It seems you’re misinformed about how this sensor is used. The point clouds (plus camera and radar data) are all fed to the models for detection. That makes their detectors much more robust in different lighting and weather conditions than cameras alone.
It's just "sensing depth" the same way cameras provide just "pixels". A fused cameras+radars+lidar input provides more robust coverage in a variety of conditions.
You know it would be even more robust under even more conditions? Putting 80 cameras and 20 LIDAR sensors on the car. Also a dozen infrared heat sensors, a spectrophotometer, and a Doppler radar. More is surely always better. Waymo should do that.
Remarkable. You managed to both misunderstand my point and, in drafting your witty riposte, accidentally understand it and adopt it as your own. More isn't objectively better, less isn't objectively better. There's only different strategies and actual real world outcomes.
> More isn't objectively better, less isn't objectively better.
Great, you finally got there. All it took was one round of correcting misinformation about LiDAR and another round of completely useless back-and-forth about sensor count.
The words you’re looking for are necessary and sufficient. Cameras are necessary, but not sufficient.
> There's only different strategies and actual real world outcomes.
Thanks for making my point. Actual real world outcomes are exactly what matter: 125M+ fully autonomous miles versus 0 fully autonomous miles.
Highly ironic considering you started this comment chain with a bunch of fanboy talking points and misinformation. Clearly, you’re not interested in being factual. Bye.
This is absolutely false. LiDAR is used heavily in object detection. There’s plenty of literature on this. Here’s a few from Waymo:
https://waymo.com/research/streaming-object-detection-for-3-...
https://waymo.com/research/lef-late-to-early-temporal-fusion...
https://waymo.com/research/3d-human-keypoints-estimation-fro...
In fact, LiDAR is a key component for detecting pedestrian keypoints and pose estimation. See https://waymo.com/blog/2022/02/utilizing-key-point-and-pose-...
Here’s an actual example of LiDAR picking up people in the dark well before cameras: https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/s/U8eq8BEaGA
Not to mention they’re also highly critical for simulation.
> It can't read road signs. It can't read road lines.
Also false. Here’s Waymo’s 5th-gen LiDAR raw point clouds that can even read a logo on a semi truck: https://youtube.com/watch?v=COgEQuqTAug&t=11600s
It seems you’re misinformed about how this sensor is used. The point clouds (plus camera and radar data) are all fed to the models for detection. That makes their detectors much more robust in different lighting and weather conditions than cameras alone.