[Animats]

Waymo isn't the first to announce a low-cost LIDAR. Quantergy announced one last year.[1] They even demoed it. It never shipped. Continental, the big European auto parts company acquired ASC's excellent but expensive technology last year, and promised a low-cost version. Hasn't shipped yet.[2]

These things will get cheap as soon as they're being built in quantity 100,000, instead of quantity 100. Really cheap if they can be made with standard CMOS processes, which has been done experimentally. Most are GaInAs technology, which is expensive.

[1] http://quanergy.com/s3/ [2] http://www.continental-corporation.com/www/pressportal_com_e...

[Game_Ender]

Quanergy never shipped their product because they were not able to hit the required for performance for it to be usable. So far it looks like only Waymo and Velodyne have shipped LIDAR sensors good enough to the primary sensor on a self driving car. Everyone else is still at the "vaporware" stage.

[jayjay71]

> They even demoed it.

Sort of. "Quanergy has not yet demonstrated a version of the S3 that performs to the specifications that they announced at their press conference"

http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/sens...

[candiodari]

The best cheap lidar for indoor robots, and limited outdoor is built by microsoft, called "kinect". Beats the pants of any lidar that existed in 2005 that cost less than $100k, except on range.

Comes with open source libraries and is a pretty great piece of equipment for indoor navigation.

[zardeh]

Minus the part where it isn't a lidar. Sure its a great sensor, but if you need a lidar, then you can't use a kinect. And alternatively, if you need 360 degree fov, etc. an actual lider is often better.

[jsjohnst]

IR sensor array != to LIDAR. There is no pulsed Laser in Kinect.