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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
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday August 08 2019, @12:28AM (10 children)
What happens when two or more LIDAR systems of the same or different make/model operate within range of each other? Can/do they interfere with each other?
How susceptible are they to interference or jamming?
How would they affect someone taking a picture*? All the IR lasers would be visible to the cmos sensor in the camera and would mess up the image.
How would they affect other imaging systems like toll/red light cameras, license plate readers, or security cameras?
Anyone know the answers?
*there was an article awhile back where the LIDAR of a car at a show permanently damaged the photographers camera
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/01/man-says-ces-lidars-laser-was-so-powerful-it-wrecked-his-1998-camera/ [arstechnica.com]
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @02:39AM (4 children)
A good lidar generates its own, pretty unique pseudo random sequence and modulates its transmitter. Then it looks for the same received sequence using synchronous receiver principle. Autocorrelation's shift is proportional to the distance. Other lidars do not get received. See CDMA.
Jamming of any receiver is possible.
Cameras of all kinds need to have notch filters for the lidar frequency.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday August 08 2019, @02:49AM (2 children)
So jamming/interference isn't anything to worry about. Good to know, thank you,
And cameras can be equipped with filters, also good to know. But what about Human eyes? Or other animal's eyes?
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @03:01AM
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday August 08 2019, @03:09AM
Interference-wise, human eyes are safe too, as don't interfere with one with the other.
But letting interference aside, the advantage of the LIDAR over using human eyes is that LIDAR can cast laser beams for as long as they are powered; if you try to cast human (or animal) eyes you'll run out of eyes pretty quick. Besides, the bounce back of a cast eye is quite poor, most of them will be squished on impact.
(large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @03:36PM
> Cameras of all kinds need to have notch filters for the lidar frequency.
What are the chances that car manufacturers will offer upgraded filters for their cameras, after some new generation of Lidar starts to use a new frequency (different wavelength)? Seems like this needs to be a safety recall.
I have a nice digital camera, does this mean that it won't work right around Lidar (perhaps on every street in a few years) unless I buy an extra filter? Who do I take to small claims court to pay for this (times many billions of small cameras that didn't come with IR filters)?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday August 08 2019, @02:42AM (4 children)
How do these automotive LIDARs effect the Human eye?
We're not talking bright headlights here, we're talking IR LASERs. Like the kind they warn you not point at anyone's eyes.
And there are going to be a lot of them on the roads eventually.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 08 2019, @03:13AM (3 children)
For now.
But keep in mind that UV light allow for a better estimation of distances; why, you only have to look at integrated chips industry - they started with Vis light lithography and are doing EUV now. (large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @12:36PM (2 children)
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades (??)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @01:41PM
Better get an arc welding helmet, yes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @06:59PM
Just wait until they start replacing the blue LEDs with lasers everywhere.