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‘LiDAR is lame’: why Elon Musk’s vision for a self-driving Tesla taxi faltered
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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Can it really cause damage? Lidar is flown constantly, and all of googles street view had been ran with lidar. That's millions of miles of data collection and I haven't heard of any negative effects. I get that it is a laser, but is duration and distance must be big factors.
Not saying you are wrong, just looking to quanitfy the risks.
https://www.techspot.com/news/108045-lidar-great-cars-but-can-permanently-damage-cameras.html
You mean to say the cars of the future can take out security cameras. That's not a negative. Security cameras are the surveillance state. If you want to take them out with today's cars you've gotta ram them and bang out the dents in your car.
Thanks for the article. That is interesting. It also is confusing that they wrote "Lidar is not the only thing that can damage camera sensors – lasers are just as harmful." Uh...Lidar is Laser.
But it is in so many fields, even devices with cameras. Apple has been adding Lidar to their phones/tablets for 5 years now. Why is this an issue now? Like I said, there is a TON of Lidar in use everyday.
Cars use stronger LIDAR lasers than the phones. The bigger range and faster response time requires it.