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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

#151

Post by Mordisquitos »

Zanfa wrote: post #149
Mordisquitos wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the equivalent of a $600 fine for somebody making 60k / year I don't know about you, but on that income I would certainly not brush off such a fine as a "cost of doing business". Would it cause me financial trouble, or would it force me to sacrifice other expenses? Absolutely not. But would I feel frustrated at having to pay it, feel stupid for my mistake, and do my best to avoid it in the future? Absolutely yes.

My bad, a better analogy would be a dealer making 60k / year selling drugs, gets caught by police and is fined $600. I wouldn’t expect them to change much.

Fair enough. In that sense I do see value in the analogy.

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

#152

Post by rfv6723 »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #146
rfv6723 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humanity has never known a world without surveillance. Responsibility cannot exist without being watched. Primitive tribes lived under the constant eye of the group, and agricultural eras relied on the strict oversight of the clan. Modern states simply adopted new tools for an ancient necessity. A society without monitoring is a society without accountability, which only leads to the Hobbesian trap of endless conflic…

This is a reduction to absurdity. Those old societies you cite didn't actively surveil with the goal of micromanaging people's daily lives the way that modern ones do.

Rural surveillance was far more suffocating because every single action was subject to the community gaze. This is exactly why classic literature frames the journey to the city as a liberation from the crushing weight of the village eye. The idea of the peaceful countryside is a modern utopian fantasy that ignores how ancient clans dictated every aspect of life including marriage and death. Modern Homeowners Associations prove that localized oversight is often the most intrusive form of management. Ancient society did not just monitor people; it owned their entire existence through inescapable social visibility.

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

#153

Post by SubiculumCode »

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.

RIP to humans under authoritarian regimes?

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

#154

Post by squigz »

rfv6723 wrote: post #142
donkey_brains wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass surveillance is a relatively recent development. Dense urban civilizations are not. And yet their denizens have not historically devolved into a “nasty, brutish, and short” existence. In fact, cities have been centers of culture and learning throughout history. How does this square with your theory?

The 19th century was the true cradle of mass surveillance. Civil registration, property tracking, and institutionalized police forces provided the systemic oversight required to manage dense urban life. These administrative tools served as the analogue version of digital monitoring to ensure every citizen remained known and categorized. Cities thrived as centers of culture only because these new forms of visibility p…

None of those things are remotely comparable to the surveillance we're talking about. There's a world of difference between, "My city knows who owns what properties and also we have a police force", and "Western intelligence agencies scoop up every bit of data they can grab about anyone on the planet and store it forever"

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

#155

Post by numpad0 »

keyKeeper wrote: post #84

There are laser measurers sold for a few buck on Temu. Robot vacuums sold for few hundred dollars have Lidars that map out the room in a seconds. Is there any actual technical reason why automobile Lidar be expensive? Just combine visual processing with single point sampler that will feed points of interest and accurate model of the surroundings will be built.

Most spinning robovac LIDARs are 2D. Most solid state robovac LIDARs are like 8x8 array of laser pointers.

Automotive LIDARs are like, 128x64[px] for production models or 1920x1080[px] for experimental models with GbE and/or HDMI-equivalents-of-industry outputs. Totally different technologies.

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

#156

Post by waldarbeiter »

keyKeeper wrote: post #114
echoangle wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably one factor is range. The article talks about 200-300m range, a robot vacuum has maybe 10m best case?

For example this one has 120m range with 1cm accuracy and its 15 euros: https://www.temu.com/bg-en/-digital-laser-distance-meter-50m...

Is the 1 cm spec 1σ (or less) or worst-case? It’s a safety-critical application.

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

#157

Post by SkiFire13 »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #124
Zanfa wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the numbers listed here prove the GPs point of poor enforcement. The largest fine is roughly 0.97% of Meta's 2023 revenue, the equivalent of a $600 fine for somebody making 60k / year. It's a tiny-tiny cost of doing business at best, definitely not a deterrent, given Meta's blatant disregard for GDPR since then.

> the equivalent of a $600 fine for somebody making 60k / year I don't know about you, but on that income I would certainly not brush off such a fine as a "cost of doing business". Would it cause me financial trouble, or would it force me to sacrifice other expenses? Absolutely not. But would I feel frustrated at having to pay it, feel stupid for my mistake, and do my best to avoid it in the future? Absolutely yes.

Would you still do your best to avoid it if that involved taking a pay cut of more than $600/year?

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

#158

Post by Betelbuddy »

simondotau wrote: post #98
throwaway473825 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anyone using only cameras except Tesla?

Xpeng, Wayne, aiMotive to name three. Probably many others, who claim to use LIDAR but don’t actually rely on it. Because LIDAR is perceived as a prerequisite for autonomous safety, admitting to not needing it is a bad PR move — for now.

There is a massive technical difference between Vision first but with LiDAR redundancy vs No LiDAR at all that is Tesla approach. Those are not the same architecture. So claiming XPeng, Waymo, or aiMotive validate Tesla is technically misleading.

XPeng system is sensor fusion. It is not camera only. Waymo is even clearer. For them LiDAR is not optional. aiMotive has now started to market camera only, but its experimental, no production deployments.

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

#159

Post by estearum »

galangalalgol wrote: post #143
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.

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?"

I don't think that's the reasoning.

The reasoning was simply that LIDAR was (and incorrectly predicted to always be) significantly more expensive than cameras, and hypothetically that should be fine because, well, humans drive with only two eyes.

Musk miscalculated on 1) cost reduction in LIDAR and 2) how incredible the human brain is compared to computers.

Having similar sensors certainly doesn't guarantee your accidents look the same, so I don't think your logic is even internally sound.

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

#160

Post by szundi »

estearum wrote: post #159
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?"

I don't think that's the reasoning. The reasoning was simply that LIDAR was (and incorrectly predicted to always be) significantly more expensive than cameras, and hypothetically that should be fine because, well, humans drive with only two eyes. Musk miscalculated on 1) cost reduction in LIDAR and 2) how incredible the human brain is compared to computers. Having similar sensors certainly doesn't guarantee your acci…

Seeing the SOTA in FSD techs it is not obvious that Musk made a miscalc so far.
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