I'm not sure that he meant lidar is a crutch in the way that this article represents. Those tiny wavelengths that allow lidar to provide tremendous detail also make it unreliable in rain and snow. Until that problem is solved, and I haven't heard that it has been, lidar dependent cars either 1) can't drive in the rain or 2) must be able to operate reliably in the rain using technology other than lidar.
Believe it or not, cars will need to be able to drive in the rain, so if you're going to eventually need to build a car that will work reliably without lidar then why not build that to begin with?
It looks like most SDC companies are going with lidar because it is faster and easier, but if it only covers 90% of use cases then that does sound like a "crutch".
Believe it or not, cars will need to be able to drive in the rain, so if you're going to eventually need to build a car that will work reliably without lidar then why not build that to begin with?
It looks like most SDC companies are going with lidar because it is faster and easier, but if it only covers 90% of use cases then that does sound like a "crutch".