> "But depth info is...one of the easiest [problems]" ... "are they safer than human drivers?" ... Semantic evasion.
It looks like you're jumping from "depth is easy with cameras" (demonstrated false) to "safer than humans anyway without it" (speculative and not demonstrated by anyone), so who here is evading? That they're safer is not demonstrated. That depth is easy with just cameras is demonstrated to be false by the continuing failures in the presence of extreme financial incentive to not have those failures.
> You agree that it's "not a problem solved by LIDAR", right? It needs a camera. You can use a LIDAR output as a (somewhat inferior) camera, but it's not providing any advantages.
The LIDAR addresses the part where all current cameras are unsuited to mapping physical world geometry under driving conditions. It's not one or the other, but you appear to be assuming an imaginary not-the-one-we-live-in reality where only one is needed because you assume that all available cameras aren't actually very bad. But they are all actually very bad. So we continue to need both for the indeterminate future until someone invents mechanically robust extreme fidelity stereoptic cameras with motion freedom independent from the vehicle body, which is what humans use.
Humans are unsafe predominantly because of inattention, not ability. Camera-only vehicles are unsafe because of camera ability before you even get to the attention part.
Tesla's repeated failures over the years (and your conviction toward what Tesla is doing regardless) demonstrate a dangerously erroneous belief that object identification is the first and most important step for path planning. But that's not how humans drive, and it's not how to drive safely. The vehicle should avoid driving into any space that isn't going to be open smooth road, period, so the most important step is mapping geometry. There are no cameras currently suited for that. This is not a theoretical limitation. Just a practical one. Becoming suitable with current cameras would require many more cameras with much more processing per frame, so if you're trying to save costs vs lidar, you won't.
It looks like you're jumping from "depth is easy with cameras" (demonstrated false) to "safer than humans anyway without it" (speculative and not demonstrated by anyone), so who here is evading? That they're safer is not demonstrated. That depth is easy with just cameras is demonstrated to be false by the continuing failures in the presence of extreme financial incentive to not have those failures.
> You agree that it's "not a problem solved by LIDAR", right? It needs a camera. You can use a LIDAR output as a (somewhat inferior) camera, but it's not providing any advantages.
The LIDAR addresses the part where all current cameras are unsuited to mapping physical world geometry under driving conditions. It's not one or the other, but you appear to be assuming an imaginary not-the-one-we-live-in reality where only one is needed because you assume that all available cameras aren't actually very bad. But they are all actually very bad. So we continue to need both for the indeterminate future until someone invents mechanically robust extreme fidelity stereoptic cameras with motion freedom independent from the vehicle body, which is what humans use.
Humans are unsafe predominantly because of inattention, not ability. Camera-only vehicles are unsafe because of camera ability before you even get to the attention part.
Tesla's repeated failures over the years (and your conviction toward what Tesla is doing regardless) demonstrate a dangerously erroneous belief that object identification is the first and most important step for path planning. But that's not how humans drive, and it's not how to drive safely. The vehicle should avoid driving into any space that isn't going to be open smooth road, period, so the most important step is mapping geometry. There are no cameras currently suited for that. This is not a theoretical limitation. Just a practical one. Becoming suitable with current cameras would require many more cameras with much more processing per frame, so if you're trying to save costs vs lidar, you won't.