[olabyne]

Human have excellent 3d vision, even with one eye. Some ability that only a vision-lidar fusion would match, not vision only. Human vision isn't just a flat image like a camera render. Distance from an object is not only estimated from using a stereo camera (2 eyes), it is made from constant movemnt from the head, and the ability to rotate the orbit on two axis.

Vision might be viable in an unknown future (which tesla is very good at seliing), but right now it is very dumb to forbid yourself extra data.

[ArtTimeInvestor]

    ability that only a vision-lidar fusion
    would match, not vision only

What would be arguments that back this theory up? Why couldn't an image stream from fixed cameras be enough?

After all, we made machines perform on a superhuman level in many areas already. You could have said "A machine will never be able to move as fast as a human unless it has two legs and feet". But that is not how it turned out.

I remember people saying computers will never beat humans in chess because they don't have intuition.

[jodleif]

I don’t see any reason to argue possibility- it’s more interesting to know what’s optimal. Would you agree that redundancy in sensors is better?

[ArtTimeInvestor]

Optimal towards which metric?

[olabyne]

What i meant is that if you multiply the number of cameras, probably make them movable, and with amazing vision software you might approach the performance of 2 humans eyes, but really it is just extra step to simulate lidar data at this point.

> After all, we made machines perform on a superhuman level in many areas already. You could have said "A machine will never be able to move as fast as a human unless it has two legs and feet". But that is not how it turned out.

Yes, thanks to wheels. Robots with legs do exist; but none of them is close the speed of an average human running. That's my point. We are not gonna do better than human vision by simply taking 2 cameras thinking it is equivalent to a human eye.

[ArtTimeInvestor]

How do you know that taking 2 cameras and superhuman intelligence won't be enough?

[olabyne]

Because it's physically not the same. Again, 1 fixed camera does not provide as much data as a single eye. It's not about the resolution, it's about the 3d perception that even a single eye provides. You can try yourself : close one eye, and you still have a good 3d perception. Now try to make your orbit fixed, no head or eye movement, and then everything feels flatter.

[ArtTimeInvestor]

Metal wings are also not physically the same as two feet. Yet, planes can move faster than humans.

How well cars will be able to maneuver with cameras and superhuman intelligence specialized in this task is yet to be seen.

Maybe we could try to find dashcam videos of self-driving cars causing accidents. Then one could form an opinion if the camera footage will be enough for future versions of the software to correctly assess what is on it.

Here is one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcj-1hNwPiw

The crash is at 1:08

To me, it seems entirely possible to understand the situation from the camera footage alone.