this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Because that’s expensive and can be done with a camera.

Expensive, as in probably less than $600? Compared to the $35000 cost of a tesla?

(comparing the cost of the iPhone 12 (without lidar) and iPhone 12 pro (with lidar), we can guess that the sensor probably costs less than $200, so 3 of them (for left, right, and front) would cost probably less than $600)

lidar can actually be very cheap and small. Unfortunately, Apple bought the only company that seems to make sensors like that (besides some other super high end models)

There have been a lot of promising research papers on the technology lately though, so I expect more, higher resolution and cheaper lidar sensors to be available relatively soon (next couple years probably).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Yeah that's not even remotely the same type of sensor used in robotics and autonomous cars. Yes lidar is getting cheaper, but for high detail long range detection they're much more expensive than the case of your iphone example. The iPhone "lidar" is less than useless in an automotive context.