
Alphabet’s Waymo Cuts Cost of Key Self-Driving Sensor by 90% - smaddali
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-08/alphabet-s-waymo-cuts-cost-of-key-self-driving-sensor-by-90
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ChuckMcM
Ok, that was a fairly odd press release. I thought that Waymo might be going
to sell a LIDAR sensor that anyone could use in their projects, but that isn't
the case.

They mention that they have stuck in Chrysler's Pacifica minivan (but this
from a previous partnership agreement) and there isn't anyone else
participating. And Krafcik says again and again things like "potential", "some
day", and "we can imagine". He mentions their LIDAR tech can tell which way a
pedestrian is facing.

But since there are no prices, there are no products, there are no actual
announcements, it seems to boil down to Google feeling the heat as the company
that used to be associated with the notion of bring Self Driving cars to the
market. I wonder if they have been doing consumer surveys on what people think
about Self Driving cars and finding out that Google is rapidly dropping from
the radar of most people.

They don't make cars, they can't get people to partner with them, and they
haven't been successful at showing meaningful progress. Meanwhile in the bay
area you can't drive down any freeway and not see some chortling Tesla owner
talking to their friends while the car moves them along in rush hour traffic.

Additionally:

For me the interesting thing is that Tesla has spent perhaps 5B$ on developing
a self driving Model S between 2011 and 2016. And in that same time period
Google went from $45B of cash on hand to $83B by Q3 of 2016, so they picked up
and literally sat on nearly $40B over the last 5 years. Guess what? Cash
sitting in the bank doesn't invent things, it doesn't build things, it doesn't
"change the world" and it doesn't make you a leader. Can you imagine where
they would be if they had used $10B of that to build a competitive electric
car company?

~~~
sirclueless
I notice that this news piece is headlined "Alphabet's Waymo" thus avoiding
mention of Google. I wonder whether this is good or bad for Waymo. I assume
they're intentionally distancing themselves from Google and this is what it
looks like.

~~~
username223
Probably neutral in the short term: like when the awful Pacific Bell renamed
itself "Cingular," it might confuse a few people. In the long term, it's the
same jalopy with a new coat of paint.

~~~
jsjohnst
Admittedly I could be told I'm nitpicking, but Pacific Bell never renamed
itself Cingular (not directly anyway). PacBell was bought by Southwestern Bell
in 1997 and became SBC. In 2000, SBC Wireless partnered with BellSouth's
mobile division to create Cingular. Cingular then bought AT&T Wireless in
2004. SBC later bought AT&T and renamed itself to the company it just bought,
aka AT&T. In 2007, AT&T nee SBC bought BellSouth and thus finally owned all
rights to the Cingular name, which promptly was dumped and instead renamed to
AT&T.

The phone company space is the most incestual circle jerk mess imaginable.
Judge Greene has to be rolling over in his grave!

~~~
username223
Thanks for the history! It almost makes me long for good old Ma Bell, who at
least had the good sense not to change her name...

~~~
jsjohnst
It's kinda hard to find these days (gotta love Viacom's legal team!), but
Stephen Colbert did a hilarious segment [0] on the Colbert Report about the
history of AT&T/Cingular back in 2007. Terminator 2 indeed!

Jump ahead to 2:20 to see the segment: [0] [http://www.cc.com/video-
clips/eamlaf/the-colbert-report-bear...](http://www.cc.com/video-
clips/eamlaf/the-colbert-report-bears---balls---gas)

~~~
mavhc
For those not in USA: [http://imgur.com/a/4lIWw](http://imgur.com/a/4lIWw)

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Animats
Waymo isn't the first to announce a low-cost LIDAR. Quantergy announced one
last year.[1] They even demoed it. It never shipped. Continental, the big
European auto parts company acquired ASC's excellent but expensive technology
last year, and promised a low-cost version. Hasn't shipped yet.[2]

These things will get cheap as soon as they're being built in quantity
100,000, instead of quantity 100. Really cheap if they can be made with
standard CMOS processes, which has been done experimentally. Most are GaInAs
technology, which is expensive.

[1] [http://quanergy.com/s3/](http://quanergy.com/s3/) [2]
[http://www.continental-
corporation.com/www/pressportal_com_e...](http://www.continental-
corporation.com/www/pressportal_com_en/themes/press_releases/3_automotive_group/chassis_safety/press_releases/pr_2016_03_03_3dlidar_en.html)

~~~
candiodari
The best cheap lidar for indoor robots, and limited outdoor is built by
microsoft, called "kinect". Beats the pants of any lidar that existed in 2005
that cost less than $100k, except on range.

Comes with open source libraries and is a pretty great piece of equipment for
indoor navigation.

~~~
zardeh
Minus the part where it isn't a lidar. Sure its a great sensor, but if you
need a _lidar_ , then you can't use a kinect. And alternatively, if you need
360 degree fov, etc. an actual lider is often better.

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kevin_thibedeau
What happens when every car on the road has lidar and your sensor is bombarded
by oncoming traffic?

~~~
threeseed
Thankfully the large physical size of the car means that the amount of sensor
data is going to be at a maximum when you're on a busy highway and fairly
minimal. Something that is constantly modelled today.

It's a very interesting question especially if self driving motorcycles take
off which have the ability to move in highly unpredictable ways.

~~~
Animats
With flash LIDAR, the duty cycle is very low. A ranging cycle is about 1μs,
while you might cycle at 60FPS. The chance of interference is only about
1/10000 for each ranging cycle. If you put a bit of random jitter in the flash
timing, you can avoid accidental repeated interference. You'll get a bad frame
once in a while, but if the frames on both sides of the bad one look similar,
you're OK.

You can tell if someone is aiming a big light source at you; all the pixels
show the same range, probably zero.

Those rotating machinery Velodyne things may not be as immune, but that
technology isn't going to be high-volume.

~~~
asdfasdfa11112
Doesnt this limit you to at least a 50 ms response time, before your CPU can
"trust" the data? (before/current/next required to smooth before handing off
to processing?)

~~~
euyyn
In the odd case that the data is clearly garbage, you'll just drop it and keep
going as before (so you add a frame to the response time at that specific
moment).

In the general case of data affected by noise, it shouldn't be a problem:
These things run a simulation of the external world, and every new input frame
is never fully trusted, just used probabilistically to update the simulation.
It is expected to carry noise, so if your sensors would tell you something
like "a pedestrian in the sidewalk just jumped 10m in the air", you'd deduce
"the guy most probably has kept walking as he was doing before, he possibly
jumped instead, or he might have changed directions instead".

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curiouscat321
Lots of Detroit based news coming from Waymo. I wonder how long it will be
until Waymo has a larger base of operations in the area and makes a
significant hiring push?

~~~
diracdelta
May already be happening. Anecdote: A real estate agent in Ann Arbor told me
this week that most of her recent customers are coming in to work for Waymo.

~~~
zump
Why MI and not CA?

~~~
wstrange
Far better to develop a self driving car in shitty road conditions, potholes,
black ice, fog, drifting snow...

~~~
huxley
As someone living in an area with shitty road conditions, if they can conquer
those that is the point at which I start becoming a believer.

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mankash666
The press release is light on actual numbers. If they can build LIDARs much
cheaper than the competition, and use Google's TPUs for the AI, they might
have a genuine differentiator for a few years

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cr0sh
If it's $7500 for a 3D LIDAR (that is, a cheaper version of the Velodyne LIDAR
system) - then that puts in range of SICK and Hokuyo 2D LIDAR sensors,
although both of those only have around 180 degree FOV - but they both have a
similar price tag (IIRC, around $3-4K per unit).

Still - that's a large fraction of the cost of vehicle, so I don't see it as
that great of a breakthrough on price.

Honestly, I personally think that we'll see flash LIDAR or some other non-
mechanical scanning tech (along with machine vision cameras - or maybe only
such cameras) being used. Indeed, if machine vision cameras could be made to
see in a wider range of wavelengths (maybe into near IR and UV?), and also
have quick adjustable focus, and some way to deal with dirt and debris - such
cameras would probably be the best way to implement sensing.

Ultimately, the issue isn't so much with the sensors, but with the software;
integration of the sensor data into a cohesive whole and then interpreting it
properly is far from a solved task (deep learning seems to work well?).

/I'm probably rambling out of my nether regions, tho

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frik
Beside LIDAR, A/Google adds a radar now too.

I wonder if more and more vehicles have now a radar, isn't it unhealthy to be
exposed to so many radar on the road? I mean it's well known that military
grade radar can be very unhealthy. I would have assumed that LIDAR plus
cameras plus ultrasonic would be enough.

~~~
MagnumOpus
Military grade radars can run at peak power output of over 1MW; airport ATC
radars at around 100kW. Given the power limitation of cars, car radars will be
under a kW for sure, probably more in the single-watt range.

And health effects start happening if you absorb more than 1kW on a small area
of your skin (burns, eye damage etc) - unlikely to happen if the total
emission is sub-kilowatt.

(I presume there are regulatory limits for this sort of emission anyway, by
FCC or otherwise, but I don't know for sure...)

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DonnyV
This is great but its still LIDAR. Which doesn't do to well when it rains,
snows or its foggy out.

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vgeek
Earnings date must be approaching, try to distract that they're still just
only an online ad company?

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RushAndAPush
It's going to be alright. I didn't get a job at Google either.

~~~
knicholes
But there were positive notes in your interviews! They'll be sure to call
again next summer!... They say 3rd time's the charm.

