[pu_pe]

LIDAR would be preferrable to cameras when it comes to privacy actually

[KaiserPro]

I don't think it makes a difference. Dense lidar goes you more information than 2d colour imagery.

There are SLAM cameras that only select "interesting" points, which are privacy preserving. They are also very low power.

[clayhacks]

I’d definitely feel much better if most cameras in the world were replaced by LIDAR. I feel like it would be much tougher to have a flawless facial recognition program with LIDAR alone

[adrianN]

Who needs facial recognition if you can identify people based on gait?

[numpad0]

People saying LIDARs can't recognize colors or LIDARs can't take pictures don't know what they are talking about.

They're just fancy cameras with synced flashes. Not Star Trek material-informational converting transporters. Sometimes they rotate, sometimes not. Often monochrome, but that's where Bayer color filters come in. There's nothing fundamentally privacy preserving or anything about LIDARs.

[abeppu]

I don't know what I'm talking about, but isn't the wavelength of the laser pretty limiting to the idea of just slapping a Bayer color filter on? Like, if the laser is IR (partly so they're not visually disrupting all the humans around them), the signal you get back doesn't the visual spectrum sections that you'd need to get RGB right?

[aix1]

> LIDAR would be preferrable to cameras when it comes to privacy actually

Right, but how likely is it that there will be LIDAR and no cameras (especially given the low cost of the latter)?