> A $100 light weight Lidar is truly game changing for robots, self driving cars and drones.
This is probably going to end up like the Oculus Rift; it won't be $100.00 - it will probably end up north of $500.00, possibly north of $1000.00.
If it were easy, SICK or Hokuyo would have done it already. The fact that neither have can mean many things, of course, but I bet one of the big ones is that it isn't easy to pack a 3D LIDAR into a small package and make it robust and cheap. Both of those companies 2D LIDAR solutions already hit the robust portion; Hokuyo's offerings hit the small package portion (SICK's 2D systems are mostly the size of a coffeemaker - I own a couple), but neither company hits the low price mark.
That could also mean that they have a niche market that's willing to pay those prices, but given the interest and want for fast 3D LIDAR for self-driving vehicles and other uses, the fact that they don't have anything out is telling.
Now doing it all solid-state? Well - there are companies that have these systems as well (supposedly at least) - called "flash LIDAR"; essentially firing a laser to "flash" the scene, then using a grid-array of CCD-like high-speed elements to gather a 3D delay-time between the flash and reception. From what I've seen, for even the low-resolution modules, they make the former two companies offerings look dirt-cheap in comparison...
$1000 is still game changing. $1000 is something that's downright cheap to throw a few of on a car if it allows for a true NHTSA level 4 self driving car.
even north of $1000 would still be cheaper than most of the in-car navigation/entertainment systems that a lot of people order. In relation to a car, $1000 is really not a lot of money. Heck, i just replaced a mirror for 450 EUR...
Not an exact analogy, but this reminds me of ancient "software modems", which shaved off a few chips and offloaded processing to the CPU. They were cheap, but had a real impact on your computer's performance.
The trouble with image processing is that it seems basically impossible to perfect with the level of certainty you'd need for 100% autonomy, whereas LIDAR gives you very straightforward data to act on. You'd still need the cameras for recognizing traffic lights and such, of course.
I really hope velodyne delivers. Quanergy seems to have a nice site but seems vaporware in the sense you can't actually buy it.
A $100 light weight Lidar is truly game changing for robots, self driving cars and drones.