6 ms·

All the necessary hardware? Do Teslas have lidar?

by mattybrennan 9y ago

throwaway-1209 9y ago
Lidar is not "necessary" hardware. Humans drive just fine without lidar.
- rpedela 9y ago
  The human visual cortex is still far more advanced than a computer's. Maybe that will change some day, but asking about non-camera sensing equipment is a reasonable question until it does.
  - throwaway-1209 9y ago
    Sure, and it's not only cortex. Humans also know a lot about the world, and can predict things much better. There are areas in which humans are limited, however, such as reaction time, spectral sensitivity, the fact that humans can only see well in the center of where they're looking at and fake the rest of their visual field, etc. It's not at all clear to me that a human pair of eyeballs is better than 8 high quality, wide spectrum cameras feeding into the system at once. That said, I think it's disingenuous of Tesla to call their system "autopilot" or imply autonomy of any kind when talking about their system. I will call something autopilot when it can drive me from door to door without me touching the wheel, in less than friendly weather conditions. Not drive in a straight line where it never rains.
    - rpedela 9y ago
      You can have a 1000 cameras and it still doesn't matter if you don't have a good computer to process the data. That is where machine learning, etc comes in. Machine learning is really starting to come into its own in last few years especially for image recognition but it still sucks compared to humans. That doesn't mean self-driving based on cameras isn't good enough but it needs to be proven and we aren't there yet.
      - throwaway-1209 9y ago
        Dude, I work on high performance machine learning and machine vision 12 hours a day. You don't need to tell me it sucks, I know. But it's superhuman on some tasks already, and in a few short years, it'll be superhuman on a few more, and little by little it'll get there. All you get from that lidar is a depth map. You can do that without a lidar, using two or more cameras. If you also interpolate across a series of predictions, and have sensor fusion (which Tesla does, they also use radars and ultrasonic sensors) you can even make it robust. Truly, people who say it can't be done should not interrupt people who are doing it.
- UnoriginalGuy 9y ago
  Humans have the computation equivalent of 38 petaflops of processing power. Does a Tesla vehicle? If you seriously want to play the inane game of "well if a human doesn't have it then a Tesla doesn't need it" then let's play that game and talk about the things humans have that the Tesla lacks. What's interesting about human's vision system is that the human eyeball is, relatively speaking, poor. We have digital cameras far better than that already. It is what the human brain that does with that raw data which makes us, as a species, thrive. Most of what we believe we "see" we never actually see, our brain fills in the gaps dynamically and infers information over time. So this human processing ability, much of it automated rather than conscious, is totally relevant if you want to have this "Tesla Vs. human" debate. It is also why Lidar might be needed to make up the massive shortfall in a Tesla's processing ability relative to the human brain. But hey, you want to keep to the "but HUMANS don't need it" then I ask where is my 38 petaflops and 1 TB of memory...
  - aidenn0 9y ago
    I'm curious where you get the number "38 petaflops" from.
    - CamperBob2 9y ago
      In the same sense that your dog solves differential equations when he catches a Frisbee, I suppose.
      - throwaway-1209 9y ago
        It's memory + control driven with visual feedback, not much more. You don't have to solve anything if you already sorta know the solution, and can adjust it for the goal.
    - UnoriginalGuy 9y ago
      IBM researchers: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/computers-have-a-lot-to-learn-from-2009-03-10/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/computers-hav... You can find other figures, but many are in the petaflop range, well above what could be realistically installed in a vehicle.
- deelowe 9y ago
  It's pretty obvious what the poster meant. Why doesn't tesla need lidar? Cars aren't humans, so that comparison isn't really helpful.
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
    What the poster seems to have meant is that LIDAR is essential hardware. Which is not some universal truth, so it is they who should justify it.
    - DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
      Visual cameras can be blinded fairly easily - even high-end cameras - simply point such a camera at the sun and try to make out a cloud in the sky. If Tesla were using true high-dynamic-range cameras (e.g. Oversampled binary imagers) then I would be more confident - but Tesla isn't saying that they are - and if they really were they would definitely boast about it. LIDAR also does work great in the rain - provided you have multiple LIDAR units (e.g. Ford's snow-proof sensor array: https://qz.com/637509/driverless-cars-have-a-new-way-to-navigate-in-rain-or-snow/ https://qz.com/637509/driverless-cars-have-a-new-way-to-navi... ). What I like about LIDAR is that it will never give you false-negative data regarding object proximity (i.e. it will never tell you an obstruction in the road is not there) but visual-only cameras can be fooled very easily and definitely can give you false-negatives regarding road obstructions. It seems inherently less safe to rely on a more homogeneous sensor array: conversely it makes sense to use as many different types of sensor as possible to ensure your design isn't susceptible to being brought down thanks to a weakness in your predominant sensor type.
  - tigershark 9y ago
    Lidar is absolutely useless for level 5 autonomy given that doesn't work in "bad" weather. It may be useful for level 4 autonomy but for sure it is not necessary even then. Source: no car driven around the planet at the moment has any lidar apart for testing purposes.
- blazespin 9y ago
  Not really, humans are horrible drivers with miserably slow reaction times.
  - Silhouette 9y ago
    Some humans are horrible drivers. Some humans are good drivers. The biggest difference is often how proactive the driver is. It's true that a careful, experienced driver will typically recognise a rapidly emerging hazard as much as several tenths of a second faster than a novice, giving them significantly more time and space to react. However, a careful, experienced driver will also anticipate places where there are likely to be hazards and adjust their driving style to compensate. Does a self-driving car know that there's a park just round the corner and it's half an hour after the local kids came out of school, thus increasing the risk of a child chasing a ball into the road? Does a self-driving car understand that the group of people standing quite near the road up ahead are outside a bar at 11:30pm and thus quite likely to be drunk and suddenly stagger into the road? Does a self-driving car know about the pothole in the cycle lane that you had to avoid while riding into town yesterday, and anticipate that anyone riding in that cycle lane today may move out into the main traffic lane without warning to go around it? Does a self-driving car know that the news last night reported on a local black spot for "accidents" caused by people wanting to make fake insurance claims, and decide to take another route that is a little slower but avoids that black spot? Better sensors, fast data processing, and the ability to monitor all sensors all the time are big advantages, for sure, but these things mostly support reactive behaviour. I've seen nothing so far to suggest that the better reactions currently outweigh proactively avoiding or mitigating these kinds of hazards in the first place. Obviously that might change in any number of ways in the future, but we seem to be a long, long way from that point yet.
    - kthejoker2 9y ago
      a) Most humans aren't aware of these things, either, so they're really non sequiturs at best. b) Even if you accept them as valid premises, it's much easier to disperse this kind of info to every car on the road than it is to disperse it to humans (every tourist in a city needs to know where every bar / park is? Or watch the local news?)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
gogeek 9y ago
They don't work in bad weather conditions like rain. So auto driving systems can't rely on LIDAR what rules it out as main sensor.

All the necessary hardware? Do Teslas have lidar?

throwaway-1209 9y ago

Lidar is not "necessary" hardware. Humans drive just fine without lidar.

rpedela 9y ago
The human visual cortex is still far more advanced than a computer's. Maybe that will change some day, but asking about non-camera sensing equipment is a reasonable question until it does.
- throwaway-1209 9y ago
  Sure, and it's not only cortex. Humans also know a lot about the world, and can predict things much better. There are areas in which humans are limited, however, such as reaction time, spectral sensitivity, the fact that humans can only see well in the center of where they're looking at and fake the rest of their visual field, etc. It's not at all clear to me that a human pair of eyeballs is better than 8 high quality, wide spectrum cameras feeding into the system at once. That said, I think it's disingenuous of Tesla to call their system "autopilot" or imply autonomy of any kind when talking about their system. I will call something autopilot when it can drive me from door to door without me touching the wheel, in less than friendly weather conditions. Not drive in a straight line where it never rains.
  - rpedela 9y ago
    You can have a 1000 cameras and it still doesn't matter if you don't have a good computer to process the data. That is where machine learning, etc comes in. Machine learning is really starting to come into its own in last few years especially for image recognition but it still sucks compared to humans. That doesn't mean self-driving based on cameras isn't good enough but it needs to be proven and we aren't there yet.
    - throwaway-1209 9y ago
      Dude, I work on high performance machine learning and machine vision 12 hours a day. You don't need to tell me it sucks, I know. But it's superhuman on some tasks already, and in a few short years, it'll be superhuman on a few more, and little by little it'll get there. All you get from that lidar is a depth map. You can do that without a lidar, using two or more cameras. If you also interpolate across a series of predictions, and have sensor fusion (which Tesla does, they also use radars and ultrasonic sensors) you can even make it robust. Truly, people who say it can't be done should not interrupt people who are doing it.
UnoriginalGuy 9y ago
Humans have the computation equivalent of 38 petaflops of processing power. Does a Tesla vehicle? If you seriously want to play the inane game of "well if a human doesn't have it then a Tesla doesn't need it" then let's play that game and talk about the things humans have that the Tesla lacks. What's interesting about human's vision system is that the human eyeball is, relatively speaking, poor. We have digital cameras far better than that already. It is what the human brain that does with that raw data which makes us, as a species, thrive. Most of what we believe we "see" we never actually see, our brain fills in the gaps dynamically and infers information over time. So this human processing ability, much of it automated rather than conscious, is totally relevant if you want to have this "Tesla Vs. human" debate. It is also why Lidar might be needed to make up the massive shortfall in a Tesla's processing ability relative to the human brain. But hey, you want to keep to the "but HUMANS don't need it" then I ask where is my 38 petaflops and 1 TB of memory...
- aidenn0 9y ago
  I'm curious where you get the number "38 petaflops" from.
  - CamperBob2 9y ago
    In the same sense that your dog solves differential equations when he catches a Frisbee, I suppose.
    - throwaway-1209 9y ago
      It's memory + control driven with visual feedback, not much more. You don't have to solve anything if you already sorta know the solution, and can adjust it for the goal.
  - UnoriginalGuy 9y ago
    IBM researchers: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/computers-have-a-lot-to-learn-from-2009-03-10/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/computers-hav... You can find other figures, but many are in the petaflop range, well above what could be realistically installed in a vehicle.
deelowe 9y ago
It's pretty obvious what the poster meant. Why doesn't tesla need lidar? Cars aren't humans, so that comparison isn't really helpful.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
  What the poster seems to have meant is that LIDAR is essential hardware. Which is not some universal truth, so it is they who should justify it.
  - DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
    Visual cameras can be blinded fairly easily - even high-end cameras - simply point such a camera at the sun and try to make out a cloud in the sky. If Tesla were using true high-dynamic-range cameras (e.g. Oversampled binary imagers) then I would be more confident - but Tesla isn't saying that they are - and if they really were they would definitely boast about it. LIDAR also does work great in the rain - provided you have multiple LIDAR units (e.g. Ford's snow-proof sensor array: https://qz.com/637509/driverless-cars-have-a-new-way-to-navigate-in-rain-or-snow/ https://qz.com/637509/driverless-cars-have-a-new-way-to-navi... ). What I like about LIDAR is that it will never give you false-negative data regarding object proximity (i.e. it will never tell you an obstruction in the road is not there) but visual-only cameras can be fooled very easily and definitely can give you false-negatives regarding road obstructions. It seems inherently less safe to rely on a more homogeneous sensor array: conversely it makes sense to use as many different types of sensor as possible to ensure your design isn't susceptible to being brought down thanks to a weakness in your predominant sensor type.
- tigershark 9y ago
  Lidar is absolutely useless for level 5 autonomy given that doesn't work in "bad" weather. It may be useful for level 4 autonomy but for sure it is not necessary even then. Source: no car driven around the planet at the moment has any lidar apart for testing purposes.
blazespin 9y ago
Not really, humans are horrible drivers with miserably slow reaction times.
- Silhouette 9y ago
  Some humans are horrible drivers. Some humans are good drivers. The biggest difference is often how proactive the driver is. It's true that a careful, experienced driver will typically recognise a rapidly emerging hazard as much as several tenths of a second faster than a novice, giving them significantly more time and space to react. However, a careful, experienced driver will also anticipate places where there are likely to be hazards and adjust their driving style to compensate. Does a self-driving car know that there's a park just round the corner and it's half an hour after the local kids came out of school, thus increasing the risk of a child chasing a ball into the road? Does a self-driving car understand that the group of people standing quite near the road up ahead are outside a bar at 11:30pm and thus quite likely to be drunk and suddenly stagger into the road? Does a self-driving car know about the pothole in the cycle lane that you had to avoid while riding into town yesterday, and anticipate that anyone riding in that cycle lane today may move out into the main traffic lane without warning to go around it? Does a self-driving car know that the news last night reported on a local black spot for "accidents" caused by people wanting to make fake insurance claims, and decide to take another route that is a little slower but avoids that black spot? Better sensors, fast data processing, and the ability to monitor all sensors all the time are big advantages, for sure, but these things mostly support reactive behaviour. I've seen nothing so far to suggest that the better reactions currently outweigh proactively avoiding or mitigating these kinds of hazards in the first place. Obviously that might change in any number of ways in the future, but we seem to be a long, long way from that point yet.
  - kthejoker2 9y ago
    a) Most humans aren't aware of these things, either, so they're really non sequiturs at best. b) Even if you accept them as valid premises, it's much easier to disperse this kind of info to every car on the road than it is to disperse it to humans (every tourist in a city needs to know where every bar / park is? Or watch the local news?)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

gogeek 9y ago

They don't work in bad weather conditions like rain. So auto driving systems can't rely on LIDAR what rules it out as main sensor.