The auto industry is always tinkering with some new words to torment us. Thanks to it, we now know that driverless cars are “coming soon.” Some manufacturers predict that autonomous vehicles will enter the commercial market, the earliest time is 2021. However, when the new technology arrived, the price was high, and most ordinary people could not enjoy it for a period of time.
laser pointer radar (LIDAR) is ridiculously expensive. The so-called laser radar is an imaging system that allows driverless car software to see the road surface clearly. High-end systems may approach $ 100,000, and low-end systems are less than $ 10,000. Emerging technologies are never cheap, but historically, manufacturers often find ways to produce components at lower costs. However, the time left for them by driverless cars is too short, which means that manufacturers who want to launch driverless cars must either accept high costs or postpone production.
Yes, car manufacturers can choose cheap hardware to reduce costs, but it is not worth the risk. why? Because auto-driving cars place huge responsibilities on manufacturers, even mid-range lidar systems are as safe as gambling. According to a report from the MIT Technology Review, low-end lidar systems are simply useless when cars are traveling at highway speeds.
Take the data from two systems as an example, one is HDL-64E, the price is 80,000 US dollars, and the other is Puck, only 8,000 US dollars. HDL-64E uses 64 laser beams to draw images for the surrounding environment. The definition is very high. It can cover up to 120 meters at the farthest. Puck only has 16 light spots, and the image will be distorted soon. The longest coverage distance is about 100 meters. If the car is driving at a low speed, both systems are good. If the car is driving at the normal driving speed, Puck will not work.
The problem is that even the HDL-64E system has just met the minimum requirements for highway driving. When the speed reaches 70 miles per hour, the car advances 31.3 meters per second. If an emergency occurs, the car needs a maximum distance of 60 meters to stop completely. Every time it exceeds one meter, the computer has more time to make decisions, and the greater distance is completely necessary for the car. In an ideal situation, a car using a green laser pointer radar system can only provide an effective image at a distance of 200 meters, and is safe when driving at the speed of a highway.