Someone in a previous thread mentioned that Uber had disabled LiDAR input because they were testing visual-light-only navigation. Was that just speculation/rumor?
> Someone in a previous thread mentioned that Uber had disabled LiDAR input because they were testing visual-light-only navigation.
That smells like BS. I can't imagine any serious players in the self-driving field that can't replay all their sensor inputs into models offline to see how things behave. If they wanted to test without LiDAR, they would run this simulations without LiDAR input. No reason to disable it when there's actual consequences.
That being said, I suppose it's possible that Uber have done what I already said, so much so that they were confident it would work and were willing to deploy it. But it still smells funny to me because I would sincerely hope the LiDAR (and other non-visible light sensor input) would be used as a failsafe.
My very limited understanding of autonomous car implementations is that you mix in all your input together to determine your surrounding environment (and all your "what do I do" logic deals with information derived from this input aggregation), so in order to safely test a new model with less input in your car, you'd need at least 2 models (one with all input, one with reduced) running at the same time.
It still seems like it'd be viable to me, and something you'd certainly want to do to avoid situations exactly like this. If you've got 2 models running, it seems like it'd be pretty straightforward to have the "all input" model assume control if it's trying to avoid an immediate collision, basically having it perform a similar role to that of a human behind the wheel during "disengagements".
I hate to say it, but never underestimated the human potential for stupidity. To make matters worse, this is amplified in organizations. But in this specific case, this is all speculation until the data gets analyzed.
That rumor originated from Robert Scoble. I've never taken him very seriously, though he is the type of person who probably does have contacts within Uber.
A software bug is still the most plausible explanation, given the evidence we have.
