5 ms·

He is off by an order of magnitude. The Velodyne 64 on that car only has a 100 Mbit connection [1]. Each of the 5-10 radars on that vehicle is connected over

He is off by an order of magnitude. The Velodyne 64 on that car only has a 100 Mbit connection [1]. Each of the 5-10 radars on that vehicle is connected over a 1MBit CAN bus [2]. The front facing is almost definitely a Gigi-E or Firewire camera so it's at most 1000MBit. Doing the math: 100 + 10*1 + 1000 = 1100MBit != 8192Mbit (1 GB) 1. http://velodynelidar.com/lidar/products/brochure/HDL-64E%20S2%20datasheet_2010_lowres.pdf http://velodynelidar.com/lidar/products/brochure/HDL-64E%20S... 2. http://www.kvaser.com/zh/about-can/the-can-protocol/19.html http://www.kvaser.com/zh/about-can/the-can-protocol/19.html

VikingCoder 13y ago
Doesn't it also know about Google Maps data? Meaning, it can look at a lot more data than just its raw sensors, every second. Also, why do you assume the front-facing camera is the only one?
- Game_Ender 13y ago
  As far as I know the "google maps" data is used for things like road locations, stop signs, and other traffic marker information. Their primary mapping data source is based on Velodyne data itself. You also have to think storage needs, would it really have 4-6TB storage array for just a few hour drive? I saw the tech lead of the project talk about 1.5 years ago. He said the primary sensor was the Velodyne, followed by radars. The only use for the camera mentioned is detecting stop light colors. At that time their main computer was a quad core machine, processing that much data sounds beyond it's limits as well.
  - grinich 13y ago
    Just because they're capturing it doesn't mean they're processing all of it immediately. This kind of data is great to keep around for simulations when you return home. Having ~10TB onboard storage isn't crazy.
    - Schwolop 13y ago
      From what I gather, they are capturing the velodyne data and turning it into a thinned point cloud of the areas of the USA in which they drive. Within this point cloud they can then do effectively a least-squares fit of the real-time view into the historical view and get another data source for localisation. Of course, there's GPS/IMU fusion too, but this sort of SLAM approach is fairly robust under GPS loss so combining them all in a filter is pretty standard practice. The scale of Google's data dwarfs most research projects, however.
beambot 13y ago
If other robots I've worked with (eg. the PR2) are any indication... 1GB/sec. is probably on the low end for the total data throughput. The PR2 had a high-res camera (GigE?), quad stereo cams in head (narrow and wide FoV), dual "wrist" cameras, a Kinect (usually), dual Hokuyo UTM LRF's, full 14+ DoF kinematics at 1KHz, and lots and lots of diagnostic info (eg. "heartbeat", system diagnostics, localization signals, IMUs, etc). Granted, we didn't log all that data all the time, but TL;DR: I wouldn't nitpick over a factor of 8 based on your own calculations.
- vowelless 13y ago
  Agree. The point cloud in the self-driving car itself is probably on the order of 1/4 to 1/2 gig a second.
  - Game_Ender 13y ago
    No, the Velodyne only has a 100 Mbit connection. It sends about 5000, 1206 byte packets per second [1]. Giving a data rate of ~50 Mbit/s (1/20 a gig). 1 - http://velodynelidar.com/lidar/products/manual/63-HDL64ES2h%20HDL-64E%20S2%20CD%20HDL-64E%20S2%20Users%20Manual.pdf http://velodynelidar.com/lidar/products/manual/63-HDL64ES2h%...
- Game_Ender 13y ago
  That was an upper bound to show the absurdity of his non sourced "fact". The reality is much lower because the main sensor is the Velodyne, and it only produces 5-6MB/s. The primary focus of his picture is the Velodyne point cloud. Which he says is "1 GB per second" which is 100 times larger than it really is. I have worked on several fully autonomous vehicle projects based on Velodynes and their processing and logging rates are around of 5-20MB/ (as you would expect) so seeing someone quote "1 GB/s" is pretty awful.
  - steve19 13y ago
    how well does the Velodyne work in heavy rain or snow?
Samuel_Michon 13y ago
The picture Gross shared is a frame from a 1.5 year old promo[1], so he may also have misheard 1Gb for 1GB. [1] http://imgur.com/IfxYZL2 http://imgur.com/IfxYZL2 – the bottom image is from this presentation: http://youtu.be/YXylqtEQ0tk http://youtu.be/YXylqtEQ0tk
georgecmu 13y ago
You are making an unwarranted assumption that they are logging the raw Velodyne data. Most likely that is not the case. Pointcloud data computed from raw Velodyne data can easily require an order of magnitude more space. That said, this guy may be more than an order of magnitude off (confused MB and GB?). If 1GB/sec figure is correct, then they'd fill up a 10TB NAS in 3 hours. Forget about network throughput, how much storage do they carry in the back of that vehicle?

VikingCoder 13y ago

Doesn't it also know about Google Maps data? Meaning, it can look at a lot more data than just its raw sensors, every second. Also, why do you assume the front-facing camera is the only one?

Game_Ender 13y ago
As far as I know the "google maps" data is used for things like road locations, stop signs, and other traffic marker information. Their primary mapping data source is based on Velodyne data itself. You also have to think storage needs, would it really have 4-6TB storage array for just a few hour drive? I saw the tech lead of the project talk about 1.5 years ago. He said the primary sensor was the Velodyne, followed by radars. The only use for the camera mentioned is detecting stop light colors. At that time their main computer was a quad core machine, processing that much data sounds beyond it's limits as well.
- grinich 13y ago
  Just because they're capturing it doesn't mean they're processing all of it immediately. This kind of data is great to keep around for simulations when you return home. Having ~10TB onboard storage isn't crazy.
  - Schwolop 13y ago
    From what I gather, they are capturing the velodyne data and turning it into a thinned point cloud of the areas of the USA in which they drive. Within this point cloud they can then do effectively a least-squares fit of the real-time view into the historical view and get another data source for localisation. Of course, there's GPS/IMU fusion too, but this sort of SLAM approach is fairly robust under GPS loss so combining them all in a filter is pretty standard practice. The scale of Google's data dwarfs most research projects, however.

beambot 13y ago

If other robots I've worked with (eg. the PR2) are any indication... 1GB/sec. is probably on the low end for the total data throughput. The PR2 had a high-res camera (GigE?), quad stereo cams in head (narrow and wide FoV), dual "wrist" cameras, a Kinect (usually), dual Hokuyo UTM LRF's, full 14+ DoF kinematics at 1KHz, and lots and lots of diagnostic info (eg. "heartbeat", system diagnostics, localization signals, IMUs, etc). Granted, we didn't log all that data all the time, but TL;DR: I wouldn't nitpick over a factor of 8 based on your own calculations.

vowelless 13y ago
Agree. The point cloud in the self-driving car itself is probably on the order of 1/4 to 1/2 gig a second.
- Game_Ender 13y ago
  No, the Velodyne only has a 100 Mbit connection. It sends about 5000, 1206 byte packets per second [1]. Giving a data rate of ~50 Mbit/s (1/20 a gig). 1 - http://velodynelidar.com/lidar/products/manual/63-HDL64ES2h%20HDL-64E%20S2%20CD%20HDL-64E%20S2%20Users%20Manual.pdf http://velodynelidar.com/lidar/products/manual/63-HDL64ES2h%...
Game_Ender 13y ago
That was an upper bound to show the absurdity of his non sourced "fact". The reality is much lower because the main sensor is the Velodyne, and it only produces 5-6MB/s. The primary focus of his picture is the Velodyne point cloud. Which he says is "1 GB per second" which is 100 times larger than it really is. I have worked on several fully autonomous vehicle projects based on Velodynes and their processing and logging rates are around of 5-20MB/ (as you would expect) so seeing someone quote "1 GB/s" is pretty awful.
- steve19 13y ago
  how well does the Velodyne work in heavy rain or snow?

Samuel_Michon 13y ago

The picture Gross shared is a frame from a 1.5 year old promo[1], so he may also have misheard 1Gb for 1GB. [1] http://imgur.com/IfxYZL2 http://imgur.com/IfxYZL2 – the bottom image is from this presentation: http://youtu.be/YXylqtEQ0tk http://youtu.be/YXylqtEQ0tk

georgecmu 13y ago

You are making an unwarranted assumption that they are logging the raw Velodyne data. Most likely that is not the case. Pointcloud data computed from raw Velodyne data can easily require an order of magnitude more space. That said, this guy may be more than an order of magnitude off (confused MB and GB?). If 1GB/sec figure is correct, then they'd fill up a 10TB NAS in 3 hours. Forget about network throughput, how much storage do they carry in the back of that vehicle?