Hacker News Reader

LIDAR is valuable as a safety feature, i.e. it can (unlike radars or cameras) reliably see (at least in clear weather) if there's anything in the car's path warranting evasion/braking maneuvers. In particular it's important that the LIDAR is dumb, i.e. its failure mores are predictable

View on HN

LIDAR operates by timing how a photon reflects from a surface, it doesn't guarantee see everything. As you stated already, it cannot see in snow or rain.

I am actually on sensor-fusion side, but I don't think we should jump to the conclusion LIDAR is the best 3D mapping method.

For one example, a truck has a breaking distance of 600ft, either Velodyne or OS1 LIDAR has range less than that.

I agree about LIDARs not being the best general 3D mapping method, my point was mostly about using it as a dumb physics-based safety system. For autonomous trucks, limited LIDAR range could be mitigated by reducing speed accordingly and/or employing more powerful (or SWIR) LIDARs since trucks are more expensive and there could be a bigger budget for sensors

Reply on news.ycombinator.com