Yesterday, Israel-based startup Innoviz Technologies announced a $9 million Series A round to fund the development of a high performance, low cost, solid-state lidar to enable fully autonomous driving. Lidar is recognized by most (but not all) groups developing autonomous vehicles as a necessary sensor, because it provides high resolution and long range 3-D data that are independent of lighting conditions and most weather. However, the cost and complexity of currently available lidar systems make them impractical for most consumer vehicles, which is why there's been so much interest recently in developing an inexpensive and reliable (but technically challenging) solid state lidar.

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