Travis on the right, me [sic] on the left
Travis DeRose of the excellent Curiosityness podcast -- an eclectic and fascinating smorgasbord with episodes spanning the visual effects of Star Wars, how to get started mountain biking, the Presidential Pet Museum, the science of stand-up comedy, and the history of the Internet. For episode 93, Travis…
What will having a laser mapper in your pocket mean?
The world according to Velodyne's VLS-128, since renamed the Alpha Puck. (Courtesy Velodyne)
I wrote quite a bit about Velodyne in The Laser That's Changing the World -- David Hall, the company's founder and CEO, is a brilliant engineer who developed the lidar sensor that paved they way for the first great leaps in vehicle autonomy,…
Manning the booth at ILMF 2019
The 2019 edition of the International Lidar Mapping Forum is a wrap. The folks at Diversified Communications provided a booth (thank you!), which gave me the opportunity to hang out and chat with a bunch of interesting folks for the better part of three days. There were experts in algorithms…
Elon Musk was right when he called lidar a “crutch” when it came to self-driving cars. Where he’s not right, though, is that the technology’s crutchitude is somehow a reason not to employ lidar—which uses lasers to scan the world around them, identify objects and characterize surroundings to centimeter accuracy—as a fundamental sensor on self-driving…