Ford, Baidu Invest US$150M in LiDAR for Autonomous Cars

In an effort to accelerate autonomous vehicle adoption, Ford and Baidu have joined forces and, together, invested The states$150 million in Lite, Detection, and Ranging (LiDAR) firm Velodyne. This is seen as an unprecedented move.

Nextcar Bug art Typically used to make loftier-resolution maps, LiDAR is a surveying technology that measures altitude by illuminating a target with a laser light. Information is and so used to create high-resolution 3D digital images used for mapping, localisation, object identification, and collision avoidance.

"LiDAR continues to prove itself as the critical sensor for condom autonomous vehicle operation," Velodyne CEO, David Hall, said.

The investment will let Velodyne to aggrandize production of automotive LiDAR sensors, "making them widely accessible and enabling mass deployment of fully autonomous vehicles," Hall added.

Ford and Chinese search behemothic Baidu are no strangers to self-driving technology.

In Jan 2022, Ford teamed up with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University to work on automated car tech. Last summertime, the company appointed Randy Visintainer as Managing director of Democratic Vehicle Evolution.

Around the same fourth dimension, Baidu partnered with BMW and announced plans to put self-driving cars on public roads in Red china by the end of 2022. In December the aforementioned yr, a modified BMW iii Serial successfully completed testing on Beijing highways.

Velodyne's LiDAR solutions were previously tested in Google's cocky-driving cars, and have been incorporated into mobile mapping vehicles by Nokia Here, Bing Maps, TomTom, and more.

"From the very beginning of our autonomous vehicle program, we saw LiDAR as a cardinal enabler due to its sensing capabilities and how it complements radar and cameras," Ford Chief Technical Officer, Raj Nair, said.

Jing Wang, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Baidu'due south autonomous driving unit, said his company is developing self-driving cars "with the intention to increase passenger safety and reduce traffic congestion and pollution."

Velodyne expects an increased presence of LiDAR sensors in autonomous vehicles over the next several years.