Uber Scales Back Number of Sensors on Self Driving Cars

theverge.com

3 pointsportofcall2 comments

Most people on HN were wondering why the sensors didn't catch the pedestrian, now we have a possible reason:

"In scaling back to a single lidar on the Volvo, Uber introduced a blind zone around the perimeter of the SUV that cannot fully detect pedestrians, according to interviews with former employees and Raj Rajkumar, the head of Carnegie Mellon University’s transportation center who has been working on self-driving technology for over a decade."

It is very unfortunate that other programs will be tainted by this, but it's also a lesson.

I wonder what happened with the cheap LIDAR alternatives that showed up on HN some time ago.

That blind spot or more like blind area would be immediately around the car where other sensors have coverage as well. Not 20 meters in front of the car. Just take a look at our simulation of this scene [1]. The person would have been clearly visible to the LIDAR.

Scaling back sensors just to cut costs is obviously not a good idea, but the conclusion this article leads people to is not correct either

[1] http://www.blensor.org/lidar_accident_followup.html

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