LiDAR News: Waymo Offers its LiDAR for Sale, Innoviz Raises $100M

Venturebeat and Bloomberg report that Waymo has decided to offer its LiDAR for sale. This is a nice opportunity to learn more about the Google/Waymore internal design:

"Our Laser Bear Honeycomb is a best-in-class perimeter sensor. For those familiar with our self-driving cars, it’s the same sensor around the bumper of the vehicles. It features:"

• Wide field of view: Where some 3D lidar have a vertical field of view (FOV) of just 30°, the Honeycomb has a vertical FOV of 95°, plus a 360° horizontal FOV. That means one Honeycomb can do the job of three other 3D sensors stacked on top of one another.
• Multiple returns per pulse: When the Honeycomb sends out a pulse of light, it doesn’t just see the first object the laser beam touches. Instead, it can see up to four different objects in that laser beams’ line of sight (e.g., it can see both the foliage in front of a tree branch and the tree branch itself). This gives a rich and more detailed view of the environment, and uncovers objects that might otherwise be missed.
• Minimum range of zero: The Honeycomb has a minimum range of zero, meaning it can see objects immediately in front of the sensor. This enables key capabilities such as near object detection and avoidance.

CTech reports that Innoviz is in the process of raising a new round of around $100M bringing the total investment into the company to $182M. The company's valuation in this round is $500M, according to Reuters.

WSAU: Reuters publishes its view on "A chaotic market for one sensor stalls self-driving cars:"