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Comment by doppio19 | Hacker News Reader

I can believe it. I rode in a Waymo for the first time a couple days ago and it was incredible. No problems with the rain or bad San Francisco drivers. It was a really smooth ride and I felt extremely safe.

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I was under the impression the LIDAR approach was compromised by rain? Did something change or did I not understand it right?

That's just some good old Musk/Tesla propaganda. Waymo has developed a really high resolution lidar + some software magic means rain is no longer an issue for them.

Thanks. Any recommended reading links on this?

Their 5th gen Lidar point clouds compared it to previous gen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COgEQuqTAug&t=11601s

They have a ton of literature at https://waymo.com/research/ and tech talks on YouTube (search talks by Drago Anguelov). They make heavy use of simulators [1] where they simulate weather events and create their own weather maps [2]. It's a very sophisticated stack.

[1] https://waymo.com/blog/2021/06/SimulationCity.html

[2] https://waymo.com/blog/2022/11/using-cutting-edge-weather-re...

Thanks!

The kind of comment I expect from hacker news, thanks!

Its impressive how the lidar resolution evolved as per the youtube video. The color added, i wonder if its post-processing.

Probably using remote human operators to make numbers look better.

I thought the opposite. I thought this was one of the main reasons in favor of LIDAR vs regular cameras.

The current Waymo driver uses cameras, RADAR and LIDAR, which are meant to compliment each other's capabilities.

https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/episode/10386-the...

there are many video showing waymo trips during rain or even (heavy) fog

few examples : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4aBNYcBoLI ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8TGFA6SfAo

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