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This is exactly why we need LIDAR. Tesla has been very stubborn about avoiding LIDAR and this is what happens as a consequence. The rest of the self-driving sc
by screye 6y ago
This is exactly why we need LIDAR.
Tesla has been very stubborn about avoiding LIDAR and this is what happens as a consequence. The rest of the self-driving scene fundamentally relies on LIDAR to get things working. Believe me, if cameras were sufficient people wouldn't use LIDAR . LIDAR is expensive. I have spoken to quite a few people in the field and the lack of LIDAR in Tesla vehicles baffles them.
Radar is not a substitute for LIDAR. Sound is really high latency and has terrible resolution.
I would like to see how often things like these happen with Waymo.
- Cerium 6y agoRadar is not sonar. The latency for radar is good, but the resolution is indeed poor.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoIf you're willing to spend DOD type bucks you can get some insanely good (like the old boring legacy tech will keep track of a city's worth of vehicles and dismounts without getting them all confused with each other) radar. The secret sauce is in the algorithms though and lord knows how many millions of dollars and man hours have been poured into that.
- mlyle 6y agoLimited aperture on a car means limited angular resolution even with millimeter wave. This can mean the information needed to tell whether something stationary is in your path just isn't there-- especially in the vertical direction where aperture is smaller. A big flat surface that's not normal to you like the box truck may also not be a very large return.
- kube-system 6y agoYeah, my 6 year old Toyota has millimeter wave radar, and so do a lot of cars, for detecting objects in front of the vehicle.
- jturpin 6y agoMaybe, the problem right now is that there is no module that Tesla can purchase and use on their cars. All the Lidar modules currently in use are these large and more importantly expensive spinning devices mounted on top of the car. These make sense for robotaxis, where cost and unsightliness are not an issue, but not an option for Tesla right now. I believe a couple companies have made headway with cheaper, smaller (solid state?) devices that might be an option in the near future, but these are just recent developments.
- trog 6y agoHow about laser rangefinders? Even one of them in the centre of the vehicle in the direction of travel would be useful for high speed impact avoidance - well, assuming they work reliably and how I think they do; I'm not a hardware guy. But would a laser rangefinder pointing forward be useful? They're not that big and bulky and should at least be useful for braking when it detects something closing too rapidly...?
- bentcorner 6y agoJust spitballing but would those have problems in rain/fog/smoke?
- sukilot 6y agoYou know what a smart driver does in rain/fog/smoke? Slow down.
- bentcorner 6y agoI guess I should be more clear - I'm guessing (but I could be wrong) that a laser rangefinder would consider heavy rain/fog/smoke to be a solid barrier and wouldn't slow down, it'd stop.
- trog 6y agoThat would be my guess too.. but that's probably what you want to happen if automated sensors are unable to perceive the world around them - slow and stop the car until a human takes over again...?
- habitue 6y ago> Believe me, if cameras were sufficient people wouldn't use LIDAR I don't necessarily think LIDAR is a bad idea, but this logic seems kind of circular. Isn't the issue that nobody knows what's sufficient? At the very least the engineers at Tesla seem to think LIDAR isn't necessary (maybe not a slam-dunk argument but humans don't use LIDAR to drive, so it's at the very least plausible computer vision systems alone are sufficient)
- lnanek2 6y agoThat's like saying humans have consciousness, so strong AI is at least very plausible. Possible, sure? Possible in the next decade? Probably not.
- SomewhatLikely 6y agoDoesn't seem like it was necessary here. I'm no computer vision expert, but surely parallax between multiple cameras and/or multiple time points would make detecting such a massive object simple.
- MauranKilom 6y agoLarge uniform/featureless surfaces are the bane of stereo vision. And propagating in from the borders is extremely risky if there's any occlusion affecting the borders (read: if you get the borders wrong). Maybe in this particular instance you could look at the data and go "yep, that white surface is indeed closing in and not just some part of the sky". But how many false positives do you allow for "there's a huge thing in my way that requires emergency braking" in interstate scenarios?
- screye 6y agoThis actually seemed like an adversarial case. It seems like the color of the truck and that of the road were near identical to each other. Maybe no different that what it looks like when the road changes textures to a worse surface or or hits an odd pot hole. It is likely the car alerted the owner to take over, but did not brake on its own. The thing about LIDAR is detecting objects becomes shit easy. One thing is for sure. I can guarantee such an accident would not have happened with LIDAR.
- aeternum 6y agoIt's surprising they did not train for this given very similar accidents (hitting semi-trucks) in 2016 and 2019. LIDAR isn't a surefire solve, it also has issues with large white surfaces and bright sunlight.