LiDAR technology is amazing: the limits of Tesla's camera-based self-driving technology

I came across a video that I couldn't stop watching for the first time in a while.

This video has nothing to do with Porsche, but if you have time, please take a look. It's a video that explains LiDAR technology.

LiDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging, a technology that uses laser light to measure the distance to an object.

The video explains this very clearly, and the first thing they try to do using the technology is to measure the structure of Space Mountain at Disneyland.

Although it's said that there's no legal problem (it doesn't violate Disney's rules), they're pushing the boundaries with this experiment (?), and I can't help but think that after a while the Disney part will become an issue and the video will be taken down.

Anyway, they brought this LiDAR measuring device inside Space Mountain and took measurements while actually riding it to get a complete picture of Space Mountain's structure, and even 3D printed a model of it.

In other words, LiDAR can measure and sense its surroundings using lasers at incredible speeds, even in pitch black darkness that appears to the human eye.

With that understanding, we moved on to experiments using a car.

Tesla, which is famous for its autonomous driving (autopilot), currently does not use LiDAR technology but relies on cameras and artificial intelligence for autonomous driving, and this video is an experiment to see the difference in technology.

We will conduct various autonomous driving tests using a Lexus SUV test vehicle equipped with LIDAR and two Tesla vehicles.

The experiment started with a simple one, asking whether each car would detect a boy standing in the middle of the road and make an emergency stop.

Of course, this is a normal part of Tesla testing, so the car stopped in front of the boy without any problems.

But from this point on, the other conditions under which the boy stands in the middle of the road become increasingly difficult.

For example, when there is so much fog that the human eye cannot see ahead, can a car detect a boy and make an emergency stop? When it is raining heavily and visibility is poor, when backlight (or bright light) makes it too bright to see ahead, etc.

Then they move on to the final, most challenging hurdle, and said to be the main objective of this experiment: whether the car can make an emergency stop in front of what appears to be a road in front of them, but is actually a wall that is constructed.

The walls installed along the entire road like this have drawings of the road ahead, so if you were driving a normal car, you might think you could just keep going and end up crashing into them.

When viewed from the side, it looks like a wall, and there is a boy behind it.

As for the results, the LiDAR was measuring the whole area with a laser, so it could detect things like this:

In this way, the car was able to clearly see, "Oh, there's some kind of obstacle there," and made an emergency stop in front of the wall.

However, Tesla decided that there was a way...

It crashed into the wall and then into the boy on the other side.

So the result is this:

Of course, in reality, you might think, "You wouldn't rely on autonomous driving in such thick fog," or "The presence of a wall like this is not something you would normally expect, so it doesn't matter," but still, this video made me think that being able to "instantly grasp surrounding objects at the incredibly fast speed of light even in the dark or in bad weather" could lead to safer driving.

It's interesting to learn about the various technologies available today.

Here is the video (18:53)↓