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Today, on the first day of Tesla's independence, Elon Musk answered questions from the press, but did not have time to question Lidar. Historically, he has talked about technology, and this time he has stated it as clearly as possible.
"LIDAR is a crazy race", Elon Musk I said. "Whoever trusts LIDAR is condemned. Condemned! [They are] expensive sensors that are useless. It's like having a lot of expensive appendages. For example, an appendix is bad, and well you have a whole series, it's ridiculous, you'll see.
The topic was raised by a question about whether Tesla the newly discovered self-flying hardware could handle the LIDAR entries. Tesla's vehicle currently uses several data sources to acquire autonomous driving: radar, GPS, maps, ultrasonic sensors, etc. But not LIDAR like some of Tesla's main competitors. Elon Musk had previously explained that he considered LIDAR as a crutch for autonomous vehicles. For Tesla, cameras are the key to the future and his CEO sees a future where cameras will allow Tesla to go through the most difficult weather situations.
Andrej Karparthy, Senior Director of Amnesty International, spoke and explained that the world is built for visual recognition. LIDAR systems, he said, have trouble deciphering a plastic bag and a rubber tire. Large-scale neural network training and visual recognition are needed for level 4 and 5 autonomy, he said.
"In this sense, LIDAR is really a shortcut," said Karparthy. "This avoids the fundamental problems, the important problem of visual recognition, necessary for autonomy. This gives a false impression of progress and is ultimately a crutch. It really gives very fast demos!
Uber, Waymo, Cruise and many others use technology in their self-driving technology stack. As proponents of technology, they emphasize LIDAR's ability to see harsh weather and light conditions better than existing cameras. They are expensive. And often hungry for power. This is where Tesla's solution around the cameras comes in.
The company today detailed its current generation autonomous computer that works with all existing Tesla vehicles. Once the software is ready, it will allow Teslas to operate autonomously with its existing sensor set – at least that's what the company says – and this sensor set does not include LIDAR. Instead, the sensors inside Tesla vehicles rely on a neural network driven by the data collected by all Tesla vehicles.
"Everybody trains the network all the time," said Musk. "Whether the autopilot is enabled or not, the network is being trained. Each kilometer traveled for the car with equipment equal to or greater than 2 forms the network. "
The data obtained is rather scary, said Musk later during the press conference. But probably not as scary as relying on LIDAR.
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