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posted by takyon on Wednesday August 07 2019, @10:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the liedurr dept.

Lots of companies are working to develop self-driving cars. And almost all of them use lidar, a type of sensor that uses lasers to build a three-dimensional map of the world around the car. But Tesla CEO Elon Musk argues that these companies are making a big mistake. "They're all going to dump lidar," Elon Musk said at an April event showcasing Tesla's self-driving technology. "Anyone relying on lidar is doomed."

"Lidar is really a shortcut," added Tesla AI guru Andrej Karpathy. "It sidesteps the fundamental problems of visual recognition that is necessary for autonomy. It gives a false sense of progress, and is ultimately a crutch."

In recent weeks I asked a number of experts about these claims. And I encountered a lot of skepticism. "In a sense all of these sensors are crutches," argued Greg McGuire, a researcher at MCity, the University of Michigan's testing ground for autonomous vehicles. "That's what we build, as engineers, as a society—we build crutches."

Self-driving cars are going to need to be extremely safe and reliable to be accepted by society, McGuire said. And a key principle for high reliability is redundancy. Any single sensor will fail eventually. Using several different types of sensors makes it less likely that a single sensor's failure will lead to disaster.

"Once you get out into the real world, and get beyond ideal conditions, there's so much variability," argues industry analyst (and former automotive engineer) Sam Abuelsamid. "It's theoretically possible that you can do it with cameras alone, but to really have the confidence that the system is seeing what it thinks it's seeing, it's better to have other orthogonal sensing modes"—sensing modes like lidar.

Previously: Robo-Taxis and 'the Best Chip in the World'

Related: Affordable LIDAR Chips for Self-Driving Vehicles
Why Experts Believe Cheaper, Better Lidar is Right Around the Corner
Stanford Researchers Develop Non-Line-of-Sight LIDAR Imaging Procedure
Self Driving Cars May Get a New (non LiDAR) Way to See
Nikon Will Help Build Velodyne's Lidar Sensors for Future Self-Driving Cars


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 08 2019, @12:24AM (6 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 08 2019, @12:24AM (#877273) Journal

    Musk should take at least a brief look at warships. The typical warship has radar, of course, but looking more closely, there is repetitive redundancy obvious in the masts. Multiple straight antennae, along with multiple radar domes, each with intimidating name. Ships have several radio antenna on those masts as well. Sonar is redundant, in that multiple different frequencies are used, each in several different ways. As if that weren't enough, one of the ships I served on had a passive sonar fish that was towed behind the ship, on miles of cable, that could dive below the thermocline. Repetitive redundancy is everywhere on a warship.

    Why all of that redundancy? It's to make the ship SURVIVABLE, both in peacetime and in combat.

    Few motorists would consider survivability a "bad thing".

    Stick those damned "extra" sensors in there. The car already costs multiple tens of thousands of dollars. Lidar increases the cost by $800 per vehicle? Don't be a cheapskate, put it in there!

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @12:39AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @12:39AM (#877279)

    Lidar adds approximately $10 to $100,000 to the cost of the vehicle.

    • (Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday August 08 2019, @12:48AM (2 children)

      by Mykl (1112) on Thursday August 08 2019, @12:48AM (#877281)

      Am I right in assuming that you meant $10,000 to $100,000?

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @12:59AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @12:59AM (#877282)

        NO! [spar3d.com]

      • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday August 08 2019, @01:03AM

        by deimtee (3272) on Thursday August 08 2019, @01:03AM (#877285) Journal

        Probably not.
        A single distance sensing laser (eg cheap handheld distance meter) can probably be sourced for less than $10 per unit.
        A full-on 'warship' LIDAR array as described by Runaway above could easily go above $100,000

        --
        If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 08 2019, @01:36PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 08 2019, @01:36PM (#877442) Journal

      Y U HATE CAPITALISM????

      Just because you can find a chip for ten bucks, doesn't mean you will find anyone who will install that chip for you, along with all the rest of the hardware and electronics to make the chip useful for ten bucks. I picked $800 as a semi-rational figure, because I know it's not super expensive, but no one is going to do it for free.

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 08 2019, @02:54AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 08 2019, @02:54AM (#877315) Journal

    one of the ships I served on had a passive sonar fish that was towed behind the ship, on miles of cable...
    ...
    Why all of that redundancy? It's to make the ship SURVIVABLE, both in peacetime and in combat.

    Few motorists would consider survivability a "bad thing".

    As a motorist, I confirm I'd like to see cars with miles of cable in tow if those cars are more survivable ⚆_ (grin)

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford