From the last time that Cruise showed up on HN a while back, I recall I made a comment based on the photos of their test vehicles that they're clearly going all-in on LIDAR + RADAR + camera for feeding data into their autonomous onboard navigation computer.
This is directly the opposite of what Tesla has mandated their engineers to do, which is to be 100% reliant upon camera systems only.
Somebody at Cruise commented that their intention is to drive down the cost of LIDAR units through economies of scale and better technology.
My personal belief is that the data acquired from LIDAR representing a at-this-moment-in-time snapshot of a vehicle's surroundings is very valuable, and Cruise is probably going down the right path with this.
Relying entirely on cameras only requires the full intellect of a human who can make snap judgments about what's going on in a scene (eg: a pedestrian wearing a black or dark blue jacket who is walking a black or brown labrador retriever across an unmarked crosswalk in Seattle level mid winter rain, at night time, something I literally saw just two nights ago).
This is directly the opposite of what Tesla has mandated their engineers to do, which is to be 100% reliant upon camera systems only.
Somebody at Cruise commented that their intention is to drive down the cost of LIDAR units through economies of scale and better technology.
My personal belief is that the data acquired from LIDAR representing a at-this-moment-in-time snapshot of a vehicle's surroundings is very valuable, and Cruise is probably going down the right path with this.
Relying entirely on cameras only requires the full intellect of a human who can make snap judgments about what's going on in a scene (eg: a pedestrian wearing a black or dark blue jacket who is walking a black or brown labrador retriever across an unmarked crosswalk in Seattle level mid winter rain, at night time, something I literally saw just two nights ago).