Are we sure these things aren’t damaging our eyes? It’s lasers shooting all over the place right?
Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
211–220 of 582 posts
Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#212Earlier 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?"
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.
There is also a report from the same flooding in LA of a Waymo driving into a flooded road and getting stuck.
They might have flipped a switch after that, causing this.
Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Eh, I think ‘miscalculation’ might be giving too much credit about good intentions. He wanted (needed?) to get on the hype train for self driving to pump up the stock price, knew that at the time there was zero chance they could sell it at the price point lidar required at the time - or even effective other sensors (like radar) - and sold it anyway at the price point that people would buy it at, even though it was no…
I think Musk is really not as smart as he thinks he is and this specific thing was probably an earnest mistake. Lots of other fraudulent stuff going on though of course!
Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#214Are we sure these things aren’t damaging our eyes? It’s lasers shooting all over the place right?
When designed, built, installed and calibrated correctly, the power and wavelengths used are not considered harmful to humans.
Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#215Since 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.
It was cost wasn't it?
If this lowers Lidar costs, and Tesla has spent all this time refining the camara technology. Now have both.
Use both.
Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#216Since 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.
I'll preface by saying lidar should be used with autonomous vehicles.
Individual cameras don't have distance information, but you can easily calibrate a system of cameras to give you distance information. Your eyes do this already, albeit not quantitatively. The quantitative part comes from math our brains aren't setup to do in real time.
Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#217Earlier 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…
Sensor fusion is also hard to get right, since you still need cameras you have to fuse the two information streams. Thats mainly a software problem and companies like Waymo have done it, but Tesla was having trouble with it earlier, and if you don’t do it right, your self driving system can be less reliable.
Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok so Waymo is useless in the rain then, kind of limiting. But at least that 0.000000000001% times it actually is a sinkhole you won't damage the bumper.
I'd rather a Waymo be useless in the rain rather than a Tesla be actively dangerous and likely to kill me. Tesla ""autopilot"" fatalities: 65 Waymo fatalities: 0
Autopilot isn’t full self driving (FSD), most cars these ship with smart cruise control (what autopilot basically is). Do you have fatality statistics for FSD?
If we are just talking about smart cruise control, most cars are using cameras and radar, not lidar yet. But Tesla is special since it doesn’t even use radar for its smart cruise control implementation, so that could make it less safe than other new cars with smart cruise control, but Autopilot was never competing with Waymo.
Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, 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.
Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not even 1% of their annual revenue, let alone the entire multi year period they've been in breach before and since. It's nothing to them.
The interesting part is that it keeps going up. You seem to believe we have somehow reached a cap where Meta can just expense it as a cost of doing business. That's not how European law works. The fine maximum is far higher and repeated non compliance keeps making the fines higher and higher. It's a ladder not a sizing precedent.
Maximum GDPR fine is 4% of global revenue in the previous year. If a company has 30% profit margin then they can, in theory, treat is as a cost of doing business, indefinitely.