There's an Apple-like acquisition trend in the self-driving car space

Ford’s self-driving car subsidiary Argo AI has acquired Princeton Lightwave, a LiDAR producer, in a move to take ownership of its supply chain, which is becoming more common in the autonomous vehicle (AV) development space.    

LiDAR, which stands for Light Detection And Ranging, are sensors used by AVs to determine how far away objects are in the world around it to create a 3D map of road conditions. The system works by sending out lightwaves from lasers that bounce off objects before returning to the sensor, similar to how more commonly understood tools like radar and sonar function.    

Argo AI CEO Bryan Salesky announced the acquisition in a Medium post, calling the sensor tech “crucial” to the development of Argo’s autonomous platform. He wrote that the move to bring Princeton onboard makes Argo “uniquely positioned” to build out its hardware and software systems together, which presumably gives the company more direct control over how the platform works as one, along with cutting costs by owning the means of LiDAR production.   Read more…

More about Ford, Autonomous Vehicles, Self Driving Cars, Lidar, and Argo Ai
Source: Mashable | There's an Apple-like acquisition trend in the self-driving car space