[rmason]

I suspect this is yet another story sponsored by the Tesla shorts. Just saw an excellent two hour interview by Lex Fridman of George Hotz and he goes into details why he thinks camera will win over lidar.

But he also admits that presently Google is ahead of everyone in the race for level 5, but raises the question of whether they can ever do it economically enough to make money on it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwcYp-XT7UI 2 hours!

Money quote is when Lex tells him, ""Some non-zero part of your brain has a madman in it"

I'd argue that is true of many of the greatest inventors of our time.

[melling]

I believe Tesla’s also have radar.

I also listened to the podcast. George made it sound like the Lidar wasn’t being used for much. It augments the maps to help determine more precise location?

[cameldrv]

I noticed that too. My understanding of what he said was most AV companies were using the lidar purely for localization (on an HD map) and not for object detection. This was the opposite of my understanding, so his statement was very confusing to me. Anyone able to comment?

[Symmetry]

You can absolutely use lidar pointclouds for object detection. It can be hard with low resolution lidar in a cluttered environment, though.

[cameldrv]

Of course you can use it. The claim Hotz seemed to be making was that the major AV stacks weren't doing it, which would have been major news to me.

[Symmetry]

They have a fixed position radar which sees the distances and radial speeds of objects in a cone extending in front of the car. Because it can't tell you which direction an object is in they have to filter out objects that are radially stationary so as not to be triggered by things on the side of the road, overhead signs, etc. At least until these objects are close enough that the cone's width doesn't exceed the width of the car by much. Now, it's very useful when dealing with other moving cars which probably aren't hanging in the air above your direction of travel. But it doesn't help with everything.

[natch]

Yes you’re right, they do.

[nemothekid]

For anyone else who skipped the article - this story likely isn't sponsored by Tesla as it takes a very critical view of Camera-only self driving sensors.

Edit: misread the parent comment

[markbnj]

The author said "tesla shorts"

> sponsored by the Tesla shorts

i.e. people who are betting against Tesla.