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Velodyne Will Sell a Lidar for $100
Velodyne claims to have broken the US $100 barrier for automotive lidar with its tiny Velabit, which it unveiled at CES earlier this month.
"Claims" is the mot juste because this nice, round dollar amount is an estimate based on the mass-manufacturing maturity of a product that has yet to ship. Such a factoid would hardly be worth mentioning had it come from some of the several-score odd lidar startups that haven't shipped anything at all. But Velodyne created this industry back during DARPA-funded competitions, and has been the market leader ever since.
"The projection is $100 at volume; we'll start sampling customers in the next few months," Anand Gopalan, the company's chief technology officer, tells IEEE Spectrum.
The company says in a release that the Velabit "delivers the same technology and performance found on Velodyne's full suite of state-of-the-art sensors." Given the device's small size, that must mean the solid-state version of the technology. That is, the non-rotating kind.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by Snotnose on Tuesday January 28 2020, @01:18AM (7 children)
Anyone think a spinning bunch of expensive electronics mounted on the roof of your car is good for long term reliability? I've got an '05 car, about 2 months ago a bunch of things quit working. The one thing they all have in common? A $700 computer (forgot the official name, but it's by the right foot of my passenger. BCS - Body Control System sounds about right) that controls all of them. Sunroof, steering wheel radio controls, remote door locks. All failed at the same time.
Looks like it's easy enough to replace, and the junkyards have the thing for $100.
But
If you want to introduce your key fob to your car you need an expensive thing who's price dwarfs what it would cost me to take the car to the dealer and have them fix it.
So much for the shade tree mechanic, or the teenager with their first car. When modern cars break you're gonna need very expensive tools just to see what broke, and other expensive tools to mind meld your car with you.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday January 28 2020, @01:40AM (6 children)
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:39AM (3 children)
Small size doesn't prevent rotation. I mean, electrons have spin*, right?
*) Yes, I know, it's not that type of spin. Humour me, I'm spinning a (bad) joke here, mkay?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:51PM (2 children)
Actually, there are some theoreticians that think that quarticle "spin" might truly be a rotational property...
Offhand I can't think of any experiments that've made a particularly strong case either way. But then I probably wouldn't have heard of them.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday January 29 2020, @12:16AM (1 child)
Interesting. That made me google and led me down a rabbit hole at https://www.researchgate.net/post/Does_spin_imply_physical_rotation [researchgate.net] including the "the electron is a charged photon" theory.
I wish I had the brains/passion for physics - there is so much left to discover and understand!
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday January 29 2020, @04:53PM
Yeah, quantum physics is F'ing weird - compounded by the fact that we seem to have hit a brick wall on developing any sort of fundamental understanding. Superstring, mbane, etc,etc,etc... they all try, but after decades we still haven't come up with a single experiment that's provided any evidence to support any of them.
Personally, I'm glad to see Pilot Wave theory gaining momentum. Whether it's "right" or not, it comes at the problem from a completely different direction, which might generate interesting results that would give us further clues as to what's really going on. It completely eliminates the randomness of wave-function collapse and all the interesting doors that opens up, returning to a purely deterministic universe. With hidden non-local variables, granted, but with enough work we might come up with ways to "unhide" those.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:42AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by epitaxial on Tuesday January 28 2020, @04:03PM
I've taken apart a broken 16 laser Velodyne puck and they do indeed spin electronics along with the mirrors. The insides are pretty complex mechanically and electrically.