Possible Cruise test vehicle with no obvious lidar

[strangecosmos]

Saw this on r/selfdrivingcars: "New Spy Shots Show GM Autonomous Car Testing Without LIDAR Equipment"

It's possible this is not an autonomous test vehicle, but something else.

GM/Cruise acquired Strobe, which is working on making tiny solid state lidar units. So, it's possible that this car does have lidar, but it's compact enough that it's not visible. The lidar in Mobileye's test car is not visible.

It would be really interesting if Cruise were testing a vision+radar AV, but as titillating as that narrative is, sadly I don't think we can jump to that conclusion.

Thoughts? Anyone see something I don't?

 

[jimmy_d]

Saw this on r/selfdrivingcars: "New Spy Shots Show GM Autonomous Car Testing Without LIDAR Equipment"

It's possible this is not an autonomous test vehicle, but something else.

GM/Cruise acquired Strobe, which is working on making tiny solid state lidar units. So, it's possible that this car does have lidar, but it's compact enough that it's not visible. The lidar in Mobileye's test car is not visible.

It would be really interesting if Cruise were testing a vision+radar AV, but as titillating as that narrative is, sadly I don't think we can jump to that conclusion.

Thoughts? Anyone see something I don't?

Nice find.

Aperture tradeoffs make it hard fo a scanning lidar to be both good and small. In any case you generally see an optical surface of at lease a couple of square inches on even the smallest solid state lidar prototypes. This car really doesn’t seem to have any.

Is it really autonomous? Is it really Cruise?

 

[outdoors]

I would have loved to see the pictures continuing to go through the Jacoby roundabout there. It is two miles from my house. Have seen the said vehicle driving many times, and driver always seem to have hands on wheel while shooting me the competition glare.

 

[3Krazy]

Perhaps LIDAR is ultimately proven to be better than camera data. In its present form factor however, as used on current and projected vehicles (Waymo, Cruise, etc), for "taxi" use, for a consumer car for purchase or lease LIDAR won't be viable due to the roof mounted hardware that destroys the esthetic of the vehicle. Who will want to buy a car with a twirling instruments on a rack on top no matter how well it may be visually integrated? I think that is the main reason why Tesla is shunning LIDAR aside from its cost. Perhaps future developments in small, compact integrated LIDAR will lead to the final word. In the meantime Tesla is way ahead of anyone in consumer purchased/leased automated driving vehicles.

 

[Daniel in SD]

They’re probably just testing the next version of “super cruise” which doesn’t use lidar. Who cares what the car looks like if it can drive you while you sleep? The market for ugly cars is huge, I see them on the road every day.