4 ms·

The point is, adding lidar to the car does not mean you are "done with it". If it were the case, Tesla would have done it long ago. Lidar is great for precisely

by _ph_ 5y ago

The point is, adding lidar to the car does not mean you are "done with it". If it were the case, Tesla would have done it long ago. Lidar is great for precisely detecting 3D surfaces. But it helps very little in characterizing those surfaces. Lidar could tell you precisely how far a sheet of metal is. Whether that sheet of metal is a traffic sign and what it says, it tells you not. Lidar doesn't detect lane markings and many things more. Also, there is the challenge of merging the Lidar data with your camera images.

clouddrover 5y ago
> adding lidar to the car does not mean you are "done with it" It will mean Tesla is done with trying to avoid adding it. They test with lidar so they might as well start using it: https://insideevs.com/news/508669/tesla-model-y-luminar-lidar/ https://insideevs.com/news/508669/tesla-model-y-luminar-lida...
a_t48 5y ago
LIDAR absolutely detects lane markings, along with street signs, if you’re close enough. Edit: the reason here is that road paint (and the marking on a sign) is typically retroreflective, while roads (and regular painted sheet metal) are not. Retroreflective materials are very easy to detect with LIDAR. Even if you are on older roads that don't have retroreflective paint, white objects and black objects also tend to show up differently. Edit2: there's also no reason you can't use detection algorithms to characterize pointclouds. You can also fuse the returned objects from the lidar sensor(s) with the objects from the camera(s). You have the latter problem even with just multiple cameras. Inevitably, whatever you are using for segmentation/classification will return different results on different sensors, for sensors that share the same FOV - you do need a strategy for handling this. Tesla has not added LIDAR because of cost (and because of Elon's ego...) - they are one of the few companies going directly for consumer sales - more parts that cost $$$ and require calibration aren't good for that.
giantrobot 5y ago
LIDAR is used in addition to 2D camera images. LIDAR is used to build a depth map and do image segmentation and works in low light and low contrast environments. Single cameras (even stereo cameras) require a lot more assumptions about contrast and environment lighting to do image segmentation and depth maps. They're rarely as accurate as LIDAR and often far worse. Depth maps and image segmentation are the building blocks of object identification. You can try to AI your way into those with a single camera but it'll be less accurate and more error prone.

by _ph_ 5y ago

clouddrover 5y ago

> adding lidar to the car does not mean you are "done with it" It will mean Tesla is done with trying to avoid adding it. They test with lidar so they might as well start using it: https://insideevs.com/news/508669/tesla-model-y-luminar-lidar/ https://insideevs.com/news/508669/tesla-model-y-luminar-lida...

a_t48 5y ago

LIDAR absolutely detects lane markings, along with street signs, if you’re close enough. Edit: the reason here is that road paint (and the marking on a sign) is typically retroreflective, while roads (and regular painted sheet metal) are not. Retroreflective materials are very easy to detect with LIDAR. Even if you are on older roads that don't have retroreflective paint, white objects and black objects also tend to show up differently. Edit2: there's also no reason you can't use detection algorithms to characterize pointclouds. You can also fuse the returned objects from the lidar sensor(s) with the objects from the camera(s). You have the latter problem even with just multiple cameras. Inevitably, whatever you are using for segmentation/classification will return different results on different sensors, for sensors that share the same FOV - you do need a strategy for handling this. Tesla has not added LIDAR because of cost (and because of Elon's ego...) - they are one of the few companies going directly for consumer sales - more parts that cost $$$ and require calibration aren't good for that.

giantrobot 5y ago

LIDAR is used in addition to 2D camera images. LIDAR is used to build a depth map and do image segmentation and works in low light and low contrast environments. Single cameras (even stereo cameras) require a lot more assumptions about contrast and environment lighting to do image segmentation and depth maps. They're rarely as accurate as LIDAR and often far worse. Depth maps and image segmentation are the building blocks of object identification. You can try to AI your way into those with a single camera but it'll be less accurate and more error prone.