Velodyne Will Sell a Lidar for $100
Velodyne claims to have broken the US $100 barrier for automotive lidar with its tiny Velabit, which it unveiled at CES earlier this month.
"Claims" is the mot juste because this nice, round dollar amount is an estimate based on the mass-manufacturing maturity of a product that has yet to ship. Such a factoid would hardly be worth mentioning had it come from some of the several-score odd lidar startups that haven't shipped anything at all. But Velodyne created this industry back during DARPA-funded competitions, and has been the market leader ever since.
"The projection is $100 at volume; we'll start sampling customers in the next few months," Anand Gopalan, the company's chief technology officer, tells IEEE Spectrum.
The company says in a release that the Velabit "delivers the same technology and performance found on Velodyne's full suite of state-of-the-art sensors." Given the device's small size, that must mean the solid-state version of the technology. That is, the non-rotating kind.
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(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:46PM (1 child)
Yep. Because you need a full 360 simultaneous view in order to drive - that's why the DMV requires that you get at least two additional eyes installed around your skull before they will let you get a driver's license.
If LIDAR is your *only* sensor, and you don't want some sort of mechanical "neck" to let the sensors look around, then yeah, you probably want a full 360 view. But there's also s a whole lot of value to be had with accurate range-finder imaging along your intended direction of travel though, with cheaper but more error-prone sensors providing "peripheral vision"
Then again, at $100 per 60*FOV, full 360 LIDAR coverage might be an attractive option.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @06:33PM
> at least two additional eyes installed around your skull before they will let you get a driver's license.
Didn't the driver's ed instructor keep telling you to watch your mirrors as part of situational awareness and also track what is headed toward the blind spots? In my case the instructor suggested that we make overt head moves toward the mirrors, makes it obvious to the inspector during the driving *test* that you are checking the mirrors.