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by Ataraxic 377 days ago
From the recent tesla acme test, where the tesla runs into a wall containing a picture of a road, they also tested rain and water blocking two mannequins. The lidar equipped vehicle managed to stop before hitting the mannequins while tesla's autopilot did not. The distance before automatic braking triggered was reduced iirc.

Sure lidar is degraded by rain, but I think the conclusion that when it rains the whole system will degrade to just cameras seems incorrect. It may reduce its effective range but it seems likely to still have some advantage in a wide range of conditions.

2 comments

That test was not using FSD. When retested on the latest version of FSD, the car stopped. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cxTO8g47_k
Can you provide a link to this?
It wasn’t real rain though. If the vehicle stopped because of the water instead of seeing the mannequin, there is no much value to the lidars.