Modern tech makes it hard for me to take science fiction seriously anymore that involves humans piloting space fighters, manually aiming weapons, or even being effective on battlefields. We’re rapidly reaching a point where warfare will be strictly in the realm of machines.
Terminator becoming more and more reality every year.
So, more ways to surveil us? Cool cool cool.
100 bucks says someone will try and use this on their genitals within the year.
I doubt you’ll find a rube to take that bet.
So, keep in mind that single photon sensors have been around for awhile, in the form of avalanche photodiodes and photomultiplier tubes. And avalanche photodiodes are pretty commonly used in LiDAR systems already.
The ones talked about in the article I linked collect about 50 points per square meter at a horizontal resolution of about 23 cm. Obviously that’s way worse than what’s presented in the phys.org article, but that’s also measuring from 3km away while covering an area of 700 square km per hour (because these systems are used for wide area terrain scanning from airplanes). With the way LiDAR works the system in the phys.org article could be scanning with a very narrow beam to get way more datapoints per square meter.
Now, this doesn’t mean that the system is useless crap or whatever. It could be that the superconducting nanowire sensor they’re using lets them measure the arrival time much more precisely than normal LiDAR systems, which would give them much better depth resolution. Or it could be that the sensor has much less noise (false photon detections) than the commonly used avalanche diodes. I didn’t read the actual paper, and honestly I don’t know enough about LiDAR and photon detectors to really be able to compare those stats.
But I do know enough to say that the range and single-photon capability of this system aren’t really the special parts of it, if it’s special at all.
I love LiDAR, there was very limited terrain data from LiDAR available on USGS about a decade ago, just a couple of counties was all, but it was so detailed you could see the shape of Cars on the streets with it.
Imagine what they could do with two photons.
Or even phivetons.
that level of detail at 1km is insane. We are so fucked in the machine war.
Only.
…1kilometer only.
Or 1km so far.
Yeah this is crazy stuff.
Cool, but less cool when I remember what dark shit this kind of technology can be used for
They probably already have something better than this otherwise it would have been relaxed publicly.
*will be used for
Really cool, but really scary, all I see is facial biometrics from 1 km away.
Hello sir, I’m an not from the government and would like to show you something off in the distance for about 3 seconds if you will. Step forward where I’ve carefully marked the street with blue painter’s tape. Do not smile. Did you see it? No? Good!. Well what it is, its ah… Don’t worry about it. Good day sir. What are you talking about? I asked you to step where? I did no such thing. I’m just a normal person living in the city.
And suddenly masking got a whole lot more popular.
Umm, y’all, this is serious.
These scientists got a chill with the AI and surveillance tech and work on making a refillable toothpaste tube ffs.
superconducting nanowire single-photon detector
Don’t suppose they sell those on aliexpress yet?
Do they compete with the 1500 megawatt aperture science heavy duty super-colliding super button?
I bet Styropyro has a box of them tucked away somewhere. His laser defense turrets will have unmatched accuracy.
Hey YouTube, today we’re testing this photon detector I found browsing ebay that was sold by some friendly russians. It’s been collecting dust for 10 years but due to some recent developments it’s as relevant as ever! Now I’ll be able to see the feds coming from miles away!
I’m sure that in in 2025 those are available in every corner drug store
I wouldn’t be surprised at all
But Elon thinks camera vision is enough to drive a car.
Well, not to side with the fascist shithead, but you know, “broken clock…”. The thing is, camera vision is kinda enough… It’s an entirely different thing if it could be better, improved, safer, or whatever by adding LiDAR or other tech…
Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, you chose to be confidently incorrect about this?
Brother it
HAD LiDAR, they took it away. Tesla customers now pay more for a worse carEDIT: Had RADAR not LiDAR
No, tesla never had lidar in any of their cars, they had the same regular radar all other cars use, but yes it has since been disabled (or not installed on newer models) in favour of a camera-only solution.
Even so, the radar is at least better than not a damn thing.
In fog, in a sand storm, in any heavy weather yer gonna want LiDAR.
And in the sun, strong headlights, rain, dust
Their camera gets confused by large objects in the dark that obstruct it’s view. It has crashed into a few overturned vehicles at night because it didn’t know what they were and just disengaged instead of detecting an impasse and stopping.
I feel that way, sometimes, too. ;-)
You don’t live west of where you work, I take it?
Are you a wizard, or what!?! When I was a child, driving each morning East to the labor camp, and West home for my bowl of thin gruel, I promised myself I would only accept a job that was East of my home.
If humans can do it why not cameras?
Can humans actually do it, though? Are humans actually capable of driving a car reasonably well using only visual data, or are we actually using an entire suite of sensors in our heads and bodies to understand our speed and orientation, road conditions, and our surroundings? Driving a car by video link is considerably harder than just driving a car normally, from within a car.
And even so, computers have a long way to go before they catch up with our visual processing. Our visual cortex does a lot of error correction of visual data, using proprioceptive sensors in our heads that silently and seamlessly delete the visual smudges and smears of motion as our heads move. The error correction adjusts quickly to recalibrate things when looking at stuff under water or anything with a different refractive index, or when looking at reflections in a mirror.
And we maintain that flow of visual data by correcting for motion and stabilizing the movement of our eyes to compensate from external motion. Maybe not as good as chickens, but we’re pretty good at it. We recognize faulty sensor data and correct for it by moving our heads around obstructions, of silently ignoring something that is just blocking one eye, of blinking or rubbing our eyes when tears or water make it hard to focus. We also know when to not trust our eyes (in the dark, in fog, when temporarily blinded by lights), and fall back to other methods of understand the world around us.
Throw in our sense of balance in our inner ears, our ability to direction find on sounds, and the ability to process vibrations in our seat and tactile feedback on a steering wheel, the proprioception of feeling forces on our body or specific limbs, and we have an entire system that uses much more than visual data to make decisions and model the world around us.
There’s no reason why an artificial system needs to use exactly the same type of sensors as humans or other mammals do. And we have preexisting models and memories of what is or was around us, like when we walk around our own homes in the dark. But my point is that we rely on much more than our eyes, processed through an image processing system far more complex than the current state of AI vision. Why hold back on using as much sensor data as possible, to build a system that has good, reliable sensor data of what is on the road?
I think I’m following you. So if we added LiDAR, thermal sensors, and a couple of chickens to the car we’d be able drive the vehicle ourselves, optimally.
Reason 1: humans can blink – a dirty camera can not.
I would hope teslas to have cameras in more than one direction, but maybe that was a too generous assumption.
Yeah, it makes it better and more reliable in harsh conditions, I agree, but driving has always been based on people looking where they go, so camera imagery is enough for driving. If it is not safe for a person, then it’s not safe for a car with only cameras. Plus only having cameras doesn’t mean you cannot use special equipment, IR cameras can improve visibility on harsh conditions too. Not that I mean they are used, but you know, it’s a matter of what we mean with “enough to drive”. Again, I want to emphasize that I agree, having LiDAR or other tech would be much much better.
