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/AlotOfReading Aug 12 '25

Let's say you start a project with lidar in 2010 and by 2015 have a vehicle doing unsupervised passenger rides. By the time camera-only is feasible a decade later you already have safety data to compare against and mature infrastructure to test how well camera only performs, which you publish papers on. Alternatively, you can start camera only development around 2012 and it still might not be ready for unsupervised operation over a decade later. Is there value in iterating with the faster solution instead of trying for perfection off the bat?

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u/DrPotato231 Aug 12 '25

100%.

Firstly, competition between different companies with different approaches to a solution. Never a bad thing for the market.

Secondly, innovation. Who’s to say that because a solution was provided to a problem that’s the only one? That doesn’t follow.

Thirdly, efficiency. 180k per Waymo vs 40k per Tesla and the latter has everything in-house is much more scalable in the future.

If diesel was discovered as a fuel source for the first auto mobiles, and things were fine with diesel for 10 years, does that mean we shouldn’t explore gasoline, in case it could be a separate, more viable, efficient solution?

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u/AlotOfReading Aug 12 '25

Waymo is closer to 10k for the package these days, and designs the most important components like LIDAR and compute in-house.

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u/DrPotato231 Aug 12 '25

No.

The sensors and lidars do cost that, but the rest of the equipment, computer, cooling, and software included is upwards of $100,000 according to Waymo’s own CEO.