Lidar vs. Cameras = A Giant Fail For Tesla – CleanTechnica

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For years (it seems like decades), Tesla has been claiming that its cars can (almost) drive themselves and will soon be used as robotaxis that will earn their owners buckets of cash. Mark Rober is a former NASA engineer, YouTube impresario, and founder of something called CrunchLab. He also has a highly developed sense of humor and has created a number of challenges to explore the contention by Elon Musk that his cars, when equipped with nothing more than an array of cameras and a computer that can perform gazillions of operations per second, are able to drive themselves. Virtually every other manufacturer who claims its cars are capable of driving without the aid of a human use a suite of sensors that include lidar and/or radar — devices that Elon swears are superfluous.

Musk’s detractors insist that cameras are fine and dandy most of the time, but can fail to see things that they need to see under some conditions such as strong sunlight, glare, heavy rain, snow, sleet, fog, or smoke. Think for a minute of a right-fielder in Fenway Park on a sunny afternoon. The batter hits a high fly ball that gets lost in the sun as the fielder runs around in circles trying to find the ball while his teammates and 40,000 rabid Red Sox fans scream encouragement. If the ball happens to fall harmlessly to Earth while members of the opposing team scamper around the bases, that gives a pretty good demonstration of the limitations of technology that relies solely on visual cues. With glasses equipped with lidar, it is likely he would have caught the ball.

To illustrate his point, Rober set up six scenarios that simulate real driving challenges. Then he used a Lexus outfitted with a lidar sensor from Luminar, which manufactures lidar systems for automobiles, and a Tesla equipped only with a suite of cameras and the Autopilot software. If you click on the YouTube video below, you will be able to see for yourself how the two automobiles handled the challenges put to them by Rober and his co-conspirator colleague from Luminar. It makes for pretty interesting viewing, if a tiny bit grisly.

Well, that was fun, wasn’t it? Musk, of course, would claim the tests were rigged to embarrass Tesla, but to the casual viewer, they certainly seem to highlight some disturbing weakness in the Autopilot system, which flunked three of the six tests in rather spectacular fashion. Ask yourself whether you are comfortable letting Elon take the wheel text time you are out for a drive. Yes, yes, we know there are Tesla owners who will swear the Autopilot systems in their cars perform flawlessly, but we have a question for them: Would they be willing to stand in the middle of the road while a speeding Tesla is bearing down on them? One thing that should give Elon Musk pause it that this video has been viewed more than 8 million times. It seems unlikely many of those viewers were favorably impressed by what they saw.

Inside EVs was impressed by Rober’s testing procedure, but less so with the results. It said Tesla’s Autopilot system has improved dramatically over the years, but is linked to dozens of crashes, some of them fatal. This has sparked a number of state and federal investigations. The cynics among us suspect one of the reasons why Musk has embedded himself so willingly in the new administration is to shut down some of those investigations, which would be a spectacular abuse of his power if true. Yet many longtime autonomy experts say that Tesla’s camera-based approach — which Musk touts because it’s similar to how humans drive cars — will always be inadequate if the goal is to create self-driving cars that are safer and better than humans.

This video suggests if Musk and Tesla are going to insist they can make cars drive themselves using only cameras, their plans are doomed to end in failure. That does not bode well when BYD is including its new God’s Eye technology in self-driving cars that start at under $15,000. Musk is famous for his intransigence in the face of adversity, but there comes a time when people need to wake from their dreams and face reality in a clear-eyed, non-judgmental way. It is an open question whether that is something Musk is willing — or able — to do.

In my next life, I want to be a former NASA engineer and internet video star like Mark Rober instead of a writer. That would be so cool!