LiDAR also has FoV issues and is sensitive to lens debris among other things. Also, the addition of another layer of high resolution data may make it impractical for the compute power requirement to synthesize it all.
Lidar only works to a certain subset of distances, so you need cameras anyway to infer long distances beyond the scope. Also, since distance alone isn’t sufficient, you need cameras anyway for inference of other things.
Lidar works up to 300 meters. That’s plenty for highway driving. Everyone using lidar also use multiple cameras so they are getting best of both worlds (using sensor fusion).
Compute for full self driving hasn’t been solved, I hope it is, and I don’t know which strategy will work. It’s entirely possible LiDaR makes it work better but requires more GPUs on vehicle :)
Well they currently devote a lot of compute power to building a 3D occupancy map of the world from cameras so it’s possible that fusion with LiDAR could be done with less compute. Also their computers keep getting more powerful. But generally you’re correct, we don’t know how it would go.
