Velodyne LiDAR Inc., the global leader in Light, Detection and Ranging, or LiDAR technology, last week announced the completion of a combined $150-million investment from co-investors Ford Motor Company and China’s leading search engine company Baidu, Inc. The investment will allow Velodyne to rapidly expand the design and production of high-performance and cost-effective automotive LiDAR sensors, accelerating mass adoption in autonomous vehicle and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) applications and therefore accelerating the critical, transformative benefits they provide.
Over the last decade, Velodyne has developed four generations of hybrid solid-state LiDAR systems incorporating the company’s proprietary software and algorithms that interpret rich data gathered from the environment via highly accurate laser-based sensors to create high resolution 3D digital images used for mapping, localization, object identification and collision avoidance. Velodyne’s LIDAR solutions are capable of producing 300,000 to 2.2 million data points per second with a range up to 200 meters at centimeter-level accuracy. The company’s high-performance LiDAR technology has been recognized by global automotive OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and rideshare customers as a critical element enabling the development of fully autonomous vehicles.