I’ve tackled this question in a number of posts by highlighting Elon Musk’s view that the usage of lidar is an unnecessary crutch on the path to self-driving vehicles. During an interesting Artificial Intelligence podcast with Lex Fridman (July 22, 2019), Chris Urmson expressed an interesting point of view around lidar versus the usage of imaging systems like cameras. Chris Urmson is the co-founder and CEO of Aurora, a company developing self-driving services built around self-driving vehicles, logistics services, mobility solutions, and fleet management services. Prior to Aurora, Urmson was one of the original leaders on Google’s self-driving car project (now known as Waymo). Before Google, he was the technical director of the team who’s robot vehicle went the furthest during the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004. His team placed second and third during the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. And his team won the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge using a converted self-driving Chevy Tahoe.
Urmson believes that lidar is in fact a crutch on the road to self-driving vehicles. However, he also understands that many technologies get replaced by better future technologies. Today, Urmson believes that lidar, radar, and cameras are essential for autonomous vehicles to be robust. He asserts that using lidar allows autonomous cars to get on the road sooner. He believes the better question is, what’s the cheapest sensor suite that creates a safe vehicle on the road as quickly as possible? For Urmson, the business model matters. And for autonomous vehicles, the business model is about margin and driving costs out of the system. Thus, there’s more than just the comparison of a $50 sensor versus a $500 sensors. If the $500 sensor makes the system work, then it’s the $500 sensor that drives the economic opportunity to drive a sustainable business. From a business perspective, Urmson believes that lidar has no fundamental expense. It is in fact more expensive than an imager. But those costs can still be driven down. And with the right business model, those costs can also be absorbed.