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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: 4, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday August 08 2019, @02:42AM (4 children)

    by PinkyGigglebrain (4458) on Thursday August 08 2019, @02:42AM (#877310)

    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."
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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 08 2019, @03:13AM (3 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 08 2019, @03:13AM (#877322) Journal

    We're not talking bright headlights here, we're talking IR LASERs.

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @12:36PM (#877416)

      The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades (??)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @01:41PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @01:41PM (#877448)

        Better get an arc welding helmet, yes.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @06:59PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @06:59PM (#877602)

        Just wait until they start replacing the blue LEDs with lasers everywhere.