GM acquires laser radar company to accelerate marketization of autonomous driving

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According to foreign media reports, GM announced on Monday that it will acquire Strobe, a laser radar sensor company in California, to accelerate the development of autonomous vehicle technology and reduce the cost of laser radar.

LiDAR, the "lidar", is one of the most important sensor technologies used in autonomous vehicles, and Strobe is currently focusing on using LiDAR technology to help autonomous vehicles identify nearby targets.

Most companies looking for autonomous vehicles see laser radar as a key part of an automated system. Google Waymo, Ford and GM use lidar sensors to help autopilot systems.

The acquisition will make GM a strong competitor to the auto-driving giants Google's rivals Alphabet and Tesla.

It is expected that by 2020, fully self-driving cars will enter the market in a limited form. Both GM and Ford have publicly stated that their goal is to start selling fully self-driving cars by 2021.

Kyle Vogt, CEO of GM's driverless car company Cruise Automation, said, "This acquisition will make a huge change for GM and Cruzel because the cost will be greatly reduced."

At the same time, he added, "The reason for the acquisition of Strobe is to speed up the marketization of autonomous vehicles.

Strobe's self-manufactured laser radar is one of the key sensors for autonomous vehicles to identify their surroundings. According to industry insiders, it is the continuous decline in the cost of sensors and the increase in accuracy that makes the production of autonomous vehicles feasible.

Kyle Vogt said that by concentrating the entire sensor on a single chip, Strobe's system can reduce the cost per laser radar of a universal autonomous vehicle by 99%.

This technology not only measures the distance between vehicles, people and objects on the road, but also measures the speed of objects, which is extremely important for autonomous driving complex environments.

GM did not disclose the specific amount of the acquisition, but said that Strobe's 11 full-time employees will join the Cruise team.

GM is more active in the field of automatic driving. In 2016, it acquired Cruise Automation, a driverless technology company, and also invested in self-driving car startup Nauto. Meanwhile, GM spokesperson Ray Wert said last week that in the past three months, Cruise Automation's California-registered autonomous vehicles for testing have increased from the previous 30-40 to the current 100.