I think particular robot side projects, if you can afford it, make use of LIDAR partly because it makes dealing with things much easier than the amount of time invested attempting a vision-based system.

It's been a long time but I remember lidar being common (or at least a divide between rich/poor college clubs) a decade ago in competitions like http://www.igvc.org/

Oh definitely. I brought one of the first stereoscopic camera robots there. It was very clear we werent in the same financial support league but we did well I think our second year on there.