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10:24 · 227K views · Apr 27, 2019
A clip from Tesla Autonomy Day 2019 where Elon Musk argues cameras are enough for self-driving and calls lidar a fool's errand.
Cited in self-driving threads as the source of Tesla's vision-only stance, usually to discuss or push back on it.
4 comments from Hacker News
I think Elon Musk makes some good points why Lidar isn’t the best choice. this video Waymo taxi looks incredible but how can they scale it.
Its an interesting video but its an edited video. The company website mentions the system was able to negotiate the challenges of the driving conditions, looks like an euphemism... Very few details, no scientific publications I could find on their Asimov system on a quick search, not sure if this is a technological breakthrough or a fine tuning of existing processes and methods. Because if its a fine tuning of current algorithms not sure how long they can push this. They are relying on Lidar (and other sensors) but even as of last year, it seems most teams already realized Lidar would not be the solution for Snow, and were now pushing Ground Penetrating Radar ( sounds expensive...) "Autonomous Cars Struggle in Snow, but MIT Has a Solution for That" [LINK] Even Tesla, already realized its not just a sensor problem, solving self-driving needs a higher level algo than can put the different sensors, in context of situational awareness. Note that in no any other way I would consider Tesla an example to follow ;-) And do not think they are any closer to getting a working system. Some of the statements show at least a second level understanding of what is required. Sensors are a means to it. Its about situational awareness but also inference. "LIDAR is a fool’s errand… and anyone relying on LIDAR is doomed. — Elon Musk" this video
Anyone who owns a Tesla and has used the new V12.3 understands why Elon is so bullish about the Robo-Taxi's. He's said they've internally seen a 5x-10x reduction in disengagements on 12.4 (already trained, out soon), and that 12.5 is even better. Their GPU stack by end of the year will also be 8x the size it was earlier this year. Combine all this together, and the "feedback loop" with millions of people using FSD, it's looking like the "vision only" strategy will work. My question is what happens to all other car markers if it turns out Elon and Andrej Karpathy's strategy ( this video ) is the correct one?
Elon talked about LIDAR at the autonomy investor day. Basically he said that the Dragon spacecraft has LIDAR and he spearheaded that effort. He also said that LIDAR and cameras both use the same wavelength, if you are going to add a sensor it makes more sense to add one which is outside of the visible wavelength. Even though I know nothing about driverless cars, the reasoning from Elon makes sense. this video