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[–] 48 points 2 years ago (17 children)

If the cars run over people while going 30kmh because they use cameras and a bug crashed into the camera and that caused the car to go crazy, that is not acceptable, even if the cars crash "less than humans".

Self driving needs to be highly regulated by law and demand to have some bare minimum sensors, including radars, lidars, etc. Camera only self driving is beyond stupid. Cameras cant see in snow or dark or whatever. Anyone who has a phone knows how fucky the camera can get under specific light exposures, etc.

Noone but tesla is doing camera only "self driving" and they are only doing it in order to cut down the cost. Their older cars had more sensors than their newer cars. But Musk is living in his Bioshock uber capitalistic dream. Who cares if a few people die in the process of developing visual based self driving.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm2x6CVIXiE

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  • [+] -47 points 2 years ago (14 children)
  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    Obviously?

    Why wouldn't we want other types of sensors...?

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  • [+] -34 points 2 years ago (7 children)
  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Because that’s expensive and can be done with a camera.

    Expensive, as in probably less than $600? Compared to the $35000 cost of a tesla?

    (comparing the cost of the iPhone 12 (without lidar) and iPhone 12 pro (with lidar), we can guess that the sensor probably costs less than $200, so 3 of them (for left, right, and front) would cost probably less than $600)

    lidar can actually be very cheap and small. Unfortunately, Apple bought the only company that seems to make sensors like that (besides some other super high end models)

    There have been a lot of promising research papers on the technology lately though, so I expect more, higher resolution and cheaper lidar sensors to be available relatively soon (next couple years probably).

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  • [+] -4 points 2 years ago (2 children)
  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    To get the same resolution and quality of image in all lighting scenarios, cameras are actually going to be more expensive than LiDAR. Cameras suffer in low light, low contrast situations due to the physical limitations of bending light. More light = bigger lenses = higher cost, when LiDAR works better and is cheaper

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I've heard Elon Musk (or was it Karpathy?) talking about how camera should be sufficient for all scenarios because humans can do it on vision alone, but that's poor reasoning IMO. Cars are not humans, so there's no reason to confine them to the same limitations. If we want them to be safer and more capable than human drivers, one way to do that is by providing them with more information.

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