While LIDAR and stereo cameras (as well as RGBD depth cameras like Kinect) both effectively do the same thing, LIDAR typically has a much longer effective range while keeping high resolution.
To give you an example, this[1] commercially available sensor head can give great resolution stereo depth at around 10m but the included LIDAR unit is good out to around 30m.
LIDAR also has the advantage of operating on a different portion of the EM spectrum. It can sometimes be more well behaved in situations where there might be interference on the visible light wavelengths but not on the LIDAR wavelengths which is typically IR (e.g. extremely bright sunny days).
I think that there's a place for both in vehicles as a sort of redundancy. While they both mostly do the same things, they do them in different ways, and if LIDAR can be made cost effective then having both is a huge gain.
That sensor you linked looks to have its two cameras about 10cm apart. A car is easily 1.5m wide, giving a very cheap 15x increase in range for far objects and beating the LIDAR quote by a ton (and of course you can have multiple camera pairs for different distance ranges of course).
I'm with the grandparent: I genuinely don't understand the obsession with LIDAR in this space. It's complicated and fiddly, and seems to be competing with an "obvious" solution involving $3 camera parts.
More cameras still doesn't fix the interaction with ambient light and LIDAR units like the ones produced by Velodyne or Ibeo have ranges out to 200m[1]
Again, I think they both have their uses. If LIDAR can be made not so complicated and fiddly, I think it brings a lot to the table.
Sure, it could. But again its competition is cheap camera hardware that can be had for a few bucks and that outperforms the human eyeballs that we know are safe enough to drive cars on real roads.
I don't doubt that LIDAR can work with some development. I'm just shocked that it seems to be the default position in the industry and want someone to explain this to me in a way that makes sense.
To give you an example, this[1] commercially available sensor head can give great resolution stereo depth at around 10m but the included LIDAR unit is good out to around 30m.
LIDAR also has the advantage of operating on a different portion of the EM spectrum. It can sometimes be more well behaved in situations where there might be interference on the visible light wavelengths but not on the LIDAR wavelengths which is typically IR (e.g. extremely bright sunny days).
I think that there's a place for both in vehicles as a sort of redundancy. While they both mostly do the same things, they do them in different ways, and if LIDAR can be made cost effective then having both is a huge gain.
[1]: https://carnegierobotics.com/multisense-sl/