4 ms·

If you have to choose one over the other, it has to be vision surely? Even ignoring various current issues with Lidar systems that aren’t fundamental limitatio

If you have to choose one over the other, it has to be vision surely? Even ignoring various current issues with Lidar systems that aren’t fundamental limitations, large amounts of road infrastructure is just designed around vision and will continue to be for at least another few decades. Lidar just fundamentally can’t read signs, traffic lights or road markings in a reliable way. Personally I don’t buy the argument that it has to be one or the other as Tesla have claimed, but between the two, vision is the only one that captures all the data sufficient to drive a car.

gbnwl 9mo ago
Sorry if this is obvious, but are there actually any systems that "choose one over the other"? My impression's always been it was either vision + LIDAR, or vision alone. Are there any examples of LIDAR alone?
- ares623 9mo ago
  Roombas
  - pests 9mo ago
    I don't think they would be as well accepted into peoples homes if they had a mobile camera on it. Didn't they already leak peoples home mappings?
  - sampo 9mo ago
    Roomba (specifically the brand of the American company iRobot) only added lidar in 2025 [1]. Earliest Roombas navigated by touch (bumping into walls), and then by cameras. But if you use "roomba" as a generic term for robot vacuum then yes, Chinese Ecovacs and Xiaomi introduced lidar-based robot vacuums in 2015 [2]. [1] https://www.theverge.com/news/627751/irobot-launches-eight-new-roombas-with-lidar-room-mapping https://www.theverge.com/news/627751/irobot-launches-eight-n... [2] https://english.cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=4542 https://english.cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=4542
    - rkomorn 9mo ago
      > Earliest Roombas navigated by touch (bumping into walls) My ex got a Roomba in the early 2010s and it gave me an irrational but everlasting disdain for the company. They kept mentioning their "proprietary algorithm" like it was some amazing futuristic thing but watching that thing just bump into something and turn, bump into something else and turn, bump into something again and turn again, etc ... it made me hate that thing. Now when my dog can't find her ball and starts senselessly roaming in all the wrong directions in a panic, I call it Roomba mode.
    - vardump 9mo ago
      Neato XV-11 introduced lidar in 2010. Sadly they're no more.
    - blitzar 9mo ago
      > Earliest Roombas navigated by touch (bumping into walls) My neighbour used to park like that; "thats what the bumpers are for - bumping"
- cameronh90 9mo ago
  Not that I'm aware of, but I was referring to the claim in the parent post that if you had to choose it would be insane to choose vision over LIDAR.
- Nasrudith 9mo ago
  Don't ultimately even the ones which are vision + LIDAR ultimately have to choose priority in terms of one or the other for "What do you do if LIDAR says it is blocked and sight says it is clear' or visa-versa?" Trying to handle edge-cases where say LIDAR thinks that sprinker mist is a solid object and to swerve to avoid it and say vision which thinks that an optical illusion is a real path and not a brick wall.
- comfysocks 9mo ago
  Since the current traffic infrastructure was built for human drivers with vision, you’ll probably need some form of vision to navigate today’s roads. The only way I could picture lidar only working would be on a road system specially made for machine driving.
AnotherGoodName 9mo ago
For full self driving sure but the more regular assisted driving with basic ‘knows where other cars are in relation to you and can break/turn/alarm to avoid collisions’ as well as adaptive cruise control lidar can manage well enough. I think fsd should be both at minimum though. No reason to skimp on a niw inexpensive sensor that sees things vision alone doesn’t.
cpgxiii 9mo ago
For one, no one is seriously contemplating a LIDAR-only system, the question is between camera+LIDAR or camera-only. > Lidar just fundamentally can’t read signs, traffic lights or road markings in a reliable way. Actually, given that basically every meaningful LIDAR on the market gives an "intensity" value for each return, in surprisingly many cases you could get this kind of imaging behavior from LIDAR so long as the point density is sufficient for the features you wish to capture (and point density, particularly in terms of points/sec/$, continues to improve at a pretty good rate). A lot of the features that go into making road signage visible to drivers (e.g. reflective lettering on signs, cats eye reflectors, etc) also result in good contrast in LIDAR intensity values.
- energy123 9mo ago
  > camera+LIDAR It's like having 2 pilots instead of 1 pilot. If one pilot is unexpectedly defective (has a heart attack mid-flight), you still have the other pilot. Some errors between the 2 pilots aren't uncorrelated of course, but many of them are. So the chance of an at-fault crash goes from p and approaches p^2 in the best case. That's an unintuitively large improvement. Many laypeople's gut instinct would be more like p -> p/2 improvement from having 2 pilots (or 2 data streams in the case of camera+LIDAR). In the camera+LIDAR case, you conceptually require AND(x.ok for all x) before you accelerate. If only one of those systems says there's a white truck in front of you, then you hit the brakes, instead of requiring both of them to flag it. False negatives are what you're trying to avoid because the confusion matrix shouldn't be equally weighted given the additional downside of a catastrophic crash. That's where two somewhat independent data streams becomes so powerful at reducing crashes, you really benefit from those ~uncorrelated errors.
  - powerapple 9mo ago
    "In the camera+LIDAR case, you conceptually require AND(x.ok for all x) before you accelerate." This can be learnt by the model. Let's assume vision is 100% correct, the model would learn to ignore LIDAR, so the worst case scenario is that LIDAR is extra cost for zero benefit.

gbnwl 9mo ago

Sorry if this is obvious, but are there actually any systems that "choose one over the other"? My impression's always been it was either vision + LIDAR, or vision alone. Are there any examples of LIDAR alone?

ares623 9mo ago
Roombas
- pests 9mo ago
  I don't think they would be as well accepted into peoples homes if they had a mobile camera on it. Didn't they already leak peoples home mappings?
- sampo 9mo ago
  Roomba (specifically the brand of the American company iRobot) only added lidar in 2025 [1]. Earliest Roombas navigated by touch (bumping into walls), and then by cameras. But if you use "roomba" as a generic term for robot vacuum then yes, Chinese Ecovacs and Xiaomi introduced lidar-based robot vacuums in 2015 [2]. [1] https://www.theverge.com/news/627751/irobot-launches-eight-new-roombas-with-lidar-room-mapping https://www.theverge.com/news/627751/irobot-launches-eight-n... [2] https://english.cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=4542 https://english.cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=4542
  - rkomorn 9mo ago
    > Earliest Roombas navigated by touch (bumping into walls) My ex got a Roomba in the early 2010s and it gave me an irrational but everlasting disdain for the company. They kept mentioning their "proprietary algorithm" like it was some amazing futuristic thing but watching that thing just bump into something and turn, bump into something else and turn, bump into something again and turn again, etc ... it made me hate that thing. Now when my dog can't find her ball and starts senselessly roaming in all the wrong directions in a panic, I call it Roomba mode.
  - vardump 9mo ago
    Neato XV-11 introduced lidar in 2010. Sadly they're no more.
  - blitzar 9mo ago
    > Earliest Roombas navigated by touch (bumping into walls) My neighbour used to park like that; "thats what the bumpers are for - bumping"
cameronh90 9mo ago
Not that I'm aware of, but I was referring to the claim in the parent post that if you had to choose it would be insane to choose vision over LIDAR.
Nasrudith 9mo ago
Don't ultimately even the ones which are vision + LIDAR ultimately have to choose priority in terms of one or the other for "What do you do if LIDAR says it is blocked and sight says it is clear' or visa-versa?" Trying to handle edge-cases where say LIDAR thinks that sprinker mist is a solid object and to swerve to avoid it and say vision which thinks that an optical illusion is a real path and not a brick wall.
comfysocks 9mo ago
Since the current traffic infrastructure was built for human drivers with vision, you’ll probably need some form of vision to navigate today’s roads. The only way I could picture lidar only working would be on a road system specially made for machine driving.

AnotherGoodName 9mo ago

For full self driving sure but the more regular assisted driving with basic ‘knows where other cars are in relation to you and can break/turn/alarm to avoid collisions’ as well as adaptive cruise control lidar can manage well enough. I think fsd should be both at minimum though. No reason to skimp on a niw inexpensive sensor that sees things vision alone doesn’t.

cpgxiii 9mo ago

For one, no one is seriously contemplating a LIDAR-only system, the question is between camera+LIDAR or camera-only. > Lidar just fundamentally can’t read signs, traffic lights or road markings in a reliable way. Actually, given that basically every meaningful LIDAR on the market gives an "intensity" value for each return, in surprisingly many cases you could get this kind of imaging behavior from LIDAR so long as the point density is sufficient for the features you wish to capture (and point density, particularly in terms of points/sec/$, continues to improve at a pretty good rate). A lot of the features that go into making road signage visible to drivers (e.g. reflective lettering on signs, cats eye reflectors, etc) also result in good contrast in LIDAR intensity values.

energy123 9mo ago
> camera+LIDAR It's like having 2 pilots instead of 1 pilot. If one pilot is unexpectedly defective (has a heart attack mid-flight), you still have the other pilot. Some errors between the 2 pilots aren't uncorrelated of course, but many of them are. So the chance of an at-fault crash goes from p and approaches p^2 in the best case. That's an unintuitively large improvement. Many laypeople's gut instinct would be more like p -> p/2 improvement from having 2 pilots (or 2 data streams in the case of camera+LIDAR). In the camera+LIDAR case, you conceptually require AND(x.ok for all x) before you accelerate. If only one of those systems says there's a white truck in front of you, then you hit the brakes, instead of requiring both of them to flag it. False negatives are what you're trying to avoid because the confusion matrix shouldn't be equally weighted given the additional downside of a catastrophic crash. That's where two somewhat independent data streams becomes so powerful at reducing crashes, you really benefit from those ~uncorrelated errors.
- powerapple 9mo ago
  "In the camera+LIDAR case, you conceptually require AND(x.ok for all x) before you accelerate." This can be learnt by the model. Let's assume vision is 100% correct, the model would learn to ignore LIDAR, so the worst case scenario is that LIDAR is extra cost for zero benefit.