this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
376 points (96.5% liked)
Technology
59121 readers
4441 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Tesla's decision to only use cameras and no lidar will bite them in the ass.
Humans drive using “cameras” (eyes) and no LiDAR, that’s the assumption Tesla is making — that a supercomputer can drive 10x better than humans using the same type of sensor. Nobody really knows yet if that’s true but I get the logic.
LiDAR also is UV/visible spectrum and is blocked by dust/fog/snow/rain so it doesn’t help much in many driving situations..
You're making an argument against LiDAR with it using UV/visible spectrum, guess what uses visible spectrum to see stuff? Cameras. And they also have an unfortunate downside of not having good dynamic range, so in very bright/low light situations they probably don't work that well either. Teslas aren't even using infrared cameras to see in the dark to my knowledge.
Unsure why you are downvoted, because that is sound logic. I recall hearing on a podcast of I think a former Tesla engineer that having too many sensors potentially makes things less effective since you have to deal with different types of input, and have to crunch more data, etc. etc. Efficient development also means knowing when to cull unnecessary time sinks.
I hate Elon as much as the next guy, but... Well, humans are obviously not perfect drivers, but Tesla clearly believes that in time, with cameras all around the car (already an improvement over human drivers), a good enough AI solution would be able to match or surpass humans.
I still rather have good ol radar as a fallback if cameras and their AI model don't work for some reason. They are still work in progress, and rely on trained models to recognize objects, while if a radar sees something, it is because there is something actually there and not a guess. I don't buy the story that too much sensors is bad. Planes rely on multiple different sensors plus backups for redundancy to fly safely, self-driving cars with vastly superior tech should be able to do the same.
They actually have used radar along with the cameras for a while. It wasn't until the last few years that they decided to ditch them. I think I read that they realized it was a mistake and are going to add them back on future models.
Anything short of fiercely anti-Tesla gets immediately downvoted here. Just how it goes I guess. I’m not the biggest Tesla fan but hope they succeed on this front, we desperately need driving assistance technology to make the roads safer.