To self-drive in the snow, look under the road

Car companies have been feverishly working to improve the technologies behind self-driving cars. But so far even the most high-tech vehicles still fail when it comes to safely navigating in rain and snow.

This is because these weather conditions wreak havoc on the most common approaches for sensing, which usually involve either lidar sensors or cameras. In the snow, for example, cameras can no longer recognize lane markings and traffic signs, while the lasers of lidar sensors malfunction when there’s, say, stuff flying down from the sky.

http://news.mit.edu/2020/to-self-drive-in-snow-look-under-road-0226