Lidar costs are coming down but are still fairly expensive. Velodyne and a swarm of startups are trying to change that.
In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into lidar technology. We’ll explain how the technology works and the challenges technologists face as they try to build lidar sensors that meet the demanding requirements for commercial self-driving cars.
Some experts believe the key to building lidar that costs hundreds of dollars instead of thousands is to abandon Velodyne’s mechanical design—where a laser physically spins around 360 degrees, several times per second—in favor of a solid-state design that has few if any moving parts. That could make the units simpler, cheaper, and much easier to mass-produce.
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