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from the If-only-you-could-see-what-I’ve-seen-with-your-eyes dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
It's never good when a giant of the technology business describes your product as "a fool's errand".
But that's how Tesla's chief executive Elon Musk branded the laser scanning system Lidar, which is being touted as the best way for autonomous cars to sense their environment.
In April he said Lidar was "expensive" and "unnecessary". He believes that cameras combined with artificial intelligence will be enough to allow cars to roam the streets without a human driver.
Lidar emits laser beams and measures how long they take to bounce back from objects, and this provides so-called point-clouds to draw 3D maps of the surroundings.
These can be analysed by computers to recognise objects as small as a football or as big as a football field and can measure distances very accurately.
Despite Mr Musk, some argue these $10,000 (£7,750) pieces of kit are going to be essential. "For a car to reach anything close to full autonomy it will need Lidar," says Spardha Taneja of Ptolemus Consulting Group, a mobility consultancy.
But why are experts so divided, and how should investors judge this potential gold mine?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday November 24 2019, @11:57PM (2 children)
The problem with anything like lidar is the moving parts. But it's going to take a long fucking time before any combination of cameras and radars will be worthy of true autonomy. I for one will never ride in a self-driving car, but I do have faith that with enough testing and getting all those edge-cases, they can develop a workable product after years of collecting data and tweeking the algos. But it's gonna take years to do right, and everybody wants to be the first to beat everybody else's self-driving ensemble to market.
A company called Boeing rushed an incomplete product to beat Airbus to market, and look what happened to them. Their reputation is now in a death spiral and it's possible that they may never recover the trust of the commercial airline market.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday November 25 2019, @02:48PM
Would something like phased array lidar be possible?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday November 25 2019, @09:26PM
I figured everyone wants to be second to market, so the first one can suck up all the big lawsuits the next time this thing kills someone.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh