Mind you, it's a lot of cameras, 12 in total, with 3 dedicated to the task of looking straight ahead, each at a different focal length. Another camera looks back, 2 each on the left and right look diagonally forward and back, while a further 4 are embedded to survey the immediate surroundings of the car. Like I said, that's a lot of imaging sensors but at a cost of $10 or $20 each, you could outfit a whole fleet of cars for what Velodyne will charge you for a single lidar scanner.
They're cheap because they're basic, just 1.3 megapixels each, but the company is upgrading to 8 megapixels soon. That dozen cameras, plus of course GPS and a couple decades' worth of learning from the company's various imaging-based driver assistance systems, is enough to make the car drive itself.
Except that it isn't. At least, it won't be when it comes to delivering the kind of on-road redundancy that Mobileye's engineers demand. And that's why Mobileye is now working on a lidar and radar-based solution. However, unlike most autonomous car developers, which unify their sensor data into a single input for its AI driver, Mobileye is actually keeping things wholly separate. The goal? Full redundancy.
