Car company Ford has announced the creation of a device that, in its opinion, will help to win the race among the companies involved in the projects fully unmanned vehicles. This device is a small LiDAR radar sensor developed by Velodyne, a subsidiary company of Silicon valley.
“Presents the third generation sensor is compact enough to fit on the mirror of the car, but powerful enough to scan the radius of 200 meters around the vehicle,” says mark fields, President and CEO of Ford.
The new sensor, dubbed “Ultra Puck”, according to fields, “though, and has an elegant, understated design, however, can bring enormous progress in the technology development of unmanned vehicles”. The sensor has the ability to create real time three-dimensional map of the vehicle’s surroundings and thanks to Ford’s software calculates the most various, even minor situation on the road.
Other unmanned vehicles, for example cars Google, use larger LiDAR sensors, which are installed on the roof of the vehicle. The company Tesla, which also “flirts” with technology, unmanned vehicle control, does not use such sensors. However, most of these sensors are very large and uncomfortable, while the device from Velodyne can be conveniently placed on the car and not to spoil its aesthetic appearance.
Fields says that the company in the coming months plans to equip sensors LiDAR dozens of our unmanned vehicles Fusion Hybrid. More specifically, it is about 30 unmanned vehicles, which is almost three times more than the current number of unmanned cars that romp on American roads in California, Arizona and Michigan to test new technologies.