I think particular robot side projects, if you can afford it, make use of LIDAR partly because it makes dealing with things much easier than the amount of time

I think particular robot side projects, if you can afford it, make use of LIDAR partly because it makes dealing with things much easier than the amount of time invested attempting a vision-based system. It's been a long time but I remember lidar being common (or at least a divide between rich/poor college clubs) a decade ago in competitions like http://www.igvc.org/ http://www.igvc.org/