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Well, that was specifically about blending two different sensors with different characteristics. For you walking, it would be like blending your eyes with your

Well, that was specifically about blending two different sensors with different characteristics. For you walking, it would be like blending your eyes with your nose. If your eyes tells you the floor is safe, and your nose smells something bad, do you stop? Anytime you have two different sensors with different characteristics, you want "the best". Your body uses your eyes to see where to walk, and your nose to test if pizza is rotten. Blending multiple sensor types is tricky. So back to LIDAR.. same difference. Camera and LIDAR have different profiles. I think it's fine to use either, but I think trying to blend the two is a sub-optimal solution to the problem. Again, this is my guess from what I know. I could be wrong, and the winning technology could use 12 different sensors (vision + radar + lidar + smell + microphones), and blend them all to drive. Cool if someone pulls it off! But if I had to do it myself or place a bet, I would put it on a single sensor type.

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
Unfortunately your example is inapt because the center of your vision and your peripheral vision may as well be entirely separate systems that don't overlap, and the way brains apply focus doesn't translate to how cameras work. Your scenario is closer to asking about the center of your focus saying the path in front of you is clear and your peripheral vision detecting inbound motion from the side. Peripheral motion detection overrides the clear forward view, but it's because they aren't trying to record the same information. Here's why: > If your eyes tells you the floor is safe, and your nose smells something bad, do you stop? Absolutely, yes, if the bad smell smells like dog shit or vomit or something else that I definitely don't want to step in. If I'm walking, I'm very unlikely to be looking directly at my feet and much more likely to be looking ahead to do predictive path planning. I definitely do stop at least transiently in your scenario and then apply extra visual focus to the ground right in front of my feet so that I don't step on dog shit. The center of my vision is great at discerning details, but peripheral vision is terrible for that. Anyway, the obvious answer to your inquiry based on my explanation here is to use confidence weighting and adaptive focus. If I think something might be happening somewhere, I focus my available resources directly at the problem.
- patentatt 5y ago
  This. When sensors disagree, you need to proceed with caution by taking a defensive stance and seek out more information. If a self-driving car can’t do that, then it can’t self drive really. I’m bearish on self driving, my uninformed take is that it is something that will require very near general AI to pull off acceptably. So it’s kind of silly, again in my totally uninformed opinion, to focus on using our current methods to do self driving. The focus needs to be on pushing toward general AI first, then just ask it to drive.
baud147258 5y ago
> If your eyes tells you the floor is safe, and your nose smells something bad well, if I'm smelling gas, I know the situation isn't safe… (and thus my nose is giving me an information my eyes might not have detected)
threeseed 5y ago
> but I think trying to blend the two is a sub-optimal solution to the problem Research over the last decade has shown that LiDAR/Vision fusion outperforms Vision Only. Can you explain the science behind your position ?
tw04 5y ago
> If your eyes tells you the floor is safe, and your nose smells something bad, do you stop? If my eyes tell me the floor is safe, but my ears hear it creaking and my feet feel it sagging I'm going to stop in my tracks/back up. If Tesla can't handle correlating multiple different types of sensors they aren't ever replacing a human driver.
a-dub 5y ago
sensor fusion is used in a lot of places in robotics (and rockets!). and yes, your percept is constructed from all functioning senses. what you look at and where your attention lands is often directed by your auditory system which can locate things in 3d space.

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago

Unfortunately your example is inapt because the center of your vision and your peripheral vision may as well be entirely separate systems that don't overlap, and the way brains apply focus doesn't translate to how cameras work. Your scenario is closer to asking about the center of your focus saying the path in front of you is clear and your peripheral vision detecting inbound motion from the side. Peripheral motion detection overrides the clear forward view, but it's because they aren't trying to record the same information. Here's why: > If your eyes tells you the floor is safe, and your nose smells something bad, do you stop? Absolutely, yes, if the bad smell smells like dog shit or vomit or something else that I definitely don't want to step in. If I'm walking, I'm very unlikely to be looking directly at my feet and much more likely to be looking ahead to do predictive path planning. I definitely do stop at least transiently in your scenario and then apply extra visual focus to the ground right in front of my feet so that I don't step on dog shit. The center of my vision is great at discerning details, but peripheral vision is terrible for that. Anyway, the obvious answer to your inquiry based on my explanation here is to use confidence weighting and adaptive focus. If I think something might be happening somewhere, I focus my available resources directly at the problem.

patentatt 5y ago
This. When sensors disagree, you need to proceed with caution by taking a defensive stance and seek out more information. If a self-driving car can’t do that, then it can’t self drive really. I’m bearish on self driving, my uninformed take is that it is something that will require very near general AI to pull off acceptably. So it’s kind of silly, again in my totally uninformed opinion, to focus on using our current methods to do self driving. The focus needs to be on pushing toward general AI first, then just ask it to drive.

baud147258 5y ago

> If your eyes tells you the floor is safe, and your nose smells something bad well, if I'm smelling gas, I know the situation isn't safe… (and thus my nose is giving me an information my eyes might not have detected)

threeseed 5y ago

> but I think trying to blend the two is a sub-optimal solution to the problem Research over the last decade has shown that LiDAR/Vision fusion outperforms Vision Only. Can you explain the science behind your position ?

tw04 5y ago

> If your eyes tells you the floor is safe, and your nose smells something bad, do you stop? If my eyes tell me the floor is safe, but my ears hear it creaking and my feet feel it sagging I'm going to stop in my tracks/back up. If Tesla can't handle correlating multiple different types of sensors they aren't ever replacing a human driver.

a-dub 5y ago

sensor fusion is used in a lot of places in robotics (and rockets!). and yes, your percept is constructed from all functioning senses. what you look at and where your attention lands is often directed by your auditory system which can locate things in 3d space.