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Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

spectrum.ieee.org

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

#271

Post by peterfirefly »

spyder wrote: post #164
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.

Yea, even in the case they could match human level stereo depth perception with AI, why would they say "no" to superhuman lidar capabilities. Cost could be a somewhat acceptable answer if there wouldn't be problems with the camera only approach but there are still examples of silly failures of it. And if I remember correctly they also removed their other superhuman radar in their newer models, the one which in certai…

Because they don't have superhuman LIDAR. They never did. Nobody ever did. LIDAR input is not completely reliable so what do you do then?

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

#272

Post by lazide »

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…

Evidence clearly shows otherwise.

Also, military sensor use shows the best answer is to have as many different types of sensors as possible and then do sensor fusion. So machine vision, lidar, radar, etc.

That way you pick up things that are missed by one or more sensor types, catches problems and errors from any of them, and end up with the most accurate ‘view’ of the world - even better than a normal human would.

It’s what Waymo is doing, and they also unsurprisingly, have the best self driving right now.

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

#273

Post by 0_____0 »

RobotToaster wrote: post #183
nlitened wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> lidars don't work well in rain/snow/fog. Neither do cameras, or eyeballs.

If you have multi-return lidar, you can see through certain occlusions. If the fog/rain isn't that bad, you can filter for the last return and get the hard surface behind the occlusion. The bigger problem with rain is that you get specular reflection and your laser light just flies off into space instead of coming back to you. Lidar not work good on shiney.

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

#274

Post by Zigurd »

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…

No, it isn't "smarter." Camera-only driving is the product of a stubborn dogmatic boss who can't admit a fundamental error. "Just make it work" is a terrible approach to engineering.

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

#275

Post by alkonaut »

dsr_ wrote: post #221
RobotToaster wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lidars don't work well in rain/snow/fog. Neither do cameras, or eyeballs.

When it's not safe to drive, it's not safe to drive. I've been in zero-road-speed whiteout conditions several times. The only move to make is to the side of the road without getting stuck, and turning on your flashers. Low-light cameras would not have worked. Sonar would not have worked. Infrared would not have worked.

I think the weather where cameras/sensors start having problems is much better than zero-vis whiteout.

If we could make sensors that lets an autonomous vehicle drive reliably in any snow/rain where a human could drive (although carefully) then we're good. But we are a long way from that. Especially since a lot of sensor tech like cameras tend to fail in 2 ways, both through their performance being worse in adverse condition but also simply failing to function at all if they are covered in ice/snow/water.

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

#276

Post by RockRobotRock »

Zigurd wrote: post #268

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…

>Waymo benefits from Google's unparalleled geospatial data.

That's true, and they have a huge headstart, but I wonder if all these cubesat companies can bring the price down on data enough that others will be able to compete.

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

#277

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

sergiotapia wrote: post #219
zelphirkalt wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a suspicion here on HN. When criticizing big tech, especially Google and FB, at a certain time of the day a specific cohort comes online and downvotes. Suspiciously, that is a time when one could conclude, that now people in the US start working or come online. Either fanboys, employees or an organized group of users trying to silence big tech criticism. I have no proof of course and it might be coincidence, o…

It's been my experience that hn and reddit have a very high overlap in audience these days. The jerrybreakseverything crowd. Anything anti-tesla, anti-grok, is applauded.

Yeah, I agree with GP, pretty much anything that isn't effusively praising tesla or elmu etc will tend to get reflexively downvoted.

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

#278

Post by [deleted] »

Zigurd wrote: post #274
nlitened wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No, it isn't "smarter." Camera-only driving is the product of a stubborn dogmatic boss who can't admit a fundamental error. "Just make it work" is a terrible approach to engineering.

[deleted]

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

#279

Post by coredog64 »

moffkalast wrote: post #51
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 quic…

I think the difference is that these are intended for automotive use and have a much longer range than the ones in your Roomba.

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

#280

Post by alkonaut »

The article is a bit muddy on what is hope and what is product. Can we _really_ buy a solid state lidar today? At what cost? When can I have it delivered?

The article starts out without saying it but my takeaway at the end is "Not $200" and "Not in the near future"?

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