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Comment by Qworg | Hacker News Reader

Google currently has a req out for a electromechanical engineer to work on a new sensor system. I'm betting they're building a new sensor for their vehicle - rotating, but perhaps not LIDAR.

Cracking the heavy rain/snow problem would require more than just a new design though - you'd need a totally different sensor modality, a mix of sensors that can extract enough data, or a system that's far more robust to noise.

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I realize the costs would be high, but would there be a way to embed some information in/near the roadway that would assist the onboard systems? I think there might be some advantages in making the road smarter in addition to the car.

There are advantages, but this poses a high bar for adoption. The current approach of keeping the entire suite of sensors on the car means that infrastructure won't need immediate upgrades to support autonomous vehicles.

I have no doubt that smarter roads are in our future, but they pose too high of a price for wide spread adoption of autonomous vehicles at the outset.

I think this is ultimately the best way forward, but I am excited to see other tech alternatives develop, too.

I really don't think it would be that expensive, at least along Interstates and major highways, to embed a trace wire to help guide self driving cars. (At least, during regular maintenance and new construction- tearing up roads to add it would obviously be expensive).

Even if you use a sensor fabric on the road way, as well as high precision/precise positioning GPS (sub-centimeter resolution) for lane keeping, you will still need a sensor that can build the environment around the car in a model software can process. Some sort of lidar/radar combination I believe.

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