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Camera vs. Lidar

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Re: Camera vs. Lidar

#51

Post by gordon_freeman »

m463 wrote: post #35

I'm suspicious - this article has been posted several times in the last few days. Does hacker news accept dupes? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20677720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20680495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20683288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20686791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20705890

No need to be suspicious. AFAIK, HN encourages folks to reshare if they think that a quality post slipped off without much engagement. I even got an email from someone at HN encouraging me to reshare my couple of years' old post again to see if it sticks this time around.

Re: Camera vs. Lidar

#52

Post by m3at »

ebg13 wrote: post #25
m3at wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't just have 2D data though. We learn objects representations by interacting with them over years in a multi modal fashion. Take for example a simple drinking glass: we know its material properties (it is transparent, solid, can hold liquids), its typical position (stay on a tabletop, upright with the open side on top), its usage (grab it with a hand and bring to mouth)... We also make heavy use of the time dim…

You're not responding to what they said. The person you're responding to is talking about depth from stereo, not cognition. Lidar _also_ doesn't know what the glass feels like.

I am, I was not writing about cognition here.

All I'm saying is that even with stereo inputs, we're doing more than computing depth from the baseline between left/right images. Close one eye and you can still estimate relative objects positions, because you learned that roads are mostly planar and cars don't float but stand on the road. You know what the expected size of a car is compared to, say, a human, and if the car is visually smaller than the human, it must be more far away.

Lidar _also_ doesn't know what the glass feels like.

Yes I agree with you, lidar and most current vision sensors also suffer from this.

Re: Camera vs. Lidar

#53

Post by worik »

This is ignoring the Elephant in the room: The AI is not good enough often enough for general purpose AVs. In restricted settings it will be great (container terminals, warehouses...) but from every thing I have seen, from the outside as I am not a insider, the last little bit of safety seems unobtainable with neural networks. I so want to be wrong, and please tell me why I am. I want my next care to have a cocktail cabinet and drive smoothly enough to balance my champagne flute on the arm rest.

Re: Camera vs. Lidar

#54

Post by unnouinceput »

I side with Elon on this. Except he's kinda of a cheap bastard and my idea of using Lytro cameras instead of cheap ones used by Tesla won't actually fly with him. So yeah, use Lytro and you can forget about Lidar altogether.

Re: Camera vs. Lidar

#55

Post by pazimzadeh »

mbrumlow wrote: post #7
jsharf wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of our ability to judge relative distance is based on our brains judgement of lighting, texture, inference, and sound. While having two eyes helps a lot, you can still navigate a complex office environment with one eye closed. It just takes a bit more care.

When I was younger I remember hearing about how we can do all these things because we have 2 eyes. And that depth perception is what gives us the ability to not walk into walls, and do other things including driving. I have thought about this many times and often wondered why when closing one eye I am still able to function. Sense then I have thought strongly that having depth perception is used for training some oth…

I'm skeptical of the claim that a major reason for having two eyes is depth perception.

One reason why you're still able to function is that you don't rely on your sense of depth that much these days. i.e. You don't need to gage where a spear or arrow will land. Even in a car, you are effectively on a one dimensional track and only have to decided to go left or right.

If you only had one eye, then in situations where there is lots of pressure to perceive depth I think you'd have to move your head around a lot.

Which makes me wonder, which human activities demand the best depth perception?

Re: Camera vs. Lidar

#56

Post by pazimzadeh »

jsharf wrote: post #4
tgog wrote: post #3

This completely neglects the fact that humans can build near perfect 3D representations of the world with 2D images stitched together with the parallax neural nets in our brain. This blogpost briefly mentions it in one line as a throwaway and says you'd need extremely high resolution cameras?? Doesn't make sense at all. Two cameras of any resolution spaced a regular distance apart should be able to build a better par…

I think most of our ability to judge relative distance is based on our brains judgement of lighting, texture, inference, and sound. While having two eyes helps a lot, you can still navigate a complex office environment with one eye closed. It just takes a bit more care.

In these modern times yes, there's little selective pressure keeping depth perception sharp. That doesn't mean most of our ability to judge depth is from monocular clues (though that could be true).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_perception#Theories_of_e...

Re: Camera vs. Lidar

#57

Post by dang »

m463 wrote: post #35

I'm suspicious - this article has been posted several times in the last few days. Does hacker news accept dupes? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20677720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20680495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20683288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20686791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20705890

This is answered in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

Re: Camera vs. Lidar

#58

Post by alkonaut »

pfundstein wrote: post #36
mantap wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot have false negatives. Ever. You cannot have a situation where the system doesn't see a pedestrian and runs over them at without noticing. So you need to make a very convincing argument that it can't happen. With cameras and computer vision there's no way to prove it. There is always a chance that it will glitch out for a second and kill someone.

Autonomous vehicles don't need to be perfect drivers -- from it, they just need to be better than humans.

No, we accept humans as being imperfect but we do not accept machines as being imperfect. Yes this means that companies that have autonomous vehicles that have a lower accident rate than humans may still be completely unable to sell them because of legal issues and market perception.

We don’t know yet what the acceptance rate is for autonomous accidents - but I can guarantee it’s not the rational value of 1:1 or “as safe as humans”. They’ll need to do a lot better.

Re: Camera vs. Lidar

#59

Post by alkonaut »

worik wrote: post #53

This is ignoring the Elephant in the room: The AI is not good enough often enough for general purpose AVs. In restricted settings it will be great (container terminals, warehouses...) but from every thing I have seen, from the outside as I am not a insider, the last little bit of safety seems unobtainable with neural networks. I so want to be wrong, and please tell me why I am. I want my next care to have a cocktail…

Cars will reach 50% and 75% and 95% autonomy but they won’t reach 100% unless we change infra to be controlled. So long as they are driving among humans on roads made for humans they will never be 100% autonomous. 100% autonomy might sound like just a little more than 95% but it’s not. At 100 is where a car can be built to not have a driver. Its passengers can be drunk or not know how to drive. It’s a huge difference from 95% or 99%.

I think when cars are 95 or 99% autonomous they will be sold with human remote control so there will be centers where manufacturers have hundreds of remote drives ready to intervene and handle the last 5% or 1% of situations. Ther race to AV profitability will be won by the manufacturer with the smallest army of backup drivers.

Re: Camera vs. Lidar

#60

Post by alkonaut »

yo-scot-99 wrote: post #47
threeseed wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cameras don't work reliably in inclement weather either. So what was Musk's point ?

there's 200-300k cars out there with just cameras + radar and their bet is the software catches up to the rhetoric. Adding lidar is next to impossible on the current fleet and adds to the cost if they start now. It is an early design bet which the coders now have to meet.

But no car sold yet (or in the coming decade) will have close to “full autonomy”. Not even close.
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