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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) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 25 2019, @03:33AM (7 children)
There are many levels of self driving, and also more than one level of LIDAR cost/complexity/precision... Whatever systems are employed in high speed self-drivers, they're going to need a high level of redundancy, you don't want a Luna Moth collision to cause your car to come to a complete emergency stop on the highway. As cheap as optical cameras are, a "camera bar" with a few dozen high speed megapixel imagers spread across it would seem to be a good starting point - although like regular windshields, Love Bug season might still prove to be a challenge requiring frequent cleanings.
As such, the super expensive rotating mirror LIDAR systems aren't really suited to low cost consumer products which require multiple redundant backups. Maybe some of the cheaper MEMS LIDAR devices might augment optical flow calculations, they were already making pretty impressive claims on lightweight drone flyable LIDAR devices back in 2010, I assume progress has continued to march on...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 25 2019, @09:27AM (6 children)
I sure hope not. What's going to happen, when autonomous vehicle gets involved in an accident where it has a known defective sensor? Redundancy doesn't work when the vehicle has to stop working any time one of the "redundant" sensor systems stops working.
The more sensors you throw on a car, the more things that can break down and keep that car from being driven.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 25 2019, @09:43AM (5 children)
Along with a CHECK ENGINE light, you'll also have a CHECK SENSOR light.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 25 2019, @10:02AM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 25 2019, @02:22PM (3 children)
Isn't this the ultimate goal of unregulated industry? Planned obsolescence, dealer service lock-in, hidden costs as high as possible without completely bankrupting your customers.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 26 2019, @02:47AM (2 children)
And isn't the ultimate goal of unregulated customers, free shit? This stuff is an already solved problem.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 26 2019, @03:03AM (1 child)
Only in your mind.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 26 2019, @03:04AM