I have zero idea about lidar operational capabilities, but can you heat them to stop snow and ice from piling up?

Parent is referring to snow in the environment, not on the lidar itself.

When snowing in Toronto you usually cannot see the painted lines on the road, there's just the lines from cars driving through the snow that you follow. Sometimes two lane roads become an unofficial one lane road depending on what feels safe.

The falling snow also bounces the laser pulses(?) back at the lidar. Snow fall can be pretty heavy and make it difficult to see objects far ahead. Not sure how well their handling of rain ports over to snow, but it will be interesting to see!

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lapkaaaa 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Damn, you guys have it hard over there

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Rohansi 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You get used to it. I tried FSD (latest version) last winter in those conditions and it had no issues. Waymo shouldn't have any issues with it either.

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jhonof 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Street parking in the core makes what would be a manageable amount of snow into a disaster like 2 weeks a year minimum because plows can't get down older streets.

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SoftTalker an hour ago | parent [-]

Sounds like someone needs to develop an autonomous snowblower for narrow streets.

	▲	shagie an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		California did back in the '90s. https://path.berkeley.edu/automation/development-advanced-ro... It had hands free operation (still needed someone in the seat to control the plow) and lane assist in whiteout conditions when the outside edge of the lane had a cliff (much worse than driving into the ditch). https://path.berkeley.edu/automation/development-advanced-ro... > This project is one of the first real-world applications derived from PATH/Caltrans research in the area of automated vehicle control. A modified snowblower with add-on sensors, actuator, computer and driver interfaces was developed, and initial field tests were conducted along the 8 guardrail sections between Kingvale and Soda Springs on the shoulders of Interstate-80 near Donner Summit. https://path.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/develop... > Various lateral sensing and referencing technologies were investigated for this application; what was found was that machine vision does not penetrate snow, and that the GPS system does not provide sufficient reliability under possible multipath and blockage scenarios. A magnetic-marker-based sensing system was chosen for the initial implementation primarily because of its high reliability and accuracy (better than 1 cm) under all weather conditions. The mountainous highway I-80 near Donner Summit (close to Lake Tahoe) was chosen to be the first field test site. In 2001, magnets were installed along the eastbound and westbound guardrails of I-80, at 4 feet apart and 4 feet away from the guardrail. Binary coding of the magnetic markers was designed (north pole up vs. south pole up) to provide information about guardrail characteristics, such as the shoulder side (right or left of the blower) and the end of guardrail. Eight sections of the guardrail were equipped with magnets for the initial feasibility operations with a total length of 1.46 km (0.9 mile) between Soda Springs and Kingvale.
	▲	boplicity an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The problem is not plowing the streets, it is moving the snow away from the streets. After heavy snowfalls, plows create huge piles that block a significant part of the road. This is a difficult problem that simply takes a lot of resources to address.

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mdurana 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Afaik the already do this. But another problem is that falling snowflakes reflect lidar pulses and heating doesn't help in that case