Forgive my ignorance, but isn't this not supposed to happen with LIDAR equipped cars?
My understanding is that a LIDAR provides a completely accurate 3D map of the surrounding area around a self driving car. This is in contrast to Tesla's image recognition approach which makes a 3D map from 2D images. So is seems like a pretty giant bug if a self driving car ever crashes into another object with LIDAR, since it should always know the location of external objects.
You're not wrong, but it is more complicated than that. Lidar gives you an array of 3D points and intensity, corresponding to where the lasers bounced back, and how strong the reflection was. Roughly speaking, from there you have to decide 1) which sets of points belong to the same object, 2) what those objects are, and 3) what those objects intend to do in the future.
So yes, a lidar-equipped AV completely not sensing a pedestrian would be surprising, but you can see how it might have incorrectly classified the pedestrian, or misunderstood the pedestrian's intent.
My understanding is that a LIDAR provides a completely accurate 3D map of the surrounding area around a self driving car. This is in contrast to Tesla's image recognition approach which makes a 3D map from 2D images. So is seems like a pretty giant bug if a self driving car ever crashes into another object with LIDAR, since it should always know the location of external objects.
Please correct me if I am wrong!