These algorithms can allow you to have a self-driving car with only cameras. But, there would be a lot of problems if you tried to make a camera-only system fo

These algorithms can allow you to have a self-driving car with only cameras. But, there would be a lot of problems if you tried to make a camera-only system for consumer vehicle navigation. Vision systems need distinct "features" in images to find and track across frames to allow you to compute distance, speed, etc. If you don't have many features, pure vision approaches won't work. Nighttime operation is a big problem, as is driving on relatively smooth, featureless terrain. The basic downside is that standard consumer cameras are passive devices. That's why Google uses LIDAR- it's an "active" technology that creates its own features. And driving is an application where the usual computer vision "it works most of the time" is just not good enough. Time of flight cameras are interesting sensors that combines active with passive technology. As this technology matures it might allow for self-driving cars without LIDAR.