5 ms·
I'm not entirely convinced it's a good idea, but one convincing argument I've seen is that sensor fusion is hard and it's not a priori clear which sensor to bel
by feifan 5y ago
I'm not entirely convinced it's a good idea, but one convincing argument I've seen is that sensor fusion is hard and it's not a priori clear which sensor to believe when they provide conflicting information. It's entirely possible that they get better predictive accuracy from vision-only data then in the analogous situations with vision+radar data.
- voqv 5y agoThe industry has been sensor fusion for decades. Training Autopilot neural networks to hallucinate road parts is easy but doing uncertainty estimation on simple radar measurements is hard? Also you still have to fuse the data from the multiple cameras. I'm almost doubting my entire knowledge in the field now when all of a sudden everyone just accepts that "sensor fusion is hard" statement.
- feifan 5y agoI'd imagine sensor fusion in this context isn't a singular problem right? It seems entirely plausible that for Tesla's system, it's straightforward to integrate cameras where the resolution is known and data is homogenous in a certain way, and that it's hard to integrate and use radar data into that system.
- voqv 5y agoThe Model 3 has a ARS-4B radar and these things usually already do perception for you, so the output is a list of vehicle velocity and pose. Given what I know about Autopilot , I don't see how is that hard to fuse. And I doubt the supplier of the radar (Continental) gave Tesla raw data access. I just think there's more to the story than we're getting. Impossible to tell for an outsider though.
- nimithryn 5y agoI don't find this argument convincing at all. Just ignore the lidar in situations where lidar and vision conflict and you have the original decision. They probably started without lidar due to the cost (Tesla is one of few companies actually selling cars to customers, who are sensitive to price). The price of lidar has come down, but I would guess it requires a fair amount of expensive rearchitecture to add it in now, and they haven't bitten the bullet yet.
- grecy 5y agoElon has said many times they would use Lidar if they thought it was needed / beneficial. In fact he and the SpaceX team designed a Lidar into the Dragon spacecraft to help it dock with the ISS (which is obviously a HIGHLY sensitive operation with extremely strict rules), and he said it was perfect for that scenario. He was asked point blank if they would use Lidar as Tesla even if they were free... and he said no. In their opinion it's simply not the right approach to generate photons and read them as they come back. It's preferable to simply read the photons that are already coming in.
- jrallison 5y ago"Just ignore the lidar in situations where lidar and vision conflict and you have the original decision." Then why have lidar? If it's only purpose is to agree with vision or you just discard it, then why even have it?
- nimithryn 5y agoI’m arguing against the idea that conflicting sensors is an issue. Clearly you can do no worse with sensors A and B than with just sensor A. You might want to not have sensor B to lower the cost (as I suggested). Or you might want to have both sensors A and B because the provide some synergies (as gkop pointed out, better range of view, increased confidence, etc.). But it’s definitely not enough to just argue that the sensors may conflict.
- gkop 5y agoHypothetically, 1. Improved confidence when both signals agree 2. Improved field and range of view
- ctdonath 5y agoSounds like a good reason to dump LIDAR. if vision is good enough to always defer to, why bother with something contradicting?
- nimithryn 5y ago