[kemiller]

Waymo etc do not use LIDAR for object sensing, only for positioning. LIDAR sucks for object sensing because it gives you no information about whether it's a plastic bag or a person — you still need vision for that. Even if you just err on the safe side and brake, that itself can cause an accident unecessarily.

[jowday]

You're wrong on that. LIDAR is used for object detection in every self driving car company that uses LIDAR. There's tons of research on it.

Previous generations of LIDAR were not great at classifying small objects and road debris but it works great for detecting cars, pedestrians, etc.

https://paperswithcode.com/task/3d-object-detection

Next-gen LIDAR has great density, and I bet it would do a decent job differentiating between a plastic bag or a rock in the middle of the road. In addition to depth LIDAR also returns intensity and several other metrics, which can be used as input to an ML model. It's why you can read the lettering on the side of the semi truck in this video of Waymo's next-gen LIDAR.

https://youtu.be/COgEQuqTAug?t=11601