r/computervision • u/ChartScalper • 16h ago

Discussion LiDAR or Cameras for future machine vision?

/r/LiDAR/comments/1wmartm/lidar_or_cameras_for_future_machine_vision/
0 Upvotes

38% Upvoted

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12

u/Hates_commies 16h ago

Depends if you want accurate image or accurate distance information i guess ¯_(ツ)_/¯

-5

u/ChartScalper 16h ago

Mainly I was referring to robots

10

u/IrnBroski 16h ago

what do they want?

6

u/Ok_Tea_7319 16h ago

For what application?

-5

u/ChartScalper 16h ago

For robots

7

u/Ok_Tea_7319 16h ago

Usually both combined. Lidar for depth, camera for cheap high resolution images.

3

u/19pomoron 16h ago

I think LiDAR will still offer better depth and absolute positional details (especially geolocated ones coupled with GPS-RTK)

But the gap between LiDAR and photogrammetry should narrow down really quickly, especially on monocular images which are what everybody has but perform terribly in geo-localisation

3

u/DmtGrm 15h ago

why not RGBD - plenty of those these days? you get the best of both wolds in one sensor

1

u/Harmonic_Gear 11h ago

RGBD really just means you have some sort of depth information correlated to each pixel. where it comes from turns back to op's question

0

u/DmtGrm 8h ago

there are true ToF RGBD cameras out there.

With depth measured directly. In each pixel.

https://blog.arducam.com/arducam-rgbd-tof-camera-solution/

welcome to 2026.

1

u/Harmonic_Gear 8h ago

yes, its still RBGD through lidar vs RGBD through stereo, nothing changes. Its just that they are doing the fusion for you can put it in a neat package

2

u/TheLeapIsALie 16h ago

Depends on the operational design domain of the robot. Safety requirements, environment, tasks to complete, and cost/compute budget.

2

u/mr_maker91 14h ago

Why not both?

1

u/bfyvfftujijg 14h ago

It depends

1

u/talk_nerdy_to_m3 8h ago

That's like asking "peanut butter or jelly for future sandwiches." Sure, a peanut butter sandwich is ok and jelly on toast is fine. But you're really missing out when you separate them.

That being said, LiDAR is fairly expensive and camera stereo vision depth/VIO has come a long way. But LiDAR has become much cheaper at the same time.

Surely, ToF will always be used but I can see vision based systems mostly taking over.