Hawkwind & The History of Lidar

Jon Summers is the Motoring Historian. He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider. On his show he gets together with various co-hosts to talk about new and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, motoring travel.

Jon shares an in-depth discussion on the role and technological evolution of LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) in autonomous vehicles. Jon delves into a presentation by Valeo, exploring how LIDAR sensors function as part of an autonomous vehicle's perception system. He highlights that while Elon Musk dismisses LIDAR in favor of other technologies, major German automakers like Mercedes, BMW, and Audi integrate LIDAR with their partnerships. Through anecdotes from a Society of Automotive Engineers event, Jon describes the advances in LIDAR resolution, from early basic units to the sophisticated systems able to detect minute details. The presentation by Raphael, a skilled engineer from Valeo, emphasized the importance of integrating LIDAR with existing automotive systems and discussed challenges such as weather conditions and sensor standardization. He contextualizes this discussion within the history and future trajectory of automotive technology, comparing it to his classic collection of vehicles and bikes.

• Hawkwind -Master of the Universe
• An Introduction to Lidar, by someone who can’t remember what the acronym stands for
• Wisk, the flying car people
• Tristram Shandy
• The Presenter, Rafael Fors
• Data point capture and the measure of the rate of progress. 44k to 12.5 million is the corrected, key data point I got wrong (go me!)
• J saw the rise of Nvidia coming, thanks to researching robot cars
• David Beckham’s football boot as a metaphor, Valeo is the boot not the player
• Top Trumps slide on the performance
• Foxconn and the coming Chinese EV invasion
• Valeo Scala 3
• Hawkwind - Moonglum (chorus)
• Audi’s 15 year built in obsolesense
• Hawkwind - Spirit of the Age
• A digression on Audi’s fake exhausts
• BMW design has badly lost it’s way
• Hawkwind - The Right to Decide
• Hawkwind - Psy Power
• Scala 2’s wash wipe looks like the ones on J and M’s 1990 Ford Sierra Ghia
• A stupid question?
• Waymo a user?
• Hawkwind - Moonglum (solo)
• Conclusions: the true value of Lidar, and a prediction of flying cars
• Hawkwind - Spirit of the Age

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Copyright Jon Summers, The Motoring Historian. This content is also available via jonsummers.net. This episode is part of the Motoring Podcast Network and has been republished with permission.