we are not even close to match. I'm pretty sure that having the raw intelligence of an ant brain in a mars rover would expand our exploration capabilities by several order of magnitudes.
  - lostmsu 7y ago
    Nah, insects just have very high body durability at the speeds they move.
Hitton 7y ago
>There are a lot of people here very confidently stating that LIDAR isn't necessary but seemingly forgetting to link to any actual evidence of fully autonomous vehicles that work without it. Funny, I was not aware of any fully autonomous vehicle that actually works with or without it.

nikanj 7y ago

According to your average SV pitch deck, we are 6-10 months away from reproducing general intelligence. Add in a sprinkling of Pascal's Wager, and your funding is almost guaranteed.

Piskvorrr 7y ago
Which goes back all the way to the Dartmouth workshop, which hoped to get most of the work done in 6-8 weeks. That was in 1956. Is most of the work done? Well there you go. (Your hint that it's a good way to get paid for such work holds, of course, but the expectation that Problems will get Solved...unlikely)

vbezhenar 7y ago

I'm not sure that human uses that general intelligence when driving and when decisions must be made quickly. I think that brain uses shortcuts and does not really reason about things. And those shortcuts are likely work similar to trained neural networks. That's one reason why novice drivers have problems: they don't have those shortcuts in their brains yet, so they have to reason and that takes valuable time and attention. Though I think that robotic automobiles must perform better than humans, so equipping them with better sensors makes perfect sense, regardless of algorithms.

mardifoufs 7y ago
I think it's always best to avoid comparing neural nets with biological neurones and their networks. The comparison just doesn't hold since they are completely different in almost every way. Also I think that it actually proves that humans use their general intelligence to drive, since Humans can learn on the go and add almost any type of new knowledge and act upon it without even realizing it. The brain is not looking for anything in particular, just any type of information that would be relevant to driving.

cosmodisk 7y ago

We,humans,are very good at some things that will probably take decades for computers to get anywhere near such a level. For instance, you driving a car and there's a huge truck ahead of you transporting big logs. There isn't much traffic and eventually you get close enough to the truck to see that the structure holding the logs is somewhat loose.Your brain can instantly create a scenario of what would happen if the logs would start falling on the road.This alone gives you enough info to act upon.What you do( slow down or try to take over and warn the driver at the same time) is different question.In probably less than a second your brain recognised the type of cargo the truck had, it's physical properties, some outcomes should parts of the truck fail and so on. For us it's easy,for computer this would probably take days worth computation.

Valgrim 7y ago
Not just humans, bit even the tiniest of insects are capable of navigating with ease in complex environments at a speed and adaptability we are not even close to match. I'm pretty sure that having the raw intelligence of an ant brain in a mars rover would expand our exploration capabilities by several order of magnitudes.
- lostmsu 7y ago
  Nah, insects just have very high body durability at the speeds they move.

Hitton 7y ago

>There are a lot of people here very confidently stating that LIDAR isn't necessary but seemingly forgetting to link to any actual evidence of fully autonomous vehicles that work without it. Funny, I was not aware of any fully autonomous vehicle that actually works with or without it.