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Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

spectrum.ieee.org

81–90 of 582 posts

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

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are mainly autopilot which people conflate with FSD, and high percentage are human caused accidents (auto pilot requires full attention and driver is liable).

Why does Tesla ship a feature called "autopilot" which kills you if you use it instead of "FSD"?

Autopilot is Tesla’s brand name for adaptive cruise control with lane centering. This is a common feature available on a wide range of vehicles from nearly every major manufacturer, though marketed under different names (e.g., ProPilot, BlueCruise).

Drivers can and do misuse adaptive cruise control systems, sometimes with fatal consequences. Memes aside, there is no strong evidence that fatal misuse occurs more frequently by owners of Tesla cars than with comparable systems from other brands.

This perception reflects the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon, more commonly known as the frequency illusion. Nobody is collecting statistics for other brands, so it’s assumed the phenomenon doesn’t occur.

A similar pattern occurred with media coverage of EV fires. Except in this case, good statistics exist which prove the opposite: ICE vehicles catch fire more often than EVs.

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

#82

Radar is extremely expensive, and lifar is just below that. Glad to see someone lowering the cost of this technology, and hope to see lots of engineers using this tech as a result. We might even see a boom in LIDAR tech as a result

What makes you say radar is extremely expensive? Virtually every car from the last decade has at least one, many have two or more. They’re barely more than a PCB and a radar ASIC.

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

#83
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDPR_fines_and_notices Top 5 fines: 1 - Meta - Ireland - €1.2 billion 2 - Amazon Europe - Luxembourg - €746 millions 3 - WhatsApp - Ireland - €225 millions 4 - British Airway - UK - £183 millions 5 - Google - France - €60 millions I wish every law barely got enforced this way.

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.

1% of Meta's global revenue is a tiny-tiny cost of doing business? At that point, I think I can stop even trying to argue here. It's a massive fine any way you put it. Especially when you consider the ceiling hasn't been reached and non compliance is more and more costly by design.

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

#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.

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

#85
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d definitely feel much better if most cameras in the world were replaced by LIDAR. I feel like it would be much tougher to have a flawless facial recognition program with LIDAR alone

Who needs facial recognition if you can identify people based on gait?

Judicial systems where a 6% error rate is deemed way too high to lead to a conviction.

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

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the actually WORKING self driving systems use LIDAR. This is not a coincidence.

Like Waymo? ( https://dmnews.co.uk/waymo-robotaxi-spotted-unable-to-cross-... ) 17 years after betting the farm on LIDAR the solution fails to navigate a puddle. Sorry but they bet on the wrong technology, Tesla has overtaken them with multi camera and NN solution.

Your conclusion from a single incident is a bad inference. One vehicle getting confused by a puddle (likely a sensor fusion edge case or mapping artifact, not a fundamental LIDAR failure) doesn't indict the technology. Tesla's cameras have produces vastly more failures.

Waymo has driven tens of millions of autonomous miles with a serious injury/fatality rate dramatically lower than human drivers. The actual data shows the technology works. Tesla FSD still requires active driver supervision and is not legally or technically a robotaxi system. Comparing them as if they're at parity is wrong.

LIDAR gives direct metric depth with no inference required. Camera-only systems must infer depth from 2D images using neural networks, which introduces failure modes LIDAR doesn't have. Radar is very valuable when LIDAR and cameras give ambiguous data.

What metrics has Telsa overtaken Waymo? Deployed robotaxi revenue miles? No. Disengagement rates? No published comparable data. Safety per mile in driverless operation? No.

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

#87
post #79

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 every single camera in existence if that happens. Lidar is awful with damaging camera lenses.

I had to look this up, because I had never heard of it. How could a lens be damaged by infrared lasers?

It turns out it’s the sensors that are easily damaged by high powered lidar lasers.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/keeping-lidars-from-zapping-ca...

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

#88
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d definitely feel much better if most cameras in the world were replaced by LIDAR. I feel like it would be much tougher to have a flawless facial recognition program with LIDAR alone

Who needs facial recognition if you can identify people based on gait?

Gait recognition is almost entirely hype. Sure it works to tell the difference between n = 10 people but so what, you can tell the difference between a group of 10 people by what kind of shoes they are wearing.

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

#89
post #11

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.

And, I guess, even more advanced surveillance.

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 conflict.

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

#90
post #79

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 every single camera in existence if that happens. Lidar is awful with damaging camera lenses.

What? Please explain!
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