For a long time, BMW has been talking loud and clear about its plans for autonomous vehicles. Now we finally find out a little more about what the company is planning to do to implement higher levels of driving autonomy. As it turns out, this includes equipping autonomous BMW cars with new LiDARs of the solid-state type.
BMW takes the driving autonomy to a new level
Magna Technologies and Innoviz Technologies have just announced that they will supply BMW vehicles with modern LiDAR solid-state sensors. According to the companies, this is to allow the 4th and 5th level of driving autonomy, i.e., fully autonomous driving without the need to sit behind the wheel of a physical driver.
Everything is to be included in the new generation of LiDARs. Older equipment of this type is quite large sensors that rotate and thus give a 360-degree insight into the environment of the car. They cost quite a lot and often autonomous vehicles still need a few pieces to read out the parameters of the situation at all. The new sensors, called InnovizOne, are much smaller and cost about a thousand dollars. However, they are solid-state sensors, i.e., sensors placed in one place with a laser beam directed by a small mirror. This allows the sensor to cover a large part of the environment regardless of the size of the device itself.
The new LiDAR sensors are designed to generate a real-time 3D point cloud, which will be a map of the vehicle’s environment. They are intended to be useful even in very sunny places or in places such as storms. It seems that BMW is serious about the final level of autonomy. For the time being, however, this is the song of the future – whoever needs help while driving, for the time being, the one who can benefit from various car navigation systems at most.