
Velodyne Plans a Lidar Megafactory - codewithcheese
http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/sensors/velodyne-to-build-lidar-megafactory
======
Animats
I read that, and was puzzled. Their press release says "Velodyne LiDAR’s new
approach to the development of solid-state LiDAR sensors reflects the
application of a monolithic gallium nitride (GaN) integrated circuit,
developed in partnership with Efficient Power Conversion (EPC)." That's just a
new drive circuit for the laser diode emitter.[1] Only 5ns pulses, too, which
means depth resolution around 2 feet. There are other vendors with 1.5ns
pulses. This is all on the output side; it doesn't improve the detector side.

Velodyne is still doing this with rotating machinery. The more advanced
concepts are true solid state devices. Continental, the auto parts maker,
bought Advanced Scientific Concepts' expensive, but successful technology
(Space-X uses it to dock with the ISS) and is trying to make it cheaper. If
they can get the cost down, that's probably the best technology around.

Quantergy announced a no-moving-parts LIDAR last year, but is having trouble
delivering. (Despite that, their site says "Quanergy is the leading provider
of solid state LiDAR sensors." No, they're not, not until they ship the
product.) Quantergy recently announced a mechanical scanner, which is
apparently shipping, and now claims that their solid state unit will ship in
volume in 2017. We'll see if they deliver.

Somebody is going to get this working soon, now that there's a market. I first
saw a flash LIDAR as a demo on an optical bench at ASC back in 2012. That was
clearly the right approach, but it was a long way off commercially.

[1] [http://epc-
co.com/epc/EventsandNews/News/ArtMID/1627/Article...](http://epc-
co.com/epc/EventsandNews/News/ArtMID/1627/ArticleID/1765/EPC-Development-
Board-Shows-the-Ultra-Fast-Transition-Capability-of-eGaN-FETs-over-MOSFETs-
Giving-Superior-LiDAR-System-Performance-When-Used-in-Autonomous-
Vehicles.aspx)

~~~
8f6aee757bfeb6
Even with longer pulses, if you know the shape of the pulse, you can use a
matched filter to get sub 5 ns resolution on the detector side. [0]

A drawback of flash lidar is that the light spread out with an inverse square
law. With diffuse reflection, the returned power decays in an inverse
zenzizenzic fashion [1]. Lidars with a collimated laser beam are far less
affected by the inverse square law on the emission side, therefore getting
better range and signal-to-noise ratio.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matched_filter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matched_filter)
[1]
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zenzizenzic](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zenzizenzic)

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jrockway
I'm looking forward to seeing the first company that uses the binary SI
prefixes to describe their factory. "SpaceX's new Kibifactory plans to build
1024 rockets per year," for example.

~~~
50CNT
What's wrong with base10 SI prefixes? DeciFactory to build 10 rockets per
year. CentiLaunchpad set to do 100 launches.

~~~
marcosdumay
Those would be a DecaFactory and an HectaLaunchpad. A DeciFactory would build
a rocket every 10 years.

~~~
50CNT
Whoops, mentally went in the wrong direction.

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yoodenvranx
I know almost nothing about Lidars and I was unable to find an answer to my
question:

What happens if you have a few dozen Lidar-equipped cars in the same spot? Is
there something like crosstalk, scatter or noise between the cars which result
in Lidar artifacts?

~~~
ptero
Highly unlikely unless such interference is very carefully, deliberately
planned.

If one did want to think adversarial one could explore a system receiving
Lidar, say from a car behind, figuring out its transmission and doing your own
illumination to confuse or jam the other car system. But the chances for this
state arising naturally are astronomically small. My 2c.

~~~
abakker
seems like you could make a material that would absorb most of the light,
rather than rebounding it? Lidar uses NIR, or UV lasers, so if you could
engineer a material that had good absorption properties maybe you could
prevent the beams from rebounding and confuse it that way?

~~~
blensor
You don't need to engineer it. In our lab tests we accidentially realized that
one of our desktop computers was "invisible" to the Velodyne, because it had a
black case.

Every material that is black could be a good candidate. I am wondering if the
google cars do have a problem with cars that have a matte black finish (those
PVC foils).

But you have to keep in mind that they are not invisible in the real sense,
because you get a hole in your scan where you don't have points in your
pointcloud. This could be detected, because the Velodyne usually has many
beams pointing downward which eventually would hit the road, but would leave a
hole instead if there is an NIR absorbing material.

And if you use sensor fusion, you can use a camera to check for dark colors in
those areas that might help you to detect such cases

~~~
Animats
The charcoal-black material sometimes used for office chair upholstery is a
very good IR absorber, and those things are not visible to a SICK LIDAR.

That's why you want to profile the road from a high LIDAR. It's not just about
sensing obstacles. It's about building a height map of the environment. This
was more important in the DARPA Grand Challenge, where we had to drive off-
road. Potholes and rocks were to be expected. There are visual illusions for
both vision and LIDAR, but few of them present the appearance of a flat road.

------
decktech
Velodyne is having major production issues. Our latest order with them has
been pushed back months, and our last new order was quoted at 30-40 weeks.
They keep citing yield issues. I'm hoping this opens up the market for
reasonably-priced competition.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
I see Velodyne is predicting that economies of scale would lower prices "below
$50" which is impressive, at the same time I haven't heard anything more about
Osram's $5 lidar[1], which would certainly turn up the pressure...

1: [https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/15/new-lidar-package-makes-
it...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/15/new-lidar-package-makes-it-easier-to-
add-smarts-to-your-smart-car/)

------
jayjay71
This is great news. Quanergy was supposed to be selling solid state sensors by
now, but they missed their deadline and have changed their answer to "soon."
Regardless, so long as _somebody_ is selling the sensors for cheap, it's
fantastic news for robotics. It also opens up possibilities for selling to
consumers as there could be phones that include these sensors (or more likely
they're sold separately as dongles). Suddenly your phones would be able to do
SLAM and make 3D maps of your surroundings. That would make furniture shopping
a lot easier. I could also see some cool applications with augmented reality.

~~~
alex_hirner
I wonder which "SLAM for the masses" technology will become dominant. Do you
have any thoughts what's missing in google's project Tango?

~~~
tgb
I'm still disappointed that Kinect didn't usher in that era already.

~~~
Symmetry
Apple bought the company making those sensors and they aren't available any
more unless you know where in China they tend to "fall off the backs of
trucks".

~~~
robotresearcher
Equivalent sensors are available from various mainstream manufacturers retail
for cheap....

[https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Kinect-...](https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Kinect-
Sensor-for-Xbox-One/productID.2267482500)

[https://www.asus.com/ca-
en/3D-Sensor/Xtion_PRO_LIVE/](https://www.asus.com/ca-
en/3D-Sensor/Xtion_PRO_LIVE/)

(launching soon:)

[http://click.intel.com/intel-realsense-developer-
kit-r200.ht...](http://click.intel.com/intel-realsense-developer-
kit-r200.html)

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igravious
Really interesting comment (by TheRadicalModerate (cute handle)) attached to
that IEEE Spectrum article.

Posits that we don't need each and every auto manufacturer to be building and
developing these systems (sensors + AI). Just a handful or two of large
players (and they need not necessarily be auto manufacturers themselves) all
building and developing to minimum national standards.

Basically like the driver theory test these pieces of software must all pass
the same criteria and standards. They can do better, they can set the bar
higher for themselves, but there needs to be an pretty exhaustive check-list
of compliance.

That way when you're buying a car you're not wondering which edge-case is
going to get you or someone else killed.

There are going to be fatalities and injuries along the way, that's for sure,
but so long as the number of fatalities and injuries is well below the current
horrific rate this tech will be beyond revolutionary.

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cr0sh
As much as I like LIDAR sensors, and as much as I'd like to see lower cost
units, I have a suspicion that they are ultimately going to be unneeded for
self-driving vehicles.

There's been plenty of demonstrations by various players that self-driving
vehicles can get a great amount if not nearly all needed information from
camera-based systems, and drive well using them.

Other sensors will be needed, of course - and maybe LIDAR can even play a part
there; the more data you have, from more sources, the better - this has always
been true in robotics.

I just think that LIDAR won't play a primary role, but rather as a backup or
accessory system component.

~~~
05
It's a question of reliability. When you market an 'autopilot' that
periodically crashes into stationary vehicles, you are probably fine using
just a camera. If you, on the other hand, are Google, and want to provide an
actual hands-off Level 4 self-driving car, well.. you need an actual 3D point
cloud and not just some neural network's educated guess about what the
distance is.

~~~
ajross
> not just some neural network's educated guess about what the distance is

But that's precisely the mechanism that's been working and accepted since the
invention of the directed machine...

(Also, just to clarify: a stereoscopic distance determination isn't
meaningfully a "guess". That's been a solved problem for a long time.)

The goal can't ever be perfect safety. The machines themselves aren't
perfectly safe even if they aren't driven into anything. It just has to be
measurably safer than a human driver.

~~~
petra
It's easier to certify a lidar depth map and prove it's reliability, than a
complex algorithm that builds depth maps from camera, under all lighting
conditions .

And in any case , sensor fusion seems to be a common approach, so we'll
probably need both lida and cameras.

------
joeblau
They really need this. The calibration on their Lidar sensors is all over the
place and for their sensors to be reliable enough to use off the shelf, they a
factory.

------
Bedon292
This is not a criticism, just trying to understand better. The article's use
of the word Lidars confused me. Lidar, as I understand it, is Light Detection
and Ranging. A radar like system. But the it says 'Lidars' plural. Lidar is a
technique not something to have multiple of. You can have multiple Lidar
Arrays, or Systems or something like that but Lidars seems off to me. Is this
a common way to talk about the systems?

~~~
findthewords
Precedent: "The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an
acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging[1][2] or RAdio Direction And
Ranging.[3][4] The term radar has since entered English and other languages as
a common noun, losing all capitalization." -Wikipedia on Radar

~~~
Bedon292
Right I understand the acronym going down to a word. Totally makes sense. But
its still don't see it pluralized as Radars, its radar arrays or radar dishes,
or something along those lines. At least from what I have seen.

~~~
ucaetano
[https://www.google.com/search?q=radars](https://www.google.com/search?q=radars)

And

[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=radar%2C+radar...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=radar%2C+radars&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cradar%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cradars%3B%2Cc0)

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stcredzero
Is this the same Velodyne that makes subwoofers?

~~~
bradyd
Yes it is.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velodyne_Inc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velodyne_Inc).

~~~
dllu
They also make stabilized boats. [0] Truly fascinating company.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8553204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8553204)

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zump
Software engineer here, is it too late to join Velodyne and make $$$? Asking
cause, they seem established, and their engineers must be now feeling like
they found a pot of gold.

~~~
makmanalp
Yep, but I bet pressure has been jacked up too - now that people know this
stuff is useful in self-driving cars and not just research projects, I bet
investment money is pouring in like rivers. How long till SICK or Hokuyo comes
up with a competitor? I think there are already some on the market.

~~~
cr0sh
> How long till SICK or Hokuyo comes up with a competitor?

I'm really surprised that one of them hasn't done it already. Hokuyo
especially - one of their sensors is already relatively small, and USB based;
I wish I could get my hands on a used one (so far, all I've seen on the market
are older SICK units).

It's probably because they are all entrenched in the niche industrial market;
they may not be able to make a lower priced sensor without cutting into that
market (but if they don't, they might see that market erode anyhow).

~~~
zump
But in revenue terms, is it making an impact or is it just hype? Similar to
how NVIDIA is selling GPUs to researchers, gamers must still account for most
of their revenue.

