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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

#471

Post by dcrazy »

saltcured wrote: post #411
dymk wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans aren't using only fixed vision for driving. This is such a tiresome thing to see repeated in every discussion about self driving. You're listening to the road and car sounds around you. You're feeling vibration on the road. You're feeling feedback on the steering wheel. You're using a combination of monocular and binocular depth perception - plus, your eyes are not a fixed focal length "cameras". You're moving…

In theory, a computer should be able to do the same. It could do sensor fusion with even more sense modalities than we have. It could have an array of cameras and potentially out-do our stereo vision, or perhaps even use some lightfield magic to (virtually) analyze the same scene with multiple optical paths. However, there is also a lot of interaction between our perceptual system and cognition. Just for depth percep…

Putting your point another way, in order to replicate an average human driver’s competence you would need to make several strong advancements in the state of the art in computer vision _and_ digital optics.

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

#472

Post by Gee101 »

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…

Musk has never been scared of vertically integrating something that's too expensive initially.

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

#473

Post by anthonypasq »

nindalf wrote: post #390
atonse wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for the record though, Musk isn't blindly anti-LIDAR. He has said (and I think this is an objective fact) that all existing roads and driving are based on vision (which is what all humans do). So that should technically be sufficient. SpaceX uses LIDAR for their docking systems. I would argue that yes, we do use vision but we get that "lidar depth" from our stereo vision. And that used to be why I thought camera…

> So that should technically be sufficient Sufficient to build something close to human performance. But self driving cars will be held to a much higher standard by society. A standard only achievable by having sensors like LiDAR.

if a self driving car had the exact vision of humans it would still be better because it has better reaction times. never mind the fact that humans cant actually process all the visual information in our field of view because we dont have the broad attention to be able to do that. its very obvious that you can get super human performance with just cameras.

Whether thats worth completely throwing away LiDAR is a different question, but your argument is just obviously false.

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

#474

Post by cycomanic »

ggreer wrote: post #393
MengerSponge wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If automated driving systems cause accidents at anywhere near the human rate, it'll be outlawed pretty quickly. This is evidently false. Robotaxi crash rates exceed human drivers', but there's not an effective regulatory agency to outlaw them! https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/tesla-robotaxis-cras...

According to that article, Waymo crashes 2.3x more often than human drivers (every 98k miles vs 229k miles), which is clearly false. I think it's far more likely that humans don't report most minor collisions to insurance, and that both Robotaxis and Waymo are safer than human drivers on average.

> According to that article, Waymo crashes 2.3x more often than human drivers (every 98k miles vs 229k miles), which is clearly false.

Why is it clearly false? It might be false, but clearly? I would definitely like to see evidence either way.

> I think it's far more likely that humans don't report most minor collisions to insurance, and that both Robotaxis and Waymo are safer than human drivers on average.

That sounds like you are trying to find reasons to get the conclusion you want.

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

#475

Post by moogly »

leptons wrote: post #419
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.

One camera can't really produce depth/distance information, but two cameras sure can. The eyes in your head don't capture distance information individually, but with two eyes you can infer distance.

You're forgetting the nervous system and the brain connected to those eyes (and vestibular system).

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

#476

Post by servo_sausage »

UltraSane wrote: post #191
servo_sausage wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Waymo is the best current autonomous driving system and Waymo uses LIDAR. This is because LIDAR is an incredibly effective sensor for accurate range data. Vision and Radar range data is much less accurate and reliable. Waymo used LIDAR in the realtime control loop. It combines LiDAR, camera, and radar data in real time to build a 3D representation of the environment, which is constantly updated. I fundamentally don't…

Yes, I am aware of waymo... What they do is impressive. However they don't have a product that works for all highways yet, that's the space I work in, and we have no real fixation on lidar... It's nice but not a requirement, and hard to justify the cost unless you can make sales because of it (and there are some places where this is the case, but not everywhere)

You don't need the mm precision of lidar very often; we find that it offers nothing at speed over radar; and in tight manoeuvres the cameras we need for human park assist and ultrasonics do well enough.

It in not more accurate; but it is more precise, but that doesn't really matter. (Radar gives you relative speed directly, this is more important than a very precise point at highway speeds).

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

#477

Post by servo_sausage »

stefan_ wrote: post #417
atonse wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for the record though, Musk isn't blindly anti-LIDAR. He has said (and I think this is an objective fact) that all existing roads and driving are based on vision (which is what all humans do). So that should technically be sufficient. SpaceX uses LIDAR for their docking systems. I would argue that yes, we do use vision but we get that "lidar depth" from our stereo vision. And that used to be why I thought camera…

Mentioning gaussian splatting for why we don't need lidar depth is a great example of Musk-esque technobabble; surface level seemingly correct, but nonsense to any practitioner. Because one of the biggest problems of all SfM techniques is that the results are scale ambiguous, so they do not in fact recover that crucial real-world depth measurement you get from lidar. Now you might say "use a depth model to estimate m…

This is not really true if you have multiple cameras with a known baseline, or well known motion characteristics like you get with an accelerometer+ wheel speed.

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

#478

Post by [deleted] »

dmonitor wrote: post #308
Crespyl wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That wouldn't make sense on the back of the phone.

[deleted]

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

#479

Post by aworks »

anthonypasq wrote: post #473
nindalf wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So that should technically be sufficient Sufficient to build something close to human performance. But self driving cars will be held to a much higher standard by society. A standard only achievable by having sensors like LiDAR.

if a self driving car had the exact vision of humans it would still be better because it has better reaction times. never mind the fact that humans cant actually process all the visual information in our field of view because we dont have the broad attention to be able to do that. its very obvious that you can get super human performance with just cameras. Whether thats worth completely throwing away LiDAR is a diffe…

This reminds me of the time I was distantly following a Waymo car at speed on 101 in Mountain View during rush hour. The Waymo brake lights came on first followed a second or two later by the rest of the traffic.
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