Lidar adds complexity and domain that's not available to humans. Humans drive without lidar, so presumably we can train a neural net to drive without it as well

Lidar adds complexity and domain that's not available to humans. Humans drive without lidar, so presumably we can train a neural net to drive without it as well. Lidar is almost like adding a hand crafted dimension to the decision making process. It makes the system more explainable, but doesn't necessarily mean it will help achieve better results. I look at ML in games like chess and go. Originally, they had a set of hand crafted features, like the concept of "eyes" in go. But later iterations removed those and the network performed better. I think lidar is the same thing where it'll add unnecessary complexity and ultimately hurt in learning.