Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 582 posts

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

#171

Post by expedition32 »

donkey_brains wrote: post #135
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…

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?

In my country it wasn't until the late 19th century that someone had the balls to stop going to church on Sunday. It was a huge scandal at the time but it all worked out in the end.

Humans have always done mass surveillance on eachother. You don't need technology for that.

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

#172

Post by small_model »

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?"

Very recent issue with Waymo https://dmnews.co.uk/waymo-robotaxi-spotted-unable-to-cross-.... This is 17 years after they bet the farm on LIDAR, with no signs its ever going to be cost effective or that it's better than multiple cameras, with millisecond reaction 360 degrees, that never gets tired, drunk, distracted, and also has other cheaper sensors and NN trained on Billions or real world data.

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

#173

Post by dumbfounder »

Someone wrote: post #167
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.

> Since lidar has distance information and cameras do not, it was always a ridiculous idea by a certain company to use cameras only Human eyes do not have distance information, either, but derive it well enough from spatial (by ‘comparing’ inputs from 2 eyes) or temporal parallax (by ‘comparing’ inputs from one eye at different points in time) to drive cars. One can also argue that detecting absolute distance isn’t n…

I don’t like the comparison between humans and humans. Humans don’t travel around at 100mph in packs of other humans. Why not use every sensor type at our disposal if it gives us more info to make decisions? Yes I understand it’s more complicated, but we figure stuff out.

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

#174

Post by nlitened »

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 lidar altogether.

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

#175

Post by bavell »

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?

I think about it like a series of waves in a pool. One end has wave generators (the lasers) spaced appropriately such that resulting waves hitting the other end interfere just right and create a unified wavefront (same phase, amplitude, frequency).

NB: just my layman's understanding

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

#176

Post by RobotToaster »

mikeyouse wrote: post #144
shinycode wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is complains that some Volvo cars damaged iPhone cameras. It’s not even clear if Apple takes those under warranty. We’ve seen car review YouTubers that got their iPhone camera sensors damaged captured (by a second camera) while reviewing

One such review where Marques shows how it happened to his phone https://youtube.com/shorts/oeHtfMFdzIY?si=cANJDT5BLfdd9ZUT

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 filming the LIDAR while active, for a decent amount of time, from right next to the car. I assume under normal conditions it wouldn't be running constantly while the vehicle is stationary?

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

#177

Post by larsnystrom »

Someone wrote: post #167
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.

> Since lidar has distance information and cameras do not, it was always a ridiculous idea by a certain company to use cameras only Human eyes do not have distance information, either, but derive it well enough from spatial (by ‘comparing’ inputs from 2 eyes) or temporal parallax (by ‘comparing’ inputs from one eye at different points in time) to drive cars. One can also argue that detecting absolute distance isn’t n…

Human eyes are much better than cameras at dealing with dynamic range. They’re also attached to a super-computer which has been continuously trained for many years to determine distances and classify objects.

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

#178

Post by zelphirkalt »

wasmainiac wrote: post #139
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.

Just say Tesla, why censor yourself.

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, or just difference of mindset between US citizens and Europe citizens. It happened a few times already and to me looks sus.

But if they actually read and not just ctrl+f , then of course not writing the company name, but hinting at it in an obvious way is no more helpful either.

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

#179

Post by zemvpferreira »

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…

Limited resources? Billions per year are being thrown at the base technology. We have the capital deployed to exhaust every path ten times over.

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

#180

Post by mgoetzke »

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.
Post reply on HN