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> Say you're driving down the road and there's a bit of construction, there's a guy holding SLOW/STOP sign directing traffic. LIDAR will tell you it's a hexago

by ra7 2y ago

> Say you're driving down the road and there's a bit of construction, there's a guy holding SLOW/STOP sign directing traffic. LIDAR will tell you it's a hexagonal sign, but it can't tell you what it says, you need a camera to read the sign and tell you what it says. But Waymo never said you don't need cameras. Hell, they have 29 cameras in each vehicle compared to Tesla's 8. Your point about their approaches being more alike than different is somewhat true, but you wrongly attribute the LiDAR vs camera debate to Waymo marketing. It's Elon and Tesla fans who started it and incessantly repeat it even to this day. Most rational folks say use whatever you can to get it working (which Waymo did) and optimize later.

martythemaniak 2y ago
Indeed, cameras are absolutely necessary for self-driving. They're the only ones that can read lane markings, signs, etc. LIDAR alone is not sufficient - you cannot navigate the roads using nothing but an unlabled 3D scene. It simply does not have the necessary information for you to drive ie, is that hexagonal sign a STOP or a GO, pretty important bit of info. So the question is: is LIDAR also necessary or are cameras sufficient? IE, can cameras+motion give you an accurate-enough 3D scene the way LIDAR can. And that's a narrow technical question, and it isn't even the most question when you consider self-driving as a whole. "LIDAR is necessary" is not exclusively a Waymo talking point - it is shared by all companies using LIDAR, suppliers of LIDAR etc. But it is just a talking point, there's no reason to think it's actually true.
- ra7 2y ago
  The reasons to think it’s actually true is because: 1. Only companies who have LiDAR in their stack have shown fully autonomous driving i.e. driverless. 2. Better 3D scene construction, which LiDAR, unquestionably provides permeates as an advantage throughout the stack. I do think “LiDAR or not” is a narrow argument. But the advantages are massive and undeniable, so it becomes necessary especially in light of rapidly falling costs.
- rcxdude 2y ago
  It's not necessarily a case of "LIDAR is necessary": it's more a case of how much more difficult it is to extract the necessary information with the necessary reliability from cameras alone (one important aspect I think is that LIDAR + HDmaps is very reliable at telling you 'something is there', even if it's not able to distinguish details. From the point of view of the car operating safely, that's a big deal). As it stands Tesla is behind waymo and making things harder for themselves (fundamentally because they've been trying to make it a consumer product, which constrains costs much more than aiming for robotaxis). It might mean they eventually get a much more cost competitive product, but that won't matter if they're beaten to market by 5-10 years (at the moment you can argue tesla is ahead in the areas their driver assist can operate and number of vehicles, but I think it's going to be much easier for waymo to scale up and to different areas than it is for tesla to progress their tech).

by ra7 2y ago

martythemaniak 2y ago

Indeed, cameras are absolutely necessary for self-driving. They're the only ones that can read lane markings, signs, etc. LIDAR alone is not sufficient - you cannot navigate the roads using nothing but an unlabled 3D scene. It simply does not have the necessary information for you to drive ie, is that hexagonal sign a STOP or a GO, pretty important bit of info. So the question is: is LIDAR also necessary or are cameras sufficient? IE, can cameras+motion give you an accurate-enough 3D scene the way LIDAR can. And that's a narrow technical question, and it isn't even the most question when you consider self-driving as a whole. "LIDAR is necessary" is not exclusively a Waymo talking point - it is shared by all companies using LIDAR, suppliers of LIDAR etc. But it is just a talking point, there's no reason to think it's actually true.

ra7 2y ago
The reasons to think it’s actually true is because: 1. Only companies who have LiDAR in their stack have shown fully autonomous driving i.e. driverless. 2. Better 3D scene construction, which LiDAR, unquestionably provides permeates as an advantage throughout the stack. I do think “LiDAR or not” is a narrow argument. But the advantages are massive and undeniable, so it becomes necessary especially in light of rapidly falling costs.
rcxdude 2y ago
It's not necessarily a case of "LIDAR is necessary": it's more a case of how much more difficult it is to extract the necessary information with the necessary reliability from cameras alone (one important aspect I think is that LIDAR + HDmaps is very reliable at telling you 'something is there', even if it's not able to distinguish details. From the point of view of the car operating safely, that's a big deal). As it stands Tesla is behind waymo and making things harder for themselves (fundamentally because they've been trying to make it a consumer product, which constrains costs much more than aiming for robotaxis). It might mean they eventually get a much more cost competitive product, but that won't matter if they're beaten to market by 5-10 years (at the moment you can argue tesla is ahead in the areas their driver assist can operate and number of vehicles, but I think it's going to be much easier for waymo to scale up and to different areas than it is for tesla to progress their tech).