The majority of comments surrounding stereo-camera/lidar questions have a ridiculously simplified idea of the problem. It's obviously the case that 'more sensor good, less sensor bad'. This is frankenstein's monster level technical analysis. Why don't the majority of large-brained animals have many eyes, and many different antannea appendages processing an array of diverse sensory input? You don't just automatically gain by adding lots of sensors. The signals have to be fused together and reliably cooperate and come to agreement in real time for any decision. Any sensor is only providing raw crude data. The majority of the work involved is done by processing this crude data and inferring a much more sophisticated approximation of the real environment from prior knowledge, hence using neural nets with pre-trained data. It is a good debate whether the
approximation can be done better by adding more sensor input and diverting R&D & processing resources towards fusion as opposed to improving the results that can be obtained from stereo image sensor. It's not obvious to anyone. And nature seems to inform us that most large brain animals evolve to rely heavily on two eyes instead of 16 eyes + lasers. This is an interesting discussion, but the issue isn't 'tesla could just bolt a Lidar box to the roof and magic, but they want to scam you out of a few extra bucks'. That is a moronic idea.
> Why don't the majority of large-brained animals have many eyes
Because of the cost of additional eyes. If Tesla is optimizing for cost against safety, that's sort of the point.
I don't believe that's totally the case. Andrej later makes a better argument regarding limited R&D bandwidth, noise and entropy. But the "I would almost reframe the question" evasion was disconcerting. It's a textbook media trained tactic for avoiding a question to which you have no good answer. That it was deployed here badly against a skilled interviewer such that it backfired is a valid observation.
Everyone has limited R&D and processing bandwidth. It's not just Andrej saying this, but anyone working on engineering autonomous vehicles. It has nothing to do with the cost of additional eyes. This is over-simplifying the problem. Our eyes don't work that way. The data coming from eyes and image sensors is very crude and relies on either your brain or very sophisticated post-sensor processing to construct a 3D approximation of the actual environment. The sensors themselves don't provide this information. They don't distinguish distinct objects, corners, shadows vs. changes in color, or all sorts of phenomena that doesn't actually exist in the sensor data. This has to be inferred later by a brain or processing that relies on prior assumptions and 'training' by previous experiences with 3D environments. I don't really care what Tesla is doing vs. what other companies are doing, but these 'cost cutting' arguments don't matter. I would suspect that the R&D invested into the Machine Learning infrastructure, and the custom IC, and the software engineering out-weighs whatever amount they could save by removing a small sensor. And I don't believe that this guy Andrej is conspiring to squeeze a few bucks out of his customers at the expense of degrading his life's work. He is not trying to sell mops.
