| | | Lidar maker Velodyne is confused by fatal Uber crash
‘Our lidar doesn't make the decision to put on the brakes ...’
Jonathon Ramsey
Mar 26th 2018 at 8:45AM
Lidar maker Velodyne has put out a statement concerning the fatal accident between an Uber autonomous vehicle and a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, last week. Uber's self-driving Volvo XC90 uses a Velodyne lidar (light detection and range) unit, said to be an HDL-64E. That model has a 360-degree field-of-view and a 120-meter range, so one of the big questions has been why didn't the lasers ( or the 360-degree radar) pick up pedestrian Elaine Herzberg before the vehicle hit her. Velodyne president Marta Thoma Hall told Bloomberg, "We are as baffled as anyone else. Certainly, our lidar is capable of clearly imaging Elaine and her bicycle in this situation. However, our lidar doesn't make the decision to put on the brakes or get out of her way."
The company, which supplies lidar units to a number of tech firms testing autonomous cars, wants to make sure its equipment isn't blamed for the crash. The accident took place around 10 p.m., and in fact, lidar works better at night than during the day because the lasers won't suffer any interference from daylight reflections. T here's a large, anxious, questioning audience watching the rise of autonomous cars, so a fatal misstep could have huge consequences. The Tempe police chief has already made comments that reveal a lack of understanding about the systems that underpin self-driving vehicles.
Thoma Hall's comments have been about clarifying a lidar array's role in the driving task; namely, that even when the lasers detect an object, "it is up to the rest of the system to interpret and use the data to make decisions. We do not know how the Uber system of decision-making works." If Uber's software doesn't process the data properly, then it doesn't matter what the lasers register.
continues at autoblog.com |
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