Lidar on the Radar

Happy Humpday.

The lidar business is growing, suggests a recent Bloomberg story.

That’s because Alphabet’s self-driving car unit, Waymo, is getting into the sensor business and will start selling laser-mapping sensors on its driverless vehicles to other companies (as long as they don’t compete with its robotaxi business). 

What is lidar? Basically, a device that shoots lasers off of object to determine what’s near by.

So, as Bloomberg explain, the tech could be utilized in next gen warehouse robots, security systems, autonomous tractors (and other farming implications)…This is not your daddy’s Future Farmers of America.

This move puts Waymo in competition with the world’s larger lidar producer, Veloydyne Lidar Inc., but Bloomberg suggests the lead here is that this will give Waymor scale, meaning more production and volume, the lower the cost of its sensor suite, the more customers that can be lured to using the technology.

FYI, lidar is expected to be a $1B+ market this this year. 

Still, I advise looking both ways before crossing the road.