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Comment by abc_lisper | Hacker News Reader

Idk.. animals seem to do fine without a lidar

If Tesla switches to stereoscopic vision with fully articulated cameras that can move independently of the vehicle (not fully independent, but limited 3 degrees of motion), and then they manage to integrate the output into something meaningful then maybe it would be comparable.

They already have multiple cameras; it's not clear why articulation of cameras would be required as they do not have foveas that require such articulation; they already do integrate the output of each camera into a view of the vehicle's surroundings.

Animals tend to use a combination of four tools to detect distance. Stereo vision, parallax, focus detection and scene context. Independent movement is not required for any of these (though it can help generate parallax.) Humans (and other animals) can learn to do pretty well with one eye and no head movement given the appropriate training regime.

It makes the software problem harder but it certainly is possible.

Maybe it's more like spider eyes that see a blended vectorspace of reality with less movement?

> Idk.. animals seem to do fine without a lidar

Animals also have (non)-artificial general intelligence. That doesn't mean Tesla's making a reasonable design choice if they build something in a way that relies on having that kind of capability.

The way I imagine it, Elon made Andrej put in that slide about "We are effectively building a 'synthetic animal' from the ground up." It vaguely hints at a small-scale AGI. A little bit of Andrej's soul dies when he has to says those ridiculous words, but he views this as the price he has to pay to have his dream job. Anyhow, that's how it would have played out if i had Andrej's job.

I'm sure a rhino would appreciate one. They have bad depth vision due to their horn being in the way.

Stick an animal, even a human, into a room of non-realistic objects, misleading proportions etc., and see how well it orients itself: it will be very bad. That is because sight and orientation rely heavily on intelligence: we can tell how far something is because we recognize the object and can tell whether it is small and close or large and far away. Even if one object is misleading, we look at other objects around and can usually tell if we're looking at a toy car on a real road etc.

But betting your FSD on doing object reconition and physical intuition seems like a bad bet.

Animals don't drive cars...

edit: Since this got such a negative reaction I'll amend it with more of an argument.

If an animal can do X with eyes, this in no way implies we can do X with binocular cameras, as it completely discounts

1) our eyes are preprocessors for our brain in a way that cameras are not. That both sensors capture light doesn't mean they are equivalent.

2) robot brains are not there, in any way, shape, or form.

Are humans animals?

When we're talking about the brain and its processing, planning, and decision-making abilities exhibited during driving, no. We are distinct from animals. We have the technology to build robots that mimic the capabilities of animals, from birds to fish to snakes, and now approaching dogs. Trying to do what humans do while driving with binocular cameras is far beyond our capabilities. Like I said, if you want to drive with just binocular cameras like a human, you'll need a human-level AI brain to go with it, and that's not coming any time soon.

edit: I don't understand how this is a controversial statement...

Animals do just fine with more complex navigation challenges than driving a car. While we can 'mimic' various animal capabilities, I don't believe we are anywhere close to AGI with either a dog's level of intelligence, motor control or sensory integration.

> Animals do just fine with more complex navigation challenges than driving a car.

Do you have any scenarios in mind? Driving is not only a navigation challenge, but a social challenge as well. Have you ever tried to navigate a 4 way stop when multiple cars get there at the same time?

The theory of mind problems involved in driving are huge and are primarily why I don't think you could teach an non-human animal to drive on streets / in traffic.

But depth perception isn't really involved there so those theory of mind issues don't really have any bearing on the need for lidar for self driving cars. Clearly creating world models of sufficient accuracy for driving scale navigation challenges is possible (but potentially pretty hard) with just vision data.

Have you imagined building a birds nest using a helicopter or similar flying machine? Seems to me trickier than driving a car.

...with millions (billions?) of years of evolution.

Do you know how animals do it?

Wait wasn't the whole point of computer driving that animals sucks at driving and get killed at an alarming rate while operating machinery?

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