4 ms·

Also 'Luminar Technologies, a prominent U.S. lidar manufacturer, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2025' LIDAR is useful in a small set of scenarios (

Also 'Luminar Technologies, a prominent U.S. lidar manufacturer, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2025' LIDAR is useful in a small set of scenarios (calibration and validation) but do not bet the farm on it or make it the centre piece of your sensor suite.

UltraSane 8mo ago
Lidar is critical for any autonomous vehicle. It turns out a very accurate 3D point cloud of the environment is very useful for self driving. Crazy, I know.
- servo_sausage 8mo ago
  Useful but not at all required. Camera + radar is sufficient for driving, and camera+ USS is fine for parking. Radar is just cheaper than the number of cameras and compute, it's also not really a strict requirement. Look at how the current cars fuck up, it's mostly navigation, context understanding, and tight manoeuvres. Lidar gives you very little in these areas
  - UltraSane 8mo ago
    All of the actually WORKING self driving systems use LIDAR. This is not a coincidence.
    - small_model 8mo ago
      Like Waymo? (https://dmnews.co.uk/waymo-robotaxi-spotted-unable-to-cross-puddle-in-los-angeles/ https://dmnews.co.uk/waymo-robotaxi-spotted-unable-to-cross-...) 17 years after betting the farm on LIDAR the solution fails to navigate a puddle. Sorry but they bet on the wrong technology, Tesla has overtaken them with multi camera and NN solution.
      - UltraSane 8mo ago
        Your conclusion from a single incident is a bad inference. One vehicle getting confused by a puddle (likely a sensor fusion edge case or mapping artifact, not a fundamental LIDAR failure) doesn't indict the technology. Tesla's cameras have produces vastly more failures. Waymo has driven tens of millions of autonomous miles with a serious injury/fatality rate dramatically lower than human drivers. The actual data shows the technology works. Tesla FSD still requires active driver supervision and is not legally or technically a robotaxi system. Comparing them as if they're at parity is wrong. LIDAR gives direct metric depth with no inference required. Camera-only systems must infer depth from 2D images using neural networks, which introduces failure modes LIDAR doesn't have. Radar is very valuable when LIDAR and cameras give ambiguous data. What metrics has Telsa overtaken Waymo? Deployed robotaxi revenue miles? No. Disengagement rates? No published comparable data. Safety per mile in driverless operation? No.
        small_model 8mo ago
        A Tesla wouldn't stop for a puddle. Also its not locked to a small geofenced area (people have driven coast to coast without a single intervention on FSD including parking spot to parking spot) when I can buy a Waymo vehicle that does this then Waymo would have caught up with Tesla.
        jamespo 8mo ago
        Wow, so it can cope with driving on the highway. That's the easy part.
        UltraSane 8mo ago
        Your puddle example is utterly irrelevant. Tesla's are notorious for phantom breaking. Robotaxis are very much locked to tiny geofenced areas. Some even shaped like a penis because Musk is such a child. "people have driven coast to coast without a single intervention on FSD including parking spot to parking spot" I find this claim very dubious. Prove it. Teslas never drive empty for a very good reason.
    - servo_sausage 8mo ago
      I work with programs approaching L3+ from L2, with the requirement that the system works for 99% of roads (not tesla before people start fixating on that). We find that the cases where lidar really helps are in gathering training data, parking, and if focused enough some long distance precision. None of these have been instrumental in a final product; personally I suspect that many of the cars including lidar use it for data collection and edge cases more than as part of the driving perception model.
      - heisenbit 8mo ago
        Accidents are not normal driving situations but edge cases.
        servo_sausage 8mo ago
        Sort of; accidents are the absolute core of the product. They are rare, but they are the focus of the design. By edge cases I mean scenarios like the lights going out in an underground garage; low vision due to colourful smoke or dust, or things like optical illusions or occlusion that a human would just need to remember. Lidar can help, but not really enough to be worth it.
        UltraSane 8mo ago
        Lidar is by far the most accurate source of range data. You need to explain why Waymo and Zoox use lidar in direct contradiction to what you claim.
        servo_sausage 8mo ago
        Urban operating domain combined with legacy approaches. If I was designing a robotaxi 10 years ago I would use lidar, designing consumer vehicles for near future L3 it's no longer the best use of resources. I prefer more compute and cameras for the money. Our current issues are now scene understanding and navigation; followed by parking. We get very little value from LIDAR in the driving cases, so much so that we don't even use it for active nav even on cars that have it. Only for training and parking.
schiffern 8mo ago
The same Luminar from the Mark Rober video? https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2025/03/17/youtuber-mark-rober-tests-cameras-vs-lidar-and-gets-it-wrong/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2025/03/17/youtub...
UltraSane 8mo ago
This is very wrong. LIDAR scanners have revolutionized surveying by enabling rapid, high-precision 3D mapping of terrain and infrastructure, capturing millions of data points per second. LIDAR can penetrate dense vegetation, allowing accurate, ground-level, mapping in forested or obstructed areas. Drone mounted LIDAR has become very popular. Tripod mounted LIDAR scanners are very commonly used on construction sites. Handhels LIDAR scanners can map the inside of buildings with incredible accuracy. This is very commonly used to create digital twins of factories.
- jcattle 8mo ago
  And none of this is on the order of magnitude that consumer automotive would have. The EU requires every new car to have Autonomos Emergency Braking. If LiDAR becomes cheaper than radar, this is a potential market of millions.
StephenSmith 8mo ago
Also, MicroVision, the company in OP's article bought the IP from Luminar. This feels like a circular venture capital scam. Luminar originally went public via SPAC and made a bunch of people very wealthy before ultimately failing.

UltraSane 8mo ago

Lidar is critical for any autonomous vehicle. It turns out a very accurate 3D point cloud of the environment is very useful for self driving. Crazy, I know.

servo_sausage 8mo ago
Useful but not at all required. Camera + radar is sufficient for driving, and camera+ USS is fine for parking. Radar is just cheaper than the number of cameras and compute, it's also not really a strict requirement. Look at how the current cars fuck up, it's mostly navigation, context understanding, and tight manoeuvres. Lidar gives you very little in these areas
- UltraSane 8mo ago
  All of the actually WORKING self driving systems use LIDAR. This is not a coincidence.
  - small_model 8mo ago
    Like Waymo? (https://dmnews.co.uk/waymo-robotaxi-spotted-unable-to-cross-puddle-in-los-angeles/ https://dmnews.co.uk/waymo-robotaxi-spotted-unable-to-cross-...) 17 years after betting the farm on LIDAR the solution fails to navigate a puddle. Sorry but they bet on the wrong technology, Tesla has overtaken them with multi camera and NN solution.
    - UltraSane 8mo ago
      Your conclusion from a single incident is a bad inference. One vehicle getting confused by a puddle (likely a sensor fusion edge case or mapping artifact, not a fundamental LIDAR failure) doesn't indict the technology. Tesla's cameras have produces vastly more failures. Waymo has driven tens of millions of autonomous miles with a serious injury/fatality rate dramatically lower than human drivers. The actual data shows the technology works. Tesla FSD still requires active driver supervision and is not legally or technically a robotaxi system. Comparing them as if they're at parity is wrong. LIDAR gives direct metric depth with no inference required. Camera-only systems must infer depth from 2D images using neural networks, which introduces failure modes LIDAR doesn't have. Radar is very valuable when LIDAR and cameras give ambiguous data. What metrics has Telsa overtaken Waymo? Deployed robotaxi revenue miles? No. Disengagement rates? No published comparable data. Safety per mile in driverless operation? No.
      - small_model 8mo ago
        A Tesla wouldn't stop for a puddle. Also its not locked to a small geofenced area (people have driven coast to coast without a single intervention on FSD including parking spot to parking spot) when I can buy a Waymo vehicle that does this then Waymo would have caught up with Tesla.
        jamespo 8mo ago
        Wow, so it can cope with driving on the highway. That's the easy part.
        UltraSane 8mo ago
        Your puddle example is utterly irrelevant. Tesla's are notorious for phantom breaking. Robotaxis are very much locked to tiny geofenced areas. Some even shaped like a penis because Musk is such a child. "people have driven coast to coast without a single intervention on FSD including parking spot to parking spot" I find this claim very dubious. Prove it. Teslas never drive empty for a very good reason.
  - servo_sausage 8mo ago
    I work with programs approaching L3+ from L2, with the requirement that the system works for 99% of roads (not tesla before people start fixating on that). We find that the cases where lidar really helps are in gathering training data, parking, and if focused enough some long distance precision. None of these have been instrumental in a final product; personally I suspect that many of the cars including lidar use it for data collection and edge cases more than as part of the driving perception model.
    - heisenbit 8mo ago
      Accidents are not normal driving situations but edge cases.
      - servo_sausage 8mo ago
        Sort of; accidents are the absolute core of the product. They are rare, but they are the focus of the design. By edge cases I mean scenarios like the lights going out in an underground garage; low vision due to colourful smoke or dust, or things like optical illusions or occlusion that a human would just need to remember. Lidar can help, but not really enough to be worth it.
        UltraSane 8mo ago
        Lidar is by far the most accurate source of range data. You need to explain why Waymo and Zoox use lidar in direct contradiction to what you claim.
        servo_sausage 8mo ago
        Urban operating domain combined with legacy approaches. If I was designing a robotaxi 10 years ago I would use lidar, designing consumer vehicles for near future L3 it's no longer the best use of resources. I prefer more compute and cameras for the money. Our current issues are now scene understanding and navigation; followed by parking. We get very little value from LIDAR in the driving cases, so much so that we don't even use it for active nav even on cars that have it. Only for training and parking.

schiffern 8mo ago

The same Luminar from the Mark Rober video? https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2025/03/17/youtuber-mark-rober-tests-cameras-vs-lidar-and-gets-it-wrong/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2025/03/17/youtub...

UltraSane 8mo ago

This is very wrong. LIDAR scanners have revolutionized surveying by enabling rapid, high-precision 3D mapping of terrain and infrastructure, capturing millions of data points per second. LIDAR can penetrate dense vegetation, allowing accurate, ground-level, mapping in forested or obstructed areas. Drone mounted LIDAR has become very popular. Tripod mounted LIDAR scanners are very commonly used on construction sites. Handhels LIDAR scanners can map the inside of buildings with incredible accuracy. This is very commonly used to create digital twins of factories.

jcattle 8mo ago
And none of this is on the order of magnitude that consumer automotive would have. The EU requires every new car to have Autonomos Emergency Braking. If LiDAR becomes cheaper than radar, this is a potential market of millions.

StephenSmith 8mo ago

Also, MicroVision, the company in OP's article bought the IP from Luminar. This feels like a circular venture capital scam. Luminar originally went public via SPAC and made a bunch of people very wealthy before ultimately failing.