GM buys lidar developer Strobe to further self-driving car tech – Roadshow

One big hump for self-driving-car developers to get over is the implementation of a lidar system. Waymo solved it by bringing construction in-house, and GM just solved it by buying a lidar company.

General Motors on Monday announced its acquisition of Strobe, a sensor-tech firm that works on lidar. Strobe’s engineering team will join the self-driving wizards at Cruise Automation, another firm that GM acquired in its efforts to build a mass-produced self-driving car.

Lidar is a surveying method that uses light to measure the distance to a target. It’s similar to radar, which uses radio waves instead of light. Lidar units are capable of creating high-resolution maps, which self-driving vehicles can use to assess their surroundings in detail. Many automakers believe lidar is a key component of the tech required to bring autonomous vehicles to the road.

This image from Cruise Automation’s Medium post shows an early version of Strobe’s lidar emitter.

Cruise Automation via Medium

“Strobe’s lidar technology will significantly improve the cost and capabilities of our vehicles so that we can more quickly accomplish our mission to deploy driverless vehicles at scale,” said Kyle Vogt, CEO of Cruise Automation, in a statement. Vogt went into greater detail in a Medium post discussing the benefits of lidar in self-driving cars.