Ok, that was a fairly odd press release. I thought that Waymo might be going to sell a LIDAR sensor that anyone could use in their projects, but that isn't the case.<p>They mention that they have stuck in Chrysler's Pacifica minivan (but this from a previous partnership agreement) and there isn't anyone else participating. And Krafcik says again and again things like "potential", "some day", and "we can imagine". He mentions their LIDAR tech can tell which way a pedestrian is facing.<p>But since there are no prices, there are no products, there are no actual announcements, it seems to boil down to Google feeling the heat as the company that used to be associated with the notion of bring Self Driving cars to the market. I wonder if they have been doing consumer surveys on what people think about Self Driving cars and finding out that Google is rapidly dropping from the radar of most people.<p>They don't make cars, they can't get people to partner with them, and they haven't been successful at showing meaningful progress. Meanwhile in the bay area you can't drive down any freeway and not see some chortling Tesla owner talking to their friends while the car moves them along in rush hour traffic.<p>Additionally:<p>For me the interesting thing is that Tesla has spent perhaps 5B$ on developing a self driving Model S between 2011 and 2016. And in that same time period Google went from $45B of cash on hand to $83B by Q3 of 2016, so they picked up and literally sat on nearly $40B over the last 5 years. Guess what? Cash sitting in the bank doesn't invent things, it doesn't build things, it doesn't "change the world" and it doesn't make you a leader. Can you imagine where they would be if they had used $10B of that to build a competitive electric car company?
Waymo isn't the first to announce a low-cost LIDAR. Quantergy announced one last year.[1] They even demoed it. It never shipped. Continental, the big European auto parts company acquired ASC's excellent but expensive technology last year, and promised a low-cost version. Hasn't shipped yet.[2]<p>These things will get cheap as soon as they're being built in quantity 100,000, instead of quantity 100. Really cheap if they can be made with standard CMOS processes, which has been done experimentally. Most are GaInAs technology, which is expensive.<p>[1] <a href="http://quanergy.com/s3/" rel="nofollow">http://quanergy.com/s3/</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.continental-corporation.com/www/pressportal_com_en/themes/press_releases/3_automotive_group/chassis_safety/press_releases/pr_2016_03_03_3dlidar_en.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.continental-corporation.com/www/pressportal_com_e...</a>
Lots of Detroit based news coming from Waymo. I wonder how long it will be until Waymo has a larger base of operations in the area and makes a significant hiring push?
The press release is light on actual numbers. If they can build LIDARs much cheaper than the competition, and use Google's TPUs for the AI, they might have a genuine differentiator for a few years
If it's $7500 for a 3D LIDAR (that is, a cheaper version of the Velodyne LIDAR system) - then that puts in range of SICK and Hokuyo 2D LIDAR sensors, although both of those only have around 180 degree FOV - but they both have a similar price tag (IIRC, around $3-4K per unit).<p>Still - that's a large fraction of the cost of vehicle, so I don't see it as that great of a breakthrough on price.<p>Honestly, I personally think that we'll see flash LIDAR or some other non-mechanical scanning tech (along with machine vision cameras - or maybe only such cameras) being used. Indeed, if machine vision cameras could be made to see in a wider range of wavelengths (maybe into near IR and UV?), and also have quick adjustable focus, and some way to deal with dirt and debris - such cameras would probably be the best way to implement sensing.<p>Ultimately, the issue isn't so much with the sensors, but with the software; integration of the sensor data into a cohesive whole and then interpreting it properly is far from a solved task (deep learning seems to work well?).<p>/I'm probably rambling out of my nether regions, tho
Beside LIDAR, A/Google adds a radar now too.<p>I wonder if more and more vehicles have now a radar, isn't it unhealthy to be exposed to so many radar on the road? I mean it's well known that military grade radar can be very unhealthy. I would have assumed that LIDAR plus cameras plus ultrasonic would be enough.