LiDAR vs RADAR - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: MrOmnos
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2017, 10:43:54 am
content: So, the automation of cars is probably going to be the talk of this century. And I think automated cars when used by all most all the drivers on the roads will reduce accidents and be the safest mode of transportation. But I do think this is not going to be an overnight change. I will give it few decades.Interesting thing is, there are several companies involved in such technology. And each one of the have taken their own approach. Tesla and google have their own vehicle designs where as companies like uber are using existing designs and developing their system like a kit which can turn an ordinary car into a automated car.Tesla heavily relies on cameras and on board radar where google and uber seem to use lidar systems with camera. Tesla have a nice article on their website on the reasons why they use RADAR.https://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-world-radarGoogle and other companies uses Lidar which gives better point cloud but does not work in fog, rain or other low visibility conditions. Also Lidars are expensive but I do think with time they will get much cheaper. Also a rotating bulb on top of the car also ugly.So why would you choose if you were in the team of engineers designing a automated vehicle?

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2017, 01:09:32 pm
content: I would use optical and RADAR. LIDAR is not as amendable to integration so as time goes on, it is going to be less economical. Because of its mechanical requirements, LIDAR is also not going to be as reliable; optical and RADAR can be implemented with no moving parts and a more friendly form factor.

author: Scrts
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2017, 02:34:27 pm
content: Being part of the company developing all of these sensors - you need a set of them to work reliably. There are situations where RADAR is not sufficient. In some cases stereo-camera system is also not sufficient. The crash Tesla had into a white van could have been avoided with a LIDAR.And no, the next generation scanning laser systems will not have any mechanically moving parts, thanks to the latest technologies. We're launching one next year.

author: tyrel
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2017, 02:35:43 pm
content: For now, RADAR and camera (and maybe ultrasonic sensors for low distance) are the only economically viable options.Mechanical LIDAR is simply too expensive (you can pay almost the price of a tesla for a single velodyne sensor), and not robust enough. However, several companies (velodyne, quanergy, and a few others) are developping solid state LIDAR (using MEMS mirrors, i guess) for the automotive market, that should be much cheaper and more robust. If they deliver what they promise, that's probably something you will find in all future autonomous vehicles.http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330321However, i don't think one single sensor can meet all the requirements of an autonomous vehicle : you will always need a camera, at least to read road signs, a lidar will always be more affected by rain and fog than a radar, while a radar will always be less accurate and more difficult to analyze.

author: MrOmnos
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2017, 02:59:55 pm
content: Quote from: Scrts on May 04, 2017, 02:34:27 pmDamn!! I would love to know more but I guess you aren't allowed to talk about it. Still, could you tell us how is it going to perform in fog, rain and snowy conditions? Is it any improvement over current designs?Quote from: Scrts on May 04, 2017, 02:34:27 pmTesla is quite firm on their stance on Lidars. They are working on what they call fleet learning, where they use existing sensors with better software and data they gather from their cars already on the roads. But still companies like Ford are working with lidars so, I guess you guys are set for better days ahead in terms of Lidar sells. lolI wish you all the best with your product.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2017, 03:27:55 pm
content: I guess I just don't see the point. If I don't get to drive it, I can't imagine why I'd want to own a car. I can already take the bus if I just want to sit there and be transported from one location to another, or call a cab if I want a more customized experience. I don't even like driving something with an automatic transmission, it's so boring, not really driving, just sort of aiming. No thanks.Personally I think we are decades further from a truly self driving car than most people think, despite all the hype. Google has cars that have covered millions of miles but they are millions of miles over the same small set of well controlled routes in a region with a very consistent climate. I still haven't heard good solutions for dealing with roads covered in snow, ice, standing water, mud, leaves, etc. What about rural roads with no markings? What if someone spills paint on the road that looks like a road marking, or a vandal paints bogus lines on the road that lead off a cliff or into a wall? What happens when (not if) a malicious person creates a device that jams, spoofs or otherwise interferes with sensors on the cars? Is anyone thinking of these things? Then there is the issue that even if you eliminate human cased accidents, there are still going to be some deaths and now it's going to be a machine made by some company that behaves incorrectly and kills somebody, it won't take very many instances of a particular manufacture's car doing that before it starts to add up. Even if the total number of deaths is low, it will look bad. Just look at how people respond to plane crashes. The total number of deaths in in commercial airliners is very low, but many people are still afraid to fly.

author: MrOmnos
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2017, 04:37:34 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on May 04, 2017, 03:27:55 pmI don't it's so much about getting to drive a car. People in general don't care about getting to drive a car in their day to day life. They wanna get to places. Most people spend hours stuck in traffic during their day to day commute. That's lot of human hours spent doing nothing. And this problem is only going to get worse in coming years. Most traffic jams are not caused by smaller roads or roads accidents and such. One car breaking for a while can create a runaway effect which can cause a large traffic jam down the road. I don't think cars will be fully automatic. People can still control them. Drive them where autopilot can not function. I think there will be designated highways and routes where you car will engage it's autopilot, join the traffic and take you to your destination. Existing highways can be turned in to this super fast autopilot lanes. You will still get to drive your car just not on these designated lanes. That is how I see it, but we will have to see how it goes. Where as accidents are concerned, it will not be anything like Airplanes. Most crashes are pilot error and when a plane goes down, 100-200 people die at once which of course attracts attention. Lots of smaller planes crash every where casualties are very few like 3-4, hence you rarely see those on international news.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2017, 05:09:13 pm
content: Personal cars are an inefficient way of getting around and self driving cars won't solve that. They could help if lanes were dedicated to them rather than sharing with conventional cars but if we're going to do that, we may as well dedicate lanes to buses and have light rail lines, both are vastly more efficient at moving large numbers of people than personal cars. An extensive network of rail, buses and taxis would be cheaper, easier to implement, more efficient, more environmentally sound and more practical with far fewer technical challenges than getting everyone into self driving cars. We already have the technology to do this but choose instead to focus on personal cars. Given the number of sports cars I see on the road it's pretty clear I'm not the only one who likes to drive.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2017, 05:32:20 pm
content: Public transport doesn't work because it is too expensive to drive a large truck (bus) to the middle of nowhere with only 3 people in it. Public transport is also way too fragile to rely on because there is no redundancy at all.MrOmnos' points have a lot of merit. Besides that traffic jams are often caused by people with poor driving skills and also the utilisation of the roads is poor in general. Go and watch a higway for half an hour and you'll notice traffic isn't a continuous stream but groups of cars held up by a truck and someone driving way too slow. 60% of the road isn't used for most of the time. Self driving cars can use the existing infrastructure much more efficiently by negotiating who needs to go where and takes which route and a self driving car never has to hit the brakes to take an exit. It is negotiated long before taking an exit.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2017, 05:44:51 pm
content: None of the buses will take you from you home to a grossery store and back to your house front door. This conversation stops right there.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2017, 12:11:39 am
content: Sure they will, if you live in a city, which is where self driving cars would be practical and offer significant benefit in the first place. If you live out in the sticks they're not going to buy you much and probably won't work anyway. If you just need groceries and are too lazy to drive to the store, you can order groceries and have them delivered to your door. If you live far enough out in the boonies where a bus would only have 3 people on it then what advantage is a car that drives itself? Traffic is rarely an issue in areas like that.I just don't see a reasonable path from where we are to practical self driving, they will have to mix with manually driven cars for decades, or be given special roads at which point you may as well just simplify things and use rail. It'll be a cold day in hell before I ever give up my cars.

author: shteii01
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2017, 01:06:01 am
content: Many years ago, early 2000s?, I read a sci fi book called Blue Rocket, unfortunately I don't remember the author.The setting for the book was in the near future, back when I read it.The book was not about car automation at all (it was about building and flying a space ship, the kind that does not leave solar system, so no interstellar space flight). But there was this short observation that the main character makes about automated personal vehicles that were everyday thing in his life. The setting is Florida, USA, so knowing our car culture, the Florida retirement/pensioners culture and the way things are spread out, having a car is important.The main character makes following observation. He observes that on his way, (somewhere, I don't remember now where he was traveling to) he was stuck behind a whole bunch of cars that formed a sort of train (where first car breaks the trail and following cars have less air resistance), the whole thing was arranged by automated system that organized these self driving cars. He was guessing that the people in the cars were old retired people who were taking advantage of the self driving cars and automated vehicle regulation system. That this arrangement allowed old people, whose frail health would have been a danger to us all if they tried to drive a vehicle, to go places, to shop, to go see friends, relatives, etc. That they were no longer stuck at home or being held in a retirement home.I now watch the development of self driving cars and I have to say that the author was prophetic. It is quiet amazing, what he wrote and what is developing right in front of my eyes.Overall. While your points are valid, your stance is so narrow that I don't believe you will convince anyone to change their mind. I speak from personal experience where I spent first half of my live living in Moscow, Russia, where I used buses, trolleys (single electric wagons that use rail system laid in town/city) and subway (metro) to get around town and did not need a personal vehicle at all. However, I now live in US, in a good size city, but not a major metropolis and getting around town without a personal vehicle is very difficult. I also commute to work 30 minutes every morning and about 40-50 minutes back, it would simply be impossible for me to have this job if I relied on any sort of public transportation. (And yes, I will likely buy or rent something closer to work once I save up some more money).Quote from: james_s on May 05, 2017, 12:11:39 am

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 05, 2017, 05:54:30 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on May 04, 2017, 01:09:32 pmI was going to say that I believe less mechanical solutions will be developed in the future... and then I read this:Quote from: Scrts on May 04, 2017, 02:34:27 pmI would LOVE to see that!!!

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2017, 06:44:27 am
content: Quote from: shteii01 on May 05, 2017, 01:06:01 amBut I know numerous people who don't own cars, they rely on a combination of mass transit taxis (conventional and modern services like Uber) and bicycles. When I worked in Seattle and lived out in the suburbs I took the bus to and from work every day, I only ever really drove my cars for fun and to run errands on the weekends. The mass transit out here is terrible but it did the job. If we had truly decent mass transit I'd still use it for all my commuting. I could have got by without a car at all if not for the fact that I'm a car guy, I love cars, I love driving, it's something I will never give up until I'm physically unable to do it safely at which point I'll rely on other services. I can take a whole lot of Uber rides for the cost of buying, fueling and maintaining an expensive self driving car.What I predict will happen is that some company will push something out to market on a wave of excitement and arrogance, there will be a bunch of high profile cases where a car malfunctions and kills a bunch of people and the whole thing will be set back decades. That and/or a major snowstorm will roll through and the cars will all either lose their minds and turn into bumper cars or they will all shut down and refuse to move, leading to massive gridlock. I was reading not long ago about a group of Google engineers who were working with several established car manufactures who commented that the Google guys were extremely arrogant and acted like they knew everything.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 05, 2017, 06:58:37 am
content: Volvo have adopted both Lidar and Radar in their vehicles and given they have a far longer track record than Tesla, I'd say they are doing something right.My Volvo is fitted with the stock-standard "City Safety" technology that is based on Lidar; which will completely avoid a collision with another vehicle at 50km/hr or less or if a collision is unavoidable (at higher speeds for example), it will brake and cut the throttle to lessen the impact.Optional features like adaptive cruise, pilot assist and all the rest are a combination of radar and optical sensors which work in tandem.I think both technologies have their weak and strong points. It's also the reason why Police (at least in Australia) use both Lidar and radar systems to detect speeding motorists. While radar is less effective in built-up urban areas, Lidar can be used to detect vehicles over 1KM away depending on the road, conditions and experience of the operator. I've personally seen an accurate Lidar reading at 1200 metres.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2017, 07:02:00 am
content: I think those augmentation features are for the most part a good idea. I do have concerns that people will become complacent, deciding hey it's ok to play with my phone instead of watching the road because the car will do it, but I already see so much of that. I think we'll see more and more semi-automation but I think fully autonomous cars are decades out if they ever become commonplace. For the foreseeable future they will require a human driver sober and available to take control at any time.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 05, 2017, 07:04:20 am
content: Quote from: james_s on May 05, 2017, 07:02:00 am100% agree! I already see driver skill decreasing and drivers taking greater risks because people become complacent and more reliant on "the car will handle it for me".

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2017, 08:14:14 am
content: heh, out come the armchair experts. There are both RF and Light based vision systems that don't require moving parts targeting the automotive market. Its going to be an interesting area but all the players are hoping to amortise their investments across huge numbers of units and they wont all make it.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2017, 03:52:00 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on May 05, 2017, 06:44:27 amI bet your job was in the city centre. Oddly enough public transport seems to be optimised to get people in & out city centres. That is too bad for people working in industrial areas surrounding a city. Public transport just doesn't go there.

author: Neilm
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2017, 05:12:49 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on May 05, 2017, 03:52:00 pmSeconded. My parents are both retired and live out of town (about 10 miles). They are luck in regards there is a bus service into town. One service in, and one out per day. If they had to rely on the bus, they would have about 30 minutes in town before the bus left to go back.

author: Scrts
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2017, 06:42:55 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on May 04, 2017, 03:27:55 pmAnd this is what companies like Maserati will offer you. They don't want any of those additional comfort features. They let the driver to drive the car.

author: Scrts
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2017, 06:48:46 pm
content: Quote from: MrOmnos on May 04, 2017, 02:59:55 pmYou're right - I can't. However, think of how your phone camera works. Do you move the lens manually to get it into focus?In terms of fog or heavy rain - again, that's a condition where you'd probably weigh in other sensors more. In general, you can think of a situation where you don't know what's behind the corner. And there you have a situation where you actually need a V2V/V2X communication.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2017, 07:13:13 pm
content: QuoteInefficient in what context? If you're talking mass transport and persons per liter or road area per person, sure. But as personal transport they are supremely efficient at saving time and hassle (which is why people have 'em).Also depends onwhere- around a large metropolis they are no doubt something of a ball and chain, but out in the sticks they are a necessity.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 07, 2017, 03:24:09 am
content: Quote from: dunkemhigh on May 05, 2017, 07:13:13 pmCorrect, especially in Sydney.For me, what is normally a 1 hour, 10 minute drive to work, it would be over 2 hours by train.

author: VEGETA
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2017, 05:35:13 am
content: We use Radar level sensors at our plant crystallizes and they work perfectly despite the huge amount of noise and dust. So I can confirm the point that radar are robust enough for hard weather situations which is always a big advantage. LiDARs are used in research robots a lot like ROS stuff, and the point clouds done using their data is nice but they are so expensive.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2017, 03:53:14 pm
content: Quote from: Scrts on May 05, 2017, 06:42:55 pmThey still have an auto box for US sold vehicles though, even the much loved US muscle car in the corvette has it now, just because so few people know how to use a clutch these days. Auto is a lot easier to learn, but you do develop bad driving habits with them.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2017, 04:49:38 pm
content: I guess i am blessed then, since i've been driving cars with auto transmission accident free on Toronto streets for the last 20 years.