[Alupis]

Yes, perhaps the single-most controversial decision Tesla has made regarding FSD.

Everyone else uses LIDAR in some form. Tesla's cameras can and have been fooled on many occasions.

[nicce]

Yet they stockpile them:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/7/24151497/tesla-lidar-lumin...

[Alupis]

To be fair, $2MM of LIDAR units seems more like a R&D purchase than a stockpile.

[stavros]

$2.1m?! They must have bought two!

[nicce]

2,100 - according to article

[bmicraft]

Yeah okay, but that doesn't mean _cameras_ are bad (which, to be fair, they are in Teslas case), it means the algorithms feeding on them are.

[Alupis]

It means the cameras can be fooled by things LIDAR cannot be. Such as smoke, glare, reflections, optical illusions/mirage, etc.

If the algorithms are fed with incorrect data, they will produce incorrect results - such as driving full-speed into a parked, white colored, semi-truck.

[bmicraft]

And lidar can't tell the difference between a plastic bag and a rock, what's your point?

[Alupis]

One can (and has been) fooled into thinking there is no object in the path - the other might be extra sensitive to any object in it's path.

I'll let you stew on that one for a minute...

[bmicraft]

> I'll let you stew on that one for a minute...

Then that means the vision processing isn't far along yet to be viable for a car. There is no fundamental reason why it couldn't work though. With either stereoscopic vision or more temporal processing you could obviously detect when things are only painted on a wall surface, with both there really is no excuse to still fail except limited processing power.