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Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

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Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#51

Post by moffkalast »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #10

The mind salivates at the idea of sub-$100 and soon after sub-$10 Lidar. We could build spatial awareness into damn near everything. It'll be a cambrian explosion of autonomous robots.

There are already very good sub-$100 lidars, especially for 2D since they were made en masse for vacuum cleaners. E.g. the LD19 or STL-19P as they're calling it now for some reason. You need to pair them with serious compute to run AMCL with them, plus actuation (though ST3215s are cheap and easy to integrate now too) and control for that actuation which also wants its own compute, plus a battery, etc. the costs quickly add up. Robotics is expensive regardless of how cheap components get.

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#52

Post by notTooFarGone »

small_model wrote: post #32
jdhendrickson wrote: post #4

@dang .... do these comments seem organic to you? old accounts with almost zero karma going out of their way to use the same verbiage to compliment waymo 18 minutes after an article gets posted? .... dead internet at work.

Anytime a Tesla or Elon related article is posted it gets a barrage of negative comments usually FUD like. Any neutral or positive comment gets downvoted heavily. Bit suspicious to say the least, very clear pattern, they are not doing it very well should be a bit more nuanced.

Or everyone is just tired of tesla and their stubborn camera only tech that will fail in higher autonomy cases?

No no it's the cabal...

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#53

Post by rich_sasha »

BenoitP wrote: post #7

> laser pulses > phased-array I'm not well versed into RF physics. I had the feeling that light-wave coherency in lasers had to be created at a single source (or amplified as it passes by). That's the first time I hear about phased-array lasers. Can someone knowledgeable chime in on this?

In principle, as the sibling comment says, you could measure just the phase difference on the receiver end. The trick is that it's much harder for light frequencies than radar. I'm non even sure we can measure the phase etc of a light beam, and if we could, the Nyquist frequency is incredibly high - 2x frequency takes us to PHz frequencies.

There might be something cute you can do with interference patterns but no idea about that. We do sort of similar things with astronomic observations.

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#54

Post by UltraSane »

small_model wrote: post #40
michaelt wrote: post #34

Interestingly, there have been people in the LIDAR industry predicting costs like this for many years. I heard numbers like $250 per vehicle back in 2012 [1] Of course, ambitious pricing like this is all about economies of scale - sensors that are used in production vehicles are ordered by the million, and that lowers the costs massively. When the huge orders didn't materialise, the economies of scale and low prices…

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.

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.

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#55

Post by KaiserPro »

small_model wrote: post #23
khafra wrote: post #6

Oh hell yeah, we can finally stop the braindead attempts to make a safe self-driving car with just cameras.

Yes, silly using just cameras, I mean humans have Lidar sensors, that why they can drive, why didn't new just copy that....oh wait. It all seriousness though, Tesla are producing cyber cabs now which are 10th the price of Waymo's and can drive autonomously anywhere in the world. I think we can see where this is going. (Hint: not well for Waymo) Also the article is speculative 'MicroVision says its sensor could one da…

> Tesla are producing cyber cabs now which are 10th the price of Waymo's and can drive autonomously anywhere in the world.

Wait what? when did they actually enter mass production?

> I mean humans have Lidar sensors

Real time slam is actually pretty good, the hard part is reliable object detection using just vision. Tesla's forward facing cameras are effectively monocular, which means that its much much harder to get depth (its not impossible but moving objects are much more difficult to observe if you only have cameras aligned on the same plane with no real parallax)

Ultimately Musk is right, you probably don't need lidar to drive safely. but its far more simple and easier to do if you have Lidar. Its also safer. Musk said "lidars are a crutch", not because he is some sort of genius, Its obvious that SLAM only driving is the way forward since the mid 00's (of not earlier). The reason he said it is because he thought he could save money not having lidar. The problem for him is that he didn't do the research to see how far away proper machine perception is to account for the last 1% in accuracy needed to make vision only safe and reliable.

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#56

Post by small_model »

disillusioned wrote: post #37
small_model wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, silly using just cameras, I mean humans have Lidar sensors, that why they can drive, why didn't new just copy that....oh wait. It all seriousness though, Tesla are producing cyber cabs now which are 10th the price of Waymo's and can drive autonomously anywhere in the world. I think we can see where this is going. (Hint: not well for Waymo) Also the article is speculative 'MicroVision says its sensor could one da…

This is a weirdly tired counterpoint that Elon and Elonstans like to bandy about as if it's an apples to apples comparison. Humans have a weirdly ultra-high-dynamic-range binocular vision system mounted on an advanced ptz/swivel gimbal that allows for a great degree of freedom of movement, parallax effects, and a complex heuristic system for analyzing vision data. The Tesla FSD system has... well, sure, a few more ca…

Waymos are still making lots of errors that a human wouldn't (Stopping in middle of a road due to a puddle was a recent one https://dmnews.co.uk/waymo-robotaxi-spotted-unable-to-cross-...) 17 years after betting on LIDAR, I think Tesla is ahead now in most respects. It's could be wrong though we will probably know by the end of this year.

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#57

Post by ptero »

BenoitP wrote: post #7

> laser pulses > phased-array I'm not well versed into RF physics. I had the feeling that light-wave coherency in lasers had to be created at a single source (or amplified as it passes by). That's the first time I hear about phased-array lasers. Can someone knowledgeable chime in on this?

Not an expert, but main challenges with laser coherency are present when shaping the output using multiple transmitters.

For lidar you transmit a pulse from a single source and receive its reflection at multiple points. Mentioning phased array with lidar almost always means receiving.

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#58

Post by small_model »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #49
small_model wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, silly using just cameras, I mean humans have Lidar sensors, that why they can drive, why didn't new just copy that....oh wait. It all seriousness though, Tesla are producing cyber cabs now which are 10th the price of Waymo's and can drive autonomously anywhere in the world. I think we can see where this is going. (Hint: not well for Waymo) Also the article is speculative 'MicroVision says its sensor could one da…

> Tesla are producing cyber cabs now which are 10th the price of Waymo's and can drive autonomously anywhere in the world. My understanding is that cyber cabs still need safety drivers to operate, is that not the case?

They have no steering wheel or pedals so no

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#59

Post by MayeulC »

BenoitP wrote: post #7

> laser pulses > phased-array I'm not well versed into RF physics. I had the feeling that light-wave coherency in lasers had to be created at a single source (or amplified as it passes by). That's the first time I hear about phased-array lasers. Can someone knowledgeable chime in on this?

The beam is split and re-emitted in multiple points. By controlling the optical length (refractive index, or just the length of the waveguide by using optical junctions) of the path that leads to each emitter, the phase can be adjusted.

In practice, this can be done with phase change materials (heat/cool materials to change their index), or micro ring resonators (to divert light from one wave guide to another).

The beam then self-interferes, and the resulting interference pattern (constructive/destructive depending on the direction) are used to modulate the beam orientation.

You are right that a single source is needed, though I imagine that you can also use a laser source and shine it at another "pumped" material to have it emit more coherent light.

I've been thinking about possible use-cases for this technology besides LIDAR,. Point to point laser communication could be an interesting application: satellite-to-satellite communication, or drone-to-drone in high-EMI settings (battlefield with jammers). This would make mounting laser designators on small drones a lot easier. Here you go, free startup ideas ;)

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#60

Post by fragmede »

KaiserPro wrote: post #48
fragmede wrote: post #25

It might , but comma.ai proves that lidar is red herring, which is further supported by the fact that Waymo are able to drive vision-only if necessary.

> comma.ai proves that lidar is red herring I mean it doesn't. If you actually look at it comma.ai proves that level two doesn't require lidar. Thats not the same as full speed safe autonomy. whilst it is possible to drive vision only (assuming the right array of cameras (ie not the way tesla have done it) lidar gives you a low latency source of depth that can correct vision mistakes. Its also much less energy intens…

It's fair to point out that comma.ai is SAE level two system, however it's not geofenced at all, which is an SAE level 5 requirement. But really that brings up the fact that SAE's levels aren't the right ones, merely the ones they chose to define since they're the standards body. A better set of levels are the seven I go into more detail about on my blog.

As far as distinguishing shadows on the road, that's what radar is for. Shadows on the road as seen by the vision system don't show up on radar as something the vehicle will run into.

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