[cameldrv]

They are refuting a claim that wasn't made. If they need Lidar to do better annotations, fine. You'd only need the lidar on data collection/R&D cars though, and could just use cameras on production cars.

The point Musk and others are making though is that the lidar on the market today has poor performance in weather. The cameras will struggle to a degree in weather as well, so not having good annotations when your dev car is driving though rain is exactly the time when you need the ground-truth to be as clean as possible.

[KaiserPro]

With respect, thats not what they are claiming

They are saying that lidar enhances the perception system to get more accurate dimensions and rotations of objects to a greater distance.

this means that you can predict far better, allowing you, for example, to drive at night full speed.

Weather affects visual systems as well. The "ooo rain kills lidar" is noise at best. Visual cameras are crap at night.

There is a reason that the radar augmented depth perception demo is in bright light, no rain. Because it almost certainly doesn't work as well at night, and will probably need a separate model.

[omilu]

>>Visual cameras are crap at night.

Mitigated somewhat with headlights

[KaiserPro]

Not really. Most cameras don't have the dynamic range needed to either full see where the beam is pointing, or cope with near objects.

Infra-red cameras work, but RGB not so much (well not in the <$400 per CCD price point)

[nguoi]

Not fully mitigated for humans, it's more dangerous to drive at night.