Lidar Is a Crutch

Where he’s not right, though, is that the technology’s crutchitude is somehow a reason not to employ lidar—which uses lasers to scan the world around them, identify objects and characterize surroundings to centimeter accuracy—as a fundamental sensor on self-driving cars. In daylight, cameras can do that, too, but not so much in the dark, which is why the autonomous vehicle development world has by and large settled on sensor fusion, which involves a combination of lidar, radar and cameras. But lidar has been a fundamental enabler of the rapid advance of autonomous vehicle technology, and it will make self-driving cars and trucks safer than they’d otherwise be.

Source: lidarmag.com