How the LIDAR tech GM just bought probably works
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How the LIDAR tech GM just bought probably works
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Re: How the LIDAR tech GM just bought probably works
#2One of the advantages for solid-state LIDAR has to be an increase in reliability.
Nobody wants to buy a car which requires a new LIDAR to be installed after 100,000 miles for the sum of $7,000.
Hopefully once production starts and yield rates increase the unit costs can shrink small enough to being becoming feasible for integration into lower-end products like cell phones or laptops. I think there are a lot of cool applications for LIDAR which have been blocked by the current expense.
Re: How the LIDAR tech GM just bought probably works
#3I assume LIDAR is needed since the AI isn't advanced enough to do depth perception? If I can drive with two eye balls, then I'd think a circular camera array would be plenty. Maybe this is what Tesla plans on using (in combination with RADAR).
Re: How the LIDAR tech GM just bought probably works
#4I assume LIDAR is needed since the AI isn't advanced enough to do depth perception? If I can drive with two eye balls, then I'd think a circular camera array would be plenty. Maybe this is what Tesla plans on using (in combination with RADAR).
That's what Tesla used until they plowed into cars partially blocking a lane. Four times for which there's video. I've posted the links previously.
Re: How the LIDAR tech GM just bought probably works
#5So "no moving parts" by leveraging optical phased arrays and prisms.
I wonder how much their patents restrict others from going the same general route.
It does seem like the only obvious truly "no moving parts" solution. MEMS still has moving parts, they are just tiny.
Re: How the LIDAR tech GM just bought probably works
#6I assume LIDAR is needed since the AI isn't advanced enough to do depth perception? If I can drive with two eye balls, then I'd think a circular camera array would be plenty. Maybe this is what Tesla plans on using (in combination with RADAR).
While LIDAR and stereo cameras (as well as RGBD depth cameras like Kinect) both effectively do the same thing, LIDAR typically has a much longer effective range while keeping high resolution.
To give you an example, this[1] commercially available sensor head can give great resolution stereo depth at around 10m but the included LIDAR unit is good out to around 30m.
LIDAR also has the advantage of operating on a different portion of the EM spectrum. It can sometimes be more well behaved in situations where there might be interference on the visible light wavelengths but not on the LIDAR wavelengths which is typically IR (e.g. extremely bright sunny days).
I think that there's a place for both in vehicles as a sort of redundancy. While they both mostly do the same things, they do them in different ways, and if LIDAR can be made cost effective then having both is a huge gain.
Re: How the LIDAR tech GM just bought probably works
#7I assume LIDAR is needed since the AI isn't advanced enough to do depth perception? If I can drive with two eye balls, then I'd think a circular camera array would be plenty. Maybe this is what Tesla plans on using (in combination with RADAR).
Don't you always want a real world measurement of distance?
Even if AI gets it (mostly) right, getting a second input that verifies your path is clear seems like a good idea.
Re: How the LIDAR tech GM just bought probably works
#8One of the advantages for solid-state LIDAR has to be an increase in reliability. Nobody wants to buy a car which requires a new LIDAR to be installed after 100,000 miles for the sum of $7,000. Hopefully once production starts and yield rates increase the unit costs can shrink small enough to being becoming feasible for integration into lower-end products like cell phones or laptops. I think there are a lot of cool a…
and Manufacturing / shipping / installation costs
Re: How the LIDAR tech GM just bought probably works
#9Interesting. Frequency-modulated continuous-wave LIDAR is easy to do as a one-point device. Many such devices have been built. But they're usually short range, such as the discontinued Swiss Ranger, and don't reject ambient light as effectively as pulse systems.
Being both eye-safe and sunlight-tolerant is hard. Eye-safe is easier if you can increase the diameter of the outgoing beam. Eye safety is measured based on beam energy through a 1/4" hole (an eye pupil), and if the outgoing beam is made wider (say an inch) the energy per unit area drops. But the optics become bigger. Flash LIDAR units emit a spreading beam, and if you can keep people from getting close to the emitter and staring into it, it's not a big problem. (It's a distance measuring device, so if it detects something at range Sunlight tolerant is done with a few tricks. Narrow-band interference filters cut out everything but the color of the beam being used. A pulse LIDAR can outshine the sun for a nanosecond. Continuous-wave systems could in theory operate below the noise threshold, but the detector has to not saturate.
Anyway, there are lots of technologies that can work. Continental bought Advanced Scientific Concepts' technology, which is known to work fine; it just cost too much when each unit was built by PhDs in Santa Barbara. Continental is a huge auto parts maker; making a million of something cheaply is what they do.
Re: How the LIDAR tech GM just bought probably works
#10I have a genuine question to all the LIDAR experts here: all the optical phased array research I've seen, such as the MIT, UCB and DARPA "SWEEPER" work only has a range of something like 2 meters, and 10 meters after lots of work. All the research papers I've seen also mention that accurate and high power phase shifters are a challenge as well as getting the optical phased array to a high enough output power. On the other hand, Quanergy seems to claim that their standard optical phased array on silicon is getting them 200 meter range and really good specs. Do they have something that academia doesn't have? Also Strobe's advisor's thesis says that their LIDAR only has a range of ~2 meters, isn't that totally unworkable for SDC LIDAR?