> The cold hard truth is that LIDARs are a crutch
The hard truth is there is no reason to limit machines to only the tools humans are biologically born with. Cars always have crutches that humans don't possess. For example, wheels.
The hard truth is there is no reason to limit machines to only the tools humans are biologically born with. Cars always have crutches that humans don't possess. For example, wheels.
In a true self-driving utopia, all of the cars are using multiple methods to observe the road and drive (vision, lidar, GPS, etc) AND they are all communicating with each other silently, constantly, about their intentions and status.
Why limit cars to what humans can do?
The reason this is clear is because, except for a brief period in late 2022, Teslas have included some combination of radar and ultrasonic sensors. [0]
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Autopilot_hardware
Turns out, when there's demand for LIDAR in this form factor, people invest in R&D to drive costs down and set up manufacturing facilities to achieve economies of scale. Wow, who could have predicted this‽
Western countries might not be smart enough to keep R&D because Wall Street sees it as a cost center.
[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...
You know what else used to be expensive? Structured light sensors. They cost $$$$ in 2009. Then Microsoft started manufacturing the Kinect for a mass market, and in 2010 price went down to $150.
You know what's happened to LIDAR in the past decade? You guessed it, costs have come massively down because car manufacturers started buying more, and costs will continue to come down as they reach mass market adoption.
The prohibitive cost for LIDAR coming down was always just a matter of time. A "visionary" like Musk should have been able to see that. Instead he thought he could outsmart everyone by using a technology that was not suited for the job, but he made the wrong bet.
This should be expected when someone who is *not* an experienced engineer starts making engineering decisions.
FOSS is the obvious counterexample to your absurdly firm stance, but so are many artistic pursuits that use engineering techniques and principles, etc.
My intent was to exclude research efforts, which is fundamentally different from engineering, which is a practical concern and not a “get it to just work” concern.