Pioneer Looks To Laserdisc Tech For Low-Cost LIDAR

itwbennett writes: Pioneer is developing a 3D LIDAR (light detection and ranging) sensor for use in autonomous vehicles that could be a fraction of the cost of current systems (the company envisions a price point under $83). Key to this is technology related to optical pickups once used in laserdisc players, which Pioneer made for 30 years. From the ITWorld story: "The system would detect objects dozens of meters ahead, measure their distance and width and identify them based on their shape. Pioneer, which makes GPS navigation systems, is working on getting the LIDAR to automatically produce high-precision digital maps while using a minimum of data compared to the amount used for standard maps for car navigation."

Comments

High Accuracy Point Cloud Data is scary..

[mtippett]

GPS location information has revolutionized mapping. Google and Apple get high quality position data for cars traveling. Any non-mobile platform system have many barriers to entry (cars traveling around taking photos), verifying road information. Google gets to validate incredibly accurate maps under the guise of providing traffic, location services and so on the the mobile phone users.

LIDAR, particularly those paired with accurate color mapping information for those point clouds are going to be creating high accuracy, full color 3d meshes of the pretty much anywhere that cars go near. The small snippet of video just after https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (from the previous slashdot article about autonomous golf carts) shows some of the power of LIDAR. Just after the car flyby it shows the point map being updated by every pass through an area. Incrementally correcting the 3D view of the area. The example is just a few passes by the same car.

Imagine 1000s or 100,000s of automonous vehicles with LIDAR pushing data to a vendor for "navigation experience", but still building a 100% model of everything line of site to the LIDAR. And then imagine 100s of drones flying overhead, doing virtually the same thing.

Throw in some AR like Magic Leap being able to deal with that 3d Mesh. Pretty amazing things that our kids will grow up, pretty scary for everyone else..

Re:Their requirements are lacking

[hey!]

Most accidents occur at less than 40 mph; if "dozens of meters" equates to about 100 ft, that represents about 1.7 seconds at 40 mph. Assuming a coefficient of friction of 0.8, it is theoretically possible for a car traveling at 40 mph to stop in 67 ft; call it roughly 70 ft. If the system can apply the brakes within 500 ms, that's enough to be useful, although clearly it can't stop you from plowing into a car stopped in the fast lane of the highway.

Speaking of highways, the only reason people can manage to drive on highways is that the things you're most likely to hit are traveling in the same direction; if they were slaloming between stationary obstacles at 60 mph most drivers would be dead, fast. What makes highway driving safe is that the closing speed between vehicles is usually modest; usually on less than ten fifteen miles per hour. So actually the system might have more effect on the highway so long as speed discrepancies are in the normal range.