Volvo bucks the industry, will sell LIDAR-equipped self-driving cars to customers by 2022

[Windows9]

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Most new cars sold today include a bevy of sensors such as cameras and radar to help power modern conveniences like automatic emergency braking and lane-keeping assist. Very few automakers, however, sell cars with the high-powered laser sensor known as LIDAR, and for good reason: most LIDAR are ridiculously expensive, with the leading suppliers pricing theirs at around $75,000. But now, Volvo says it has found a LIDAR maker that can produce the sensors cheap enough to justify installing them on its consumer vehicles — which it says will allow these cars to drive themselves.

In 2018, Volvo made a “strategic investment” in a little-known Florida-based LIDAR company called Luminar to use the startup’s high-resolution long-range sensor to build self-driving cars. Today, Volvo is announcing that new LIDAR-equipped cars, which the Swedish automaker says will be able to drive themselves on highways with no human intervention, will start rolling off the production line in 2022.

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It’s an ambitious plan that carries its own risks and sets Volvo apart from its competitors, many of which are planning to launch self-driving technology as part of fleets of robotaxis rather than production cars for personal ownership. They argue this will help amortize the costs of not just the LIDAR, but also the high-powered computing power needed to enable self-driving cars. But Volvo believes that by limiting the operational domain — or conditions under which the car can drive autonomously — to just highways, it is creating vehicle technology that is not only safer, but less costly as well.

“We are saying that for a particular stretch of highway, we are aiming for an unsupervised experience,” Henrik Green, Volvo’s chief technology officer, told The Verge. “Our view is that by isolating the domain to particular sets of highways, which we can control and verify, we believe that’s the safe entry into autonomous technology and autonomous experience for users.”

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/6/21248415/volvo-luminar-lidar-self-driving-highway-pilot-spa2

 

Volvo says it will roll out its self-driving highway feature, dubbed “Highway Pilot,” as part of its next big platform update. We finally have a competitor to Tesla. This self driving thing is getting scary. Do you really trust a computer to control driving at 70mph

[kokakolia]

George Hotz figured out self-driving cars many years ago. He can turn a car driverless for a thousand bucks with off the shelf tech and his own software. It's a shocker that not all new cars are driver-less at this point. Here's a documentary explaining it all:

 

 

[Bombastinator]

16 minutes ago, kokakolia said:

George Hotz figured out self-driving cars many years ago. He can turn a car driverless for a thousand bucks with off the shelf tech and his own software. It's a shocker that not all new cars are driver-less at this point. Here's a documentary explaining it all:

 

 

Without watching the video I somewhat recognize the car pictured.  It’s from one of several self driving car efforts that failed.  Not sure which one or why exactly but the project was abandoned.  It’s possible there was a reason.

 

watching the video, the claim is that at the time of the video self driving cars did not exist at all and the only thing that could be done is driving assist.  The thing in the video uses almost no sensors at all.  It makes no attempt to be anything other than driving assist.  He actually claims that not only did he not make autonomous cars but no one else can either.  His system has no safety features, which is the sort of thing Lidar would be for.  Specifically finding obstacles to the route.  The video is useful for calling BS on Volvo, but it does not imply that useful autonomous vehicles have ever been invented.  Rather the reverse.

[givingtnt]

Oooh nice !

People will have a lot of fun showing off their skills with breaking lidar from a distance on YouTube and scaring people, but never actually doing it to a car because they're responsible.

 

[Sauron]

The price in the article is a little misleading - it's true that the highest end LIDARs cost tens of thousands but you probably don't need anything nearly as precise for a car. For comparison, I've worked with a Leica LIDAR that made point clouds of tens of millions of points with incredible accuracy at a range of over 50 metres and that "only" cost $30k. A car doesn't need more than a few thousand points and you can get away with covering a fraction of the y axis that the Leica sensor would. More affordable industrial sensors used to pilot, for example, a robotic forklift would only cost the manufacturer a few thousand and are probably plenty for a car.

 

Also, as far as I know, all "self driving" cars have a Lidar on board. It's that spinning thing you can see on the top here:

not all cars have it on display like this but it's necessary for close range object detection. A Radar isn't precise enough to tell you the shape of an object.

[kokakolia]

@SauronAutonomous cars imply a huge legal can of worms. Driver's Assist is probably the most tangible option. At the very least it puts all of the responsibility towards the operator. Same as non-autonomous driving. 

[Nicnac]

Just a shame Volvo limits their cars’ max speed at 180

[Nicnac]

51 minutes ago, Sauron said:

The price in the article is a little misleading - it's true that the highest end LIDARs cost tens of thousands but you probably don't need anything nearly as precise for a car. For comparison, I've worked with a Leica LIDAR that made point clouds of tens of millions of points with incredible accuracy at a range of over 50 metres and that "only" cost $30k. A car doesn't need more than a few thousand points and you can get away with covering a fraction of the y axis that the Leica sensor would. More affordable industrial sensors used to pilot, for example, a robotic forklift would only cost the manufacturer a few thousand and are probably plenty for a car.

 

Also, as far as I know, all "self driving" cars have a Lidar on board. It's that spinning thing you can see on the top here:

not all cars have it on display like this but it's necessary for close range object detection. A Radar isn't precise enough to tell you the shape of an object.

I’m interested. What did you use that lidar for if not for mapping caves?^^

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, Nicnac said:

I’m interested. What did you use that lidar for if not for mapping caves?^^

I’m remembering a post on this site long ago regarding hardware requirements for surveying software and it might be that.  There a many uses for 3d mapping though.  The one I hear about most is making 3D models, so much smaller scale.  I’ve also heard of it being used for building sites.  It becomes a question possibly not of point count but of range.  A car would need possibly fractional kilometers of range where a device made for making models would need fractional meters.

[Sauron]

39 minutes ago, Nicnac said:

I’m interested. What did you use that lidar for if not for mapping caves?^^

It's used to map warehouses for forklift navigation. My bachelor's degree thesis involved extracting the position of shelves automatically from this type of scan.

53 minutes ago, kokakolia said:

Autonomous cars imply a huge legal can of worms

So do industrial forklifts, believe me

[kokakolia]

10 hours ago, Nicnac said:

I’m interested. What did you use that lidar for if not for mapping caves?^^

- Mapping buildings (although slowly taking reflectorless shots via total station is more precise). You're just not gonna get mm precisions with LiDAR. Surveyors are anal about that stuff.

- 3D mapping huge areas by plane (photogrammetry). That's how you get huge scale topo maps. Oil companies use these a lot for prospecting and building pipelines. 

- There's this acronym buzzword called "SLAM". Simultaneous Location and Mapping. And this is used for driverless cars and perhaps drones, forklifts and roombas.  

 

I'm just your basic surveyor. I work for an excavation company and I hardly use any of that fancy technology. Just GPS. 

 

The problem with LIDAR is that it's kind of an acronym buzzword which doesn't mean much. And it gets confused with 3D mapping and reflectorless. In the oil industry it implies photogrammetry (i.e. huge scale topography maps with about 5~10cm precisions).

 

[PlayStation 2]

Brake check!

[Bombastinator]

26 minutes ago, kokakolia said:

- Mapping buildings (although slowly taking reflectorless shots via total station is more precise). You're just not gonna get mm precisions with LiDAR. Surveyors are anal about that stuff.

- 3D mapping huge areas by plane (photogrammetry). That's how you get huge scale topo maps. Oil companies use these a lot for prospecting and building pipelines. 

- There's this acronym buzzword called "SLAM". Simultaneous Location and Mapping. And this is used for driverless cars and perhaps drones, forklifts and roombas.  

 

I'm just your basic surveyor. I work for an excavation company and I hardly use any of that fancy technology. Just GPS. 

 

The problem with LIDAR is that it's kind of an acronym buzzword which doesn't mean much. And it gets confused with 3D mapping and reflectorless. In the oil industry it implies photogrammetry (i.e. huge scale topography maps with about 5~10cm precisions).

 

So you’re saying that there are multiple methodologies for 3d mapping and lidar is only one, which has specific advantages and disadvantages.  I’m curious what the specific ones for lidar are over other different systems if you could possibly elaborate.

[Bombastinator]

19 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

Brake check!

Parking brake I would assume considering the screen name.

[Dylanc1500]

13 hours ago, Nicnac said:

Just a shame Volvo limits their cars’ max speed at 180

180 freedom units or world units?

[RejZoR]

Seeing how Tesla's ram themselves into road splitters literally coz reasons, yeah no thanks. And if you need to still be attentive while car is "self" driving, then what's even the frigging point? You just become sloppy and lazy coz you just sit behind the wheel like a sack of potato.

 

Brake assistance, attention detection, stuff like this is great and I like it as an assistance/addition to YOUR driving. Sometimes you miss something or you don't see things but radar can detect it through lets say fog or darkness. It adds layer to your own attention. Relying on it the other way around, no thanks. We are still many many years away from that no matter what car companies are saying.

[Bombastinator]

4 hours ago, Dylanc1500 said:

180 freedom units or world units?

180 implies world units.  Volvo doesn’t make Ferraris

[MyName13]

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Seeing how Tesla's ram themselves into road splitters literally coz reasons, yeah no thanks. And if you need to still be attentive while car is "self" driving, then what's even the frigging point? You just become sloppy and lazy coz you just sit behind the wheel like a sack of potato.

 

Brake assistance, attention detection, stuff like this is great and I like it as an assistance/addition to YOUR driving. Sometimes you miss something or you don't see things but radar can detect it through lets say fog or darkness. It adds layer to your own attention. Relying on it the other way around, no thanks. We are still many many years away from that no matter what car companies are saying.

But people will pay for that AND test it for the rest of us

[Curious Pineapple]

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Seeing how Tesla's ram themselves into road splitters literally coz reasons, yeah no thanks. And if you need to still be attentive while car is "self" driving, then what's even the frigging point? You just become sloppy and lazy coz you just sit behind the wheel like a sack of potato.

 

Brake assistance, attention detection, stuff like this is great and I like it as an assistance/addition to YOUR driving. Sometimes you miss something or you don't see things but radar can detect it through lets say fog or darkness. It adds layer to your own attention. Relying on it the other way around, no thanks. We are still many many years away from that no matter what car companies are saying.

And people don't ram into things for no reason?

[Nicnac]

6 hours ago, Dylanc1500 said:

180 freedom units or world units?

World units  

[RejZoR]

4 hours ago, Curious Pineapple said:

And people don't ram into things for no reason?

No one advertises people as perfect unmistakable "machines". They are desperately trying to do that with self driving cars and constantly pushing this narrative how perfect and unmistakable they are. Until one rams into a barrier because it got confused by some white lines on road because they were off for 2cm... Yeah... Reminds me of one old WW2 movie where Nazi's on a bike with the side carriage were following the stripes on the road and someone painted them straight through a road corner. And they just followed it, flying off the road in most comical way. I always get flashbacks of that movie every time I see anything about "self driving cars" fuckups because of most basic dumb things.

 

We know people make mistakes and we understand when someone crashes into a road splitting barrier because he was adjusting the radio, eating a sandwich or scratching his balls. But you expect system that's 100% focused on driving and only driving to not do such elementary mistakes. So, yeah. I have no trust in them. Even as assistance features, I sure hope they'll work when I'll fuck up. I won't trust them to do everything on their own for a long while...

[Bombastinator]

One of the things talked about in one of the videos posted is there are apparently levels of “self driving” and most computer systems are stuck on “3” they put in and use elements required for 4 or 5, but they can’t get there. 

[JZStudios]

Wonder what kind of resolution it'll be and if it can be hacked to map roads.

[Flavio hc 16]

Tesla will still shit on them, 3 order of magnitude or even more of data, and better real data from all over the world, it doesn't  need an expensive, huge and hugly lidar and they have the best autonomous driver chip on the market ( I'm  not saying this, Nvidia does). I agree with Musk, which thinks that lidar is the winning card will be doomed to fail. 

[atxcyclist]

On 5/6/2020 at 9:50 AM, Windows9 said:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/6/21248415/volvo-luminar-lidar-self-driving-highway-pilot-spa2

 

Volvo says it will roll out its self-driving highway feature, dubbed “Highway Pilot,” as part of its next big platform update. We finally have a competitor to Tesla. This self driving thing is getting scary. Do you really trust a computer to control driving at 70mph

I've seen computers crash and I've seen people crash, my issue lies with how a self-driving vehicle will prioritize safety/damage during a crash. Is it occupants first and screw everyone else? If there's a motorcyclist/bicyclist stopped in front of it at a stoplight, and someone hits the self-driver while slowing down for the light, dose the car cut the wheels hard and plow over the curb into whatever light poles and trashcans are up there, even if it would be more dangerous for the occupants of the car? Or is it just final destination for the rider? With a person driving, investigators (police) can assess fault and the expectation is that in the prior scenario, if there is time to react the driver behind would cut the wheel and make a line for a light pole to save the rider; Logically a driver would normally sacrifice their vehicle in order to not run someone over.

 

As someone that rides a motorcycle every day (I mean, not right now because of the human malware), I'd rather be looked at as a fragile object to a driver with empathy (probably), rather than a calculated variable in a computer program. It is 'artificial intelligence' after-all, no soul,  no actual freedom of choice, and no empathy.