
Lidar Company Velodyne Debuts $100 Auto Safety Sensor - finphil
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2020/01/07/lidar-pioneer-velodyne-debuts-100-auto-safety-sensor-as-self-driving-cars-pace-to-market-slows/#1483897e6cbc
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Someone1234
So Lidar is getting cheaper, but the advantage of Lidar (Vs. optical) may be
diminishing.

Lidar worked really well because it was computationally impractical to process
visual images in near real-time onboard. Lidar simplifies the informational
inflow, which reduces computational cost. But the computational cost and
practicality of processing optical data onboard has changed radically, it is
now practical and affordable (both due to substantially improved software and
new/cheaper hardware).

Keep in mind humans use "optical sensors with parallax" (i.e. our eyeballs).
Cars are already optimised around that assumption (e.g. headlines to improve
visibility in the visible light spectrum). Lidar still has advantages, but
also a bunch of drawbacks (like dispersion and sunlight disruption), optical
sensors do too (e.g. glare) but they're a lot more intuitive for humans
because we share them.

I guess what I am saying is: Are you betting on better sensor tech (Lidar) or
better computational tech (Optical)? I think Lidar will hit a ceiling after
the "easy wins" have been consumed (and we're approaching that point), whereas
optical has no real ceiling (even over and above human's innate abilities).
With optical you can understand the world as humans visibly see it, Lidar sees
the world fundamentally differently, seeing both less (bad) and more (good).

Obviously it is a somewhat false choice, but if people are investing dollars
into development of both techs it is a choice that matters.

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KaiserPro
If we want to be safer, then we need to blend sensors.

We do this as humans. We use our ears for sound and inertial detection.

Lidar, Radar, colour and near infrared optical all have a place in autonomous
driving.

I dont think we are really anywhere near optical working reliably as a single
source. I am immediately suspicious of anyone who suggests otherwise, because
they either believe to much in the state of AI, or haven't thought enough
about life critical systems to be let near anything autonomous. Worse still,
they may be out to make a quick buck.

The thing that lidar has is speed and accuracy. 100hz update rates, and
1/100th second latency is not unthinkable. With optical systems you're lucky
to get 25hz with sub 100ms latency. Thats just for depth estimation using
semantics, you still need to feed it into your driving model.

Lidar works way better at night, it works a tonne better with unknown objects.
However, like optical its shit in rain/snow. Hence why decent resolution radar
will be needed as well.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
>If we want to be safer, then we need to blend sensors.

isnt that what a kalman filter does? I thought most autonomous cars have
sensor fusion to blend all sensors

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teraflop
A Kalman filter solves the specific problem of estimating a finite-dimensional
state vector from uncertain measurements, where the measurement errors and
their correlations follow (or can be approximated as) a multivariate Gaussian.

That works quite well for, say, combining GPS (which has short-term noise)
with inertial/odometry measurements (which suffer from long-term drift) to
determine your vehicle's position, orientation, and velocity in 3D space
(expressible as a 9-dimensional state vector). But it's not directly
applicable to problems like combining map data with LIDAR and vision to
generate a representation of your surroundings.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
That's informative, thanks. I was under the impression that autonomous cars
already combine all their sensor readings

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stevehawk
I'm not a big hardware nerd, how do this and that $16,000 one from earlier
this week compare? They're both roof top, spinning sensors it seems but at
very different price points. Is this one not as far distance as the other?

~~~
mdorazio
LIDAR units have different effective ranges and, most importantly, number of
points they capture. These cheap units generally have a small number of
points. Looks like the Velabit has a range of about 100 meters, but FOV is 60
degrees horizontal by 10 degrees vertical, so you would need to mount several
of these around a vehicle to get the equivalent coverage of a 360 degree unit.
The press releases don't say how many points are in its point cloud, but I'm
guessing it's probably 1/10th of a larger unit's.

~~~
robocat
To add to above comment: comparison of some different models for Ouster (a
competitor):

[https://ouster.com/blog/128-channel-lidar-sensors-long-
range...](https://ouster.com/blog/128-channel-lidar-sensors-long-range-and-
ultra-wide-view/)

Discussion about above:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21970796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21970796)

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herogreen
Better link: [https://velodynelidar.com/press-release/velodyne-lidar-
intro...](https://velodynelidar.com/press-release/velodyne-lidar-introduces-
velabit/) states "60-degree horizontal FoV x 10-degree vertical FoV" I wonder
whats the resoltion though. Judging by the name "velabit" it could be low.

~~~
m463
It wouldn't have to be too much to overcome the resolution of current front-
facing radar and ultrasonic sensors, which are 1x1 resolution ;)

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sanguy
Very cool to see this price point. If Velodyne really can manufacture and sell
it in volume and be profitable it's an amazing evolution for Velodyne.

If it's a loss leader to buy attention and stay relevant versus their fast
moving competitors it will become obvious eventually.

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ThrustVectoring
It'd be pretty cool to use this as part of an assistance tool for people with
visual impairments. Convert the positional data to something you can learn to
parse with your ears, and people could get a better sense of obstacles around
them. I'm really not sure what the right conversion strategy or user interface
is, but it seems like the sort of thing that'd be relatively straightforward.

~~~
ipsum2
Microsoft has something similar: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/seeing-
ai](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/seeing-ai)

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rtkwe
It's really nice to see LIDAR getting cheap I've wanted to play around with
them for ages but the buy-in for anything other than cheap 2d units has always
been way too high for me to justify. I do wish there were at least a few specs
in this though.

~~~
Animats
Yes, there's nothing about the resolution. You can get single-beam scanners
for about that price now. If it's only a few beams, it's not a big deal. You
can get a small number of beams automotive LIDAR from Continental right now.

If you took a single-beam LIDAR and reflected it off a reflective prism where
each face is at a slightly different angle, you'd have a somewhat slow multi-
beam scanner with only one emitter and detector. I looked into doing that for
the DARPA Grand Challenge, We were thinking of a mod to a rotating scanner
used in laser printers to scan the page. There are optical companies that can
cut and polish custom prisms. We were too small a team to build our own
scanner, though.

~~~
cr0sh
Another way to do it is to mount a 2D LIDAR to scan in the vertical plane, and
then pan that around. A 180 degree pan will net you a dome/spherical volume
(although in a slow manner).

You could do this easily with cheap parallax sensors (like you find on Neato
vacuum cleaners, and which are now sold as separate units - RPLidar and such).
This has also been done using SICK coffeepot-style 2D LIDAR units (such rigs
tend to be large and heavy, tho).

Something I've often considered is the idea of a "stochastic" scanner - that
is, don't worry about strict angles, just let the sensor scan at random
angles, and note the angle and reading. Over time you'd build up a complete
scan. Just an idea I've rolled around in my head; the idea was to eliminate
the need for syncing and timing of the scan hardware (2D or 3D), at the price
of not necessarily getting a complete perfect scan all the time. It was
something of a thought experiment I had while thinking up ways to DIY a LIDAR
sensor in a very cheap manner, beyond what has already been done.

~~~
chrisdirkis
CSIRO did something like this with their Zebedee system[0], basically a Hokuyo
2D spinning lidar on a spring on a handheld stick. I love this from a design
perspective, because it's very usage focused. You already have a human walking
around site scanning, and a spring like this gives you the pitch and roll for
"free", compared to panning it using an (expensive/heavy/clunky)
electromechanical mechanism.

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUEAz_naHHg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUEAz_naHHg)

~~~
rtkwe
I knew I'd seen one that did exactly like that but could not find a video of
it!

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ape4
Its solid-state. Old Lidar needed an expensive revolving sensor

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jklinger410
Would be really cool to retro-fit these on an older vehicle. Replace the
center console with a tablet, some OS handles the lidar.

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lootsauce
how does one buy this?

~~~
ThrustVectoring
From Velodyne, presumably, and their website says it will be available
mid-2020

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ycombonator
My 2021 prediction: And the Chinese already got the specs and should start
selling $5 units in a year.

~~~
finphil
You beat me to it, but I was going for $50 ;)

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brixon
It will be $5 in China and $50 in the US.

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dvh
$79 for IoT enabled version ;)

