Don't know the current details, other than the website does not work. Here is an article from last year of them moving from sub-woofers to sell driving vehicles. https://www.audioholics.com/news/lidar-velodyne-shifts-from-subwoofers-to-self-driving-cars |
The lidar thing is huge numbers. Huge. 10’s of billions huge. At least in today’s soon to be self driving world, it is. Tesla is not using lidar, google is. Others may be as well. Lidar, if it was on the Tesla cars, might have prevented all deaths so far. That’s how good it is. Elon may be ignoring it due to licensing costs, and implementation costs. The militaries of the world tend to exclusively use Lidar, and Velodyne really does not need the subwoofer hassle ...with selling such expensive Lidar products to the biggest clients imaginable. |
I have no faith that self-driving cars will happen in my lifetime. Musk hocks some watered down version in his cars that can't tell the difference between the sky and a truck, but I have yet to hear of a commercially viable vehicle that really does it all. When I see the first autonomous yard switcher, then I'll take it seriously. You don't get a much more controlled environment than a Walmart DC or a FedEx terminal, and if you can't do it there, you can't do it anywhere. |
To be fair, Tesla has repeatedly warned and explained that the 'autopilot' feature isn't intended to take the place of an alert driver. It can help prevent accidents on the freeway due to driver distraction, but it's not a replacement for a driver behind the wheel, and the accidents that have come from it have been from people giving complete control to the car and no longer paying attention to the road and their surroundings. As far as self driving cars in general go, they'll be coming, but there's a long road ahead. Systems such as lidar that can detect other vehicles, pedestrians, and obstacles in the roadway better than cameras are a step forwards, but the big challenges are still going to be in the algorithms to predict what other vehicles and pedestrians are going to do, dealing with changes in traffic patterns due to construction and accidents, dealing with poorly marked roads and obstructed road signs, and dealing with extreme snow and rain that can potentially block or reduce the resolution of the various sensors. Controlled tests are one thing, putting millions of vehicles on the road across the nation is another matter entirely. As far as Velodyne goes, their subwoofers were well regarding, but Rythmik seems to be the big name in servo-subs now, and they've been offering more for the money than Velodyne for a while. |
Velodyne might as well be gone. I'm stuck with one of their DD-12 subs from 2006. I replaced the amplifier in 2010 and now the amp is out again. No customer support from Velodyne. This is still another case of a high end company bailing, leaving thousands of customers without access to repairs/parts. |
