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The autonomous systems company Aurora Innovation made a big bet Thursday on a lidar company that has taken an unconventional approach to develop its technology.
Aurora plans to acquire Blackmore Sensors and Analytics Inc., a company based in Bozeman, Mount Royal, which has roots that support the US military with its sensors, the company said.
The terms were not disclosed immediately.
Lidar units are laser sensors that help autonomous vehicles detect obstacles and locate themselves on the road. Some senior industry officials, including Elon Musk of Tesla, have claimed that these sensors are not necessary for self-driving operations. But if the acquisition of Blackmore was not eloquent, Chris Urmson, co-founder of Aurora and former head of the autonomous vehicle project of Google, offered a rebuttal.
"Lidar is vital to the development of the safest and most reliable autonomous driving system, a system capable of navigating our roads more surely than a human driver," he said Thursday.
There are dozens of lidar companies, but Blackmore stands out with an unusual approach to the development of technology. Rather than sending pulsed light waves from its sensors, like the majority of its competitors, it uses a continuous wave and modulates the frequency to obtain detailed information on target distance.
Most companies modulate the amplitude of the waves, not the frequency. This technically appears to be a choice between AM and FM radio.
Blackmore explains that his frequency-modulation-based approach has a key advantage: it can measure the Doppler effect of the speed of detected objects, collecting enough information to show rotating tires on vehicles at 200 meters, as well as granular representations of the arms and legs of pedestrians.
"We can basically use a dimly lit flashlight to see off," said Randy Reibel, CEO of Blackmore, at CES in Las Vegas in January. "I do not have to worry about eye safety issues, I do not have problems with power supply, single photon sensitivity is the rule in this industry, and few people suffer from it. "
The Blackmore office in Bozeman will be Aurora's fourth office. The company already has offices in San Francisco; Palo Alto, Calif .; and Pittsburgh.
Aurora's other co-founders are Sterling Anderson, former Tesla Program Manager X and Director of the Autopilot Program, and Drew Bagnell, who was previously an Autonomy Architect and Perception Manager at the Uber Advanced Technologies Center.
Aurora closed a $ 530 million Series B investment financing cycle in February and entered into partnerships with the Volkswagen Group, Hyundai Motor Co. and Byton.
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