[verelo]

Yeah its absurd. As a Tesla driver, I have to say the autopilot model really does feel like what someone who's never driven a car before thinks it's like.

Using vision only is so ignorant of what driving is all about: sound, vibration, vision, heat, cold...these are all clues on road condition. If the car isn't feeling all these things as part of the model, you're handicapping it. In a brilliant way Lidar is the missing piece of information a car needs without relying on multiple sensors, it's probably superior to what a human can do, where as vision only is clearly inferior.

[smallmancontrov]

The inputs to FSD are:

    7 cameras x 36fps x 5Mpx x 30s
    48kHz audio
    Nav maps and route for next few miles
    100Hz kinematics (speed, IMU, odometry, etc)

Source: https://youtu.be/LFh9GAzHg1c?t=571

[ambicapter]

So if they’re already “fusioning” all these things, why would LIDAR be any different?

[ChicagoDave]

Fog, heavy rain, heavy snow, people running between cars or from an obstructed view…

None of these technologies can ever be 100%, so we’re basically accepting a level of needless death.

Musk has even shrugged off FSD related deaths as, “progress”.

[verelo]

Better than I expected. So this was 3 days ago, is this for all previously models or is there a cut off date here?

[torginus]

I quickly googled Lidar limitations, and this article came up:

https://www.yellowscan.com/knowledge/how-weather-really-affe...

Seeing how its by a lidar vendor, I don't think they're biased against it. It seems Lidar is not a panacea - it struggles with heavy rain, snow, much more than cameras do and is affected by cold weather or any contamination on the sensor.

So lidar will only get you so far. I'm far more interested in mmwave radar, which while much worse in spatial resolution, isn't affected by light conditions, weather, can directly measure stuff on the thing its illuminating, like material properties, the speed its moving, the thickness.

Fun fact: mmWave based presence sensors can measure your hearbeat, as the micro-movements show up as a frequency component. So I'd guess it would have a very good chance to detect a human.

I'm pretty sure even with much more rudimentary processing, it'll be able to tell if its looking at a living being.

By the way: what happened to the idea that self-driving cars will be able to talk to each other and combine each other's sensor data, so if there are multiple ones looking at the same spot, you'd get a much improved chance of not making a mistake.

[dham]

Lidar is a moot point. You can't drive with just Lidar, no matter what. That's what people don't understand. The most common one I hear: "What if the camera gets mud on it", ok then you have to get out and clean it, or it needs an auto cleaning system.

[ASalazarMX]

Maybe vision-only can work with much better cameras, with a wider spectrum (so they can see thru fog, for example), and self-cleaning/zero upkeep (so you don't have to pull over to wipe a speck of mud from them). Nevertheless, LIDAR still seems like the best choice overall.

[iknowstuff]

Autopilot hasn’t been updated in years and is nothing like FSD. FSD does use all of those cues.

[verelo]

I misspoke, i'm using Hardware 3 FSD.