“roads were built for eyes” - but human vision also fails constantly! glare, fog, rain, fatigue. if we are replacing it with autonomous systems, why not sensor fusion rather than insisting on “sensor purity” cameras neural nets still have to solve depth and lighting, where lidar just measures it. cost was agreed high, but its coming down with solid state lidars.
you proved with Dragon because stakes were too high. doesn’t having lidar increase capability at highway speeds especially at night?! autonomous systems isn’t about mimicking humans, but exceeding them, imo.
Don’t be silly. I oversaw the SpaceX engineering team that built the Dragon LiDARs used to dock with
@Space_Station!
They are simply the wrong solution for a complex terrestrial road system that was designed for biological neural nets and eyes.
Therefore the right, imo only, general solution is artificial neural nets and cameras.