Major car part supplier Delphi has inked a deal with a major LIDAR company, baking laser scanners into its turnkey kit for autonomous cars. The deal will see Innoviz Technologies supply solid-state LIDAR scanners to add to Delphi’s work-in-progress system, which should give car-makers a shortcut to vehicles that can drive themselves. While Delphi might not be a household name, the vehicle parked outside many of those houses are likely to have at least some of the company’s components inside.
That heft as a tier one supplier in the auto industry is what Delphi is counting on with its autonomous car system. The company has most recently been working on integrating the various sensors required for self-driving vehicles to understand the environment around them in a way that doesn’t look out of place compared to a regular, “dumb” vehicle. Back in May, for instance, we took a test ride in a customized Audi that, if it wasn’t for the Delphi wrap, probably wouldn’t be recognized as an SUV that could pilot itself.
One of the lingering issues around that move to sensor discretion has been LIDAR. A portmanteau of “light” and “radar”, the sensors have gained popularity in recent years for the technology’s ability to create 3D maps in real-time. Often seen mounted atop autonomous cars, they spin at high speed and bounce lasers off the surrounding area, building up a point cloud of depth information. From that, the vehicle can figure out what objects are around it, and how they’re moving.
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