Cheaper LIDAR is good, but my money is on an array of super cheap cameras and better image recognition to get the additional cost of "self driving" down low. Also, cameras are lower profile than LIDAR (looks matter in cars...)
It's really useful to have multiple sensing mechanisms that have independent error behavior. I suspect when self driving cars are out there in mass, they'll use a combination of cheap cameras, lidar, etc for reliability and redundancy.
LIDAR gives you single sensor depth perception though without having to go through computationally expensive stereo vision mapping. There's definitely some benefit to that if it can improve your latency (or "framerate") such that you have extra time to swerve, slow down, etc.
Doesn't help you when visibility is poor, though. Of course, humans are no better in those conditions, but a big selling point of autonomous cars is that they can (in theory) be perfectly safe even in dense fog, snow, etc.
dave_sullivan|10 years ago
jasonwatkinspdx|10 years ago
msandford|10 years ago
organsnyder|10 years ago