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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

#261

Post by vablings »

Crespyl wrote: post #234
RobotToaster wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One highlight from the video, he says most cameras are fine, it's just iphones that don't have a very good IR filter. Which sounds correct, in my experience most cameras have pretty substantial IR filters that have to be removed if you want to photograph IR. I also wonder if the smaller sensor size on phones contributes, since the energy is being focused onto a smaller spot. Either way, for that to happen he was film…

Is it possible that the iPhone filters are weaker due to FaceID requirements? I seem to recall that FaceID (and similar systems, like Windows Hello) depend on IR to get a more 3D map of the face, so it'd make sense that they want to be more sensitive in that range. Laptops aren't generally being used in the same areas as cars though, so you wouldn't expect to see as many cases involving Windows Hello compatible lapto…

Possibly. Some models of iPhone use LIDAR for AR tooling as the measure app

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

#262

Post by Forgeties79 »

tw04 wrote: post #240
nlitened wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your vision is good enough to drive in rain/snow/fog, you don't need lidar in clear conditions. If you planned to spend $10B on vision and $10B on lidar — you would be better off spending $20B on better vision.

We have actual proof this isn’t true. Waymo is light years ahead of Tesla despite spending less. Tesla is spending upwards of $6B/year to Waymo’s $1.5B. Only one of these companies makes an autonomous robotaxi that’s actually autonomous.

It still infuriates me that Tesla went so long being able to call their feature “auto pilot.“ Then they had the audacity to call it user error when people thought the car would automatically pilot itself.

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

#263

Post by ubercore »

tw04 wrote: post #237
radial_symmetry wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert on ML vision, but I do have a Tesla and it seems to be able to tell how far away things are just fine. I'm not sure what would be wrong with the vision system that lidar needs to fix.

The phantom braking issue with auto pilot tells me it can’t. A shadow from a tree doesn’t trigger your brakes locking up at 70+ mph when there’s a lidar sensor to tell you it’s not a physical object. “Just buy FSD” isn’t a reasonable answer to a problem literally no other automaker suffers from.

Stopped using autopilot because of the phantom braking.

It's also recently gotten much worse at lane departure sensing, often confused by snow or slightly faded road markers. Not pleasant to have the alarms go off while calmly and safely driving.

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

#264

Post by peterfirefly »

xnx wrote: post #209
galangalalgol wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasoning is cynical but sound. If the system uses only the sensing modes people have, it will make the mistakes people do. If a jury thinks "well I could have done that either!" You win. It doesn't matter if your system has fewer accidents if some of the failure modes are different than human ones, because the jury will think "how could it not figure that out?"

This is a new and flawed rationale that I haven't heard before. Tesla cameras are worse (lower resolution, sensitivity, and dynamic range) than human eyes and don't have "ears" (microphones).

The cars do have at least one microphone.

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

#265

Post by jeltz »

bko wrote: post #244
zelphirkalt wrote: post #119

Since lidar has distance information and cameras do not, it was always a ridiculous idea by a certain company to use cameras only. Lidar using cars are going to replace at least the ones that don't make use of this obvious answer to obstacle detection challenges.

Why make things more complicated than they need to be? Humans don't have lidar and we are the only intelligence that can reliably drive. Lidar just seems like feature engineering, which has proven to be a dead end in most other AI applications (bitter lesson). https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~eunsol/courses/data/bitter_lesson...

Humans can drive with eyes only, but we are better drivers when we can also use other senses like hearing. If humans has lidar we would use it when driving.

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

#266

Post by [deleted] »

servo_sausage wrote: post #148
UltraSane wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the actually WORKING self driving systems use LIDAR. This is not a coincidence.

I work with programs approaching L3+ from L2, with the requirement that the system works for 99% of roads (not tesla before people start fixating on that). We find that the cases where lidar really helps are in gathering training data, parking, and if focused enough some long distance precision. None of these have been instrumental in a final product; personally I suspect that many of the cars including lidar use it…

[deleted]

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

#267

Post by brk »

nlitened wrote: post #174
zelphirkalt wrote: post #119

Since lidar has distance information and cameras do not, it was always a ridiculous idea by a certain company to use cameras only. Lidar using cars are going to replace at least the ones that don't make use of this obvious answer to obstacle detection challenges.

As I understand, lidars don't work well in rain/snow/fog. So in the real world, where you have limited resources (research and production investment, people talent, AI training time and dataset breadth, power consumption) that you could redistribute between two systems (vision and lidar), but one of the systems would contradict the other in dangerous driving conditions — it's smarter to just max out vision and ignore…

Nothing works perfectly in all conditions and scenarios. Sensor fusion has been the most logical approach now, and into the foreseeable future.

Computer vision does not work exactly like human vision, closely equating the two has tended to work out poorly in extreme circumstances.

High performance fully automated driving that relies solely on vision is a losing bet.

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

#268

Post by Zigurd »

Before y'all say that now everyone will be able to get Waymo's sensor suite for hundreds of dollars instead of tens of thousands, that's the easy part.

Waymo benefits from Google's unparalleled geospatial data. Waymo also has a support architecture that doesn't depend on real time remote operation, which can't be implemented reliably in almost all cases. You can't be following your supposedly unsupervised cars with a supervisor in a chase car. You can't even be driving remotely. Your driver software has to be able to drive independently in all cases, even those where it needs to ask a human how to proceed.

The difference between level two and level three driver assist and level four autonomy is like the difference between suborbital flight and putting a payload in orbit. What looks like a next logical step actually takes 10X or more effort, scale, and testing.

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

#269

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

mgoetzke wrote: post #180
zelphirkalt wrote: post #119

Since lidar has distance information and cameras do not, it was always a ridiculous idea by a certain company to use cameras only. Lidar using cars are going to replace at least the ones that don't make use of this obvious answer to obstacle detection challenges.

considering cameras can create reliable enough distance measurements AND also handle all the color reception needed for legally driving roads it was always a ridiculous idea by a certain set of people that lidar is necessary.

'cameras can see in color, therefore lidar is unnecessary for self driving' is unconvincing

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

#270

Post by a_better_world »

bko wrote: post #244
zelphirkalt wrote: post #119

Since lidar has distance information and cameras do not, it was always a ridiculous idea by a certain company to use cameras only. Lidar using cars are going to replace at least the ones that don't make use of this obvious answer to obstacle detection challenges.

Why make things more complicated than they need to be? Humans don't have lidar and we are the only intelligence that can reliably drive. Lidar just seems like feature engineering, which has proven to be a dead end in most other AI applications (bitter lesson). https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~eunsol/courses/data/bitter_lesson...

> we are the only intelligence that can reliably drive.

Science would like to point out that rats also can learn to drive

https://theconversation.com/im-a-neuroscientist-who-taught-r...

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