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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday November 24 2019, @10:58PM   Printer-friendly
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?


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday November 25 2019, @02:55PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 25 2019, @02:55PM (#924531) Journal

    IMO: Musk is right in the long term, but wrong in the short term.

    Self Crashing Cars probably need Lidar in the short run.

    Since human brains can do this, I suspect that in the long run, passive vision sensors alone will be enough if there is powerful enough AI to understand what it is seeing. (and maybe also hearing) Humans don't actively emit radiation and look for reflections in order to drive. So why MUST a machine necessarily have Lidar?

    Yet despite human brains' superior ability to drive by reasoning about the environment using only passive sensors, human drivers still drive while texting intoxicated about how good they can brake check large fast moving trucks.

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