Here's a few thoughts:
* They say it has a 95 degrees vertical FOV and 360 degrees FOV. The vertical FOV is awesome actually. A Velodyne VLP-16 has roughly 30 degrees FOV. We need the vertical and horizontal angular resolution to make any first-take judgements though.
* One overlooked feature I want to point out is that the Minimum Range is 0. Many lidars perform well at far distances but struggle to see objects very close (<1 meter away). This poses a safety issue as someone or something is effectively invisible to the robot if they're too close. Of course you can use cameras to handle this case but this is a big win for the Waymo hardware team!
* They're going to be 15k+ (gut estimate)
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