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A Short Introduction to Automotive Lidar Technology

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Re: A Short Introduction to Automotive Lidar Technology

#121

Post by tordrt »

Klaus23 wrote: post #44
quonn wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It‘s not just Musk. Most automobile manufacturers have maintained that they need to find a way to do it with cheap and pretty sensors.

This is simply not true. Let's look at the best autonomous driving features available today, i.e. level 3: Mercedes Drive Pilot: Uses a lidar (and a dummy unit) up front. BMW Personal Pilot: Uses a lidar (and a dummy unit) up front Honda SENSING Elite: Uses 5! lidars They all use lidar, and some of the placement locations are downright hideous (Mercedes EQS). I think further development will require even more/better…

All of these are far less capable than FSD. They might have more advanced regulatory approval because they have strong limitations of when it can be used, but if you drive the same route and compare, its not even close.

Re: A Short Introduction to Automotive Lidar Technology

#122

Post by rrr_oh_man »

michaelt wrote: post #112
Animats wrote: post #8

That's a reasonable basic overview. I'm surprised that rotating scanners are still used. It's been twenty years since Velodyne built their first one. They work OK, but cost too much. I was expecting flash LIDAR or MEMS mirrors to take over. Continental, the auto parts company, bought the leading flash LIDAR company over a decade ago, but the volume market a big parts company needs never appeared. Waymo is still using…

> I'm surprised that rotating scanners are still used. It's been twenty years since Velodyne built their first one. They're even older than that. SICK have been pointing laser range finders into spinning mirrors since about 1995 - albeit mostly for industrial safety systems which can be quite price-insensitive. There's a few things to know about LIDAR to understand why spinning lasers make sense. First of all, anythi…

> Meanwhile, automotive companies aren't scared of moving parts. A car has loads of spinning parts already; they have mastered the art of making spinning things that can keep spinning for thousands of hours.

Almost an understatement.

A typical car wheel hub with a 20-27 inch tire diameter has experienced around 75-100M full rotations by the time it reaches 100K miles.

Meanwhile, the engine probably has revolved ~5-10 times more during the same time.

Re: A Short Introduction to Automotive Lidar Technology

#123

Post by luos2 »

asdasdsddd wrote: post #49
Klaus23 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply not true. Let's look at the best autonomous driving features available today, i.e. level 3: Mercedes Drive Pilot: Uses a lidar (and a dummy unit) up front. BMW Personal Pilot: Uses a lidar (and a dummy unit) up front Honda SENSING Elite: Uses 5! lidars They all use lidar, and some of the placement locations are downright hideous (Mercedes EQS). I think further development will require even more/better…

What are the benchmarks that say Mercedes, BMW, and Honda have the best level 3 features.

It's not a benchmark, but there is a youtube channel (Out of Spec) which tests these systems, and I think they also say Mercedes are the best in their "Hogback challenge".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK3NcHSH49Q&list=PLVa4b_Vn4g...

Worth checking out, many cars are very bad.

Re: A Short Introduction to Automotive Lidar Technology

#124

Post by raisedbyninjas »

rrr_oh_man wrote: post #122
michaelt wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm surprised that rotating scanners are still used. It's been twenty years since Velodyne built their first one. They're even older than that. SICK have been pointing laser range finders into spinning mirrors since about 1995 - albeit mostly for industrial safety systems which can be quite price-insensitive. There's a few things to know about LIDAR to understand why spinning lasers make sense. First of all, anythi…

> Meanwhile, automotive companies aren't scared of moving parts. A car has loads of spinning parts already; they have mastered the art of making spinning things that can keep spinning for thousands of hours. Almost an understatement. A typical car wheel hub with a 20-27 inch tire diameter has experienced around 75-100M full rotations by the time it reaches 100K miles. Meanwhile, the engine probably has revolved ~5-10…

I may be wrong, but I think the concern was delicate components protruding from the body are susceptible to damage in urban areas.

Re: A Short Introduction to Automotive Lidar Technology

#125

Post by UltraSane »

tordrt wrote: post #120
UltraSane wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find opinions like this to be almost as crazy as saying that the earth is flat because Waymo has a working, truly self-driving taxi service RIGHT FREAKING NOW while Musk is still promising to have one some day in the hazy future while NEVER making a single vehicle that can actually drive without someone in the car. Musk rejecting LIDAR means that he fundamentally doesn't understand the technological challenge of se…

Karpathy said in some podcast that Tela uses LIDAR in training, and by doing this they can get a lot of the benefits. Not sure that all off the "worlds experts" agree with you that you HAVE to use LIDAR. Rate of progress for FSD has been very impressive lately. I personally think that its very plausible that Tesla might beat Waymo to large scale location independent autonomous driving.

The stats on the latest FSD are still terrible. It still needs human intervention far too frequently and is no where near being able to run without a human in the car or Tesla accepting liability for crashes.

Re: A Short Introduction to Automotive Lidar Technology

#126

Post by Infinitesimus »

jaimex2 wrote: post #108
bobsomers wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bold claim. Care to justify it?

Yeah, it only works in extremely controlled environments driving really slowly. The design is also flawed as it has to work with cameras anyway. The last thing you want is two systems arguing over what they see.

It doesn't have to be an argument. You know what each system is good at and prioritize inputs accordingly.

Re: A Short Introduction to Automotive Lidar Technology

#127

Post by reportingsjr »

tordrt wrote: post #120
UltraSane wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find opinions like this to be almost as crazy as saying that the earth is flat because Waymo has a working, truly self-driving taxi service RIGHT FREAKING NOW while Musk is still promising to have one some day in the hazy future while NEVER making a single vehicle that can actually drive without someone in the car. Musk rejecting LIDAR means that he fundamentally doesn't understand the technological challenge of se…

Karpathy said in some podcast that Tela uses LIDAR in training, and by doing this they can get a lot of the benefits. Not sure that all off the "worlds experts" agree with you that you HAVE to use LIDAR. Rate of progress for FSD has been very impressive lately. I personally think that its very plausible that Tesla might beat Waymo to large scale location independent autonomous driving.

Waymo's recent experiment with multimodal models and a purely camera based system (EMMA) validate some of the claims that using LIDAR data in training does help. Pretty neat! Still not as good as a LIDAR + RADAR based system.

Re: A Short Introduction to Automotive Lidar Technology

#128

Post by reportingsjr »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #61
twelvechairs wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, they are just expensive (other than iphone). Maybe 8k for a handheld basic one (e.g. Trion P1), $15k for a drone attachment (e.g. DJI Zenmuse L1) - more for the ones surveyors use proper including the tripod-mount ones. At the consumer end photogrammetry tends to just be so much cheaper that its preferred unless you really need defined accuracy at a high level of detail. Lidar tends to work currently much be…

iphone has actual lidar not photogrammetry right?

Yes, the iPhone has a laser array and sensor that it uses for lidar.

Re: A Short Introduction to Automotive Lidar Technology

#129

Post by KaiserPro »

sroussey wrote: post #48
hammock wrote: post #25

Are LIDAR dangerous to the eyes of other drivers or pedestrians?

I know we are talking about car type lidar, but the iPhone Pro has a type of one and gets a depth map of photos. So you’re shooting it everyone you are taking photos of.

I don't think the Lidar in apple's stuff is actually a lidar, I think its a structured light sensor.[1]

What do I mean by that? lidar sends pulses of light and works out the difference between emission time and arrival time to work out how far the pulse has travelled.

The structured light sensor emits a pattern or dots, and any distortion of that can be used to compute the shape of an object.

[1] https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa...

Re: A Short Introduction to Automotive Lidar Technology

#130

Post by hammock »

itishappy wrote: post #65
hammock wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the regulations and who are the relevant regulatory bodies? I could not find with a google search

Good question! You're right, this is surprisingly hard to Google. It looks like the FDA is responsible. I would not have guessed that! The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) would have been my guess, but I'm not finding much there. They have a spec for LIDAR speed measurement devices, and one for the required sensors in vehicles, but nothing on the the output of said sensors. > For manufacturers o…

Sorry, I don’t believe the FDA is doing anything more than stamping a Class 1 or class 2 sticker on component parts. They are not testing LIDAR arrays in situ under simulated driving conditions

I would like to see crash test dummy style research around vehicular LIDAR

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