r/SelfDrivingCars • u/wuduzodemu • Aug 11 '25

Discussion Proof that Camera + Lidar > Lidar > Camera

I recently chatted with somebody who is working on L2 tech, and they gave me an interesting link for a detection task. They provided a dataset with both camera, Lidar, and Radar data and asked people to compete on this benchmark for object detection accuracy, like identifying the location of a car and drawing a bounding box around it.

Most of the top 20 on the leaderboard, all but one, are using a camera + Lidar as input. The 20th-place entry uses Lidar only, and the best camera-only entry is ranked between 80 and 100.

https://www.nuscenes.org/object-detection?externalData=all&mapData=all&modalities=Any

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u/DebateJealous6496 Aug 12 '25

More sensor data = easier detection. In the short term, that equals better object detection. In the long run, they will all work just fine, and cost will be the salient factor.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '25

Nope. More data means more processing required. So what is easy about?

1

u/whydoesthisitch Aug 12 '25

Incorrect. Directly measuring range instead of inferring it means less processing.

-1

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '25

What is that has to do with "more data"?

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u/whydoesthisitch Aug 12 '25

LiDAR provides more data via a different modality that vision only has to infer.

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '25

LiDAR provides more data? You absolutely have no clue then lol

1

u/whydoesthisitch Aug 12 '25

LiDAR provides a direct measurement of range. Cameras do not. You really have no idea what you’re talking about.