A Brief History of Automotive Lidar

February 15, 2021

Paperback | 66 pages | $2.99 Kindle

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Based on three chapters of Todd Neff’s lidar history, The Laser That’s Changing the World (Prometheus Books, 2018), A Brief History of Automotive Lidar tells the story of the birth and development of a technology that has been a cornerstone of autonomous-vehicle development for more than three decades.

This character-driven eBook shares with readers the author’s visits with famed Carnegie Mellon University roboticist Red Whittaker, Velodyne Lidar founder David Hall, Uber ATG (the ride-sharing giant’s autonomous-vehicle development subsidiary, now a part of Aurora Innovations), and the University of Michigan’s Mcity autonomous-vehicle proving ground. The story starts with early autonomous-vehicle development work at Stanford’s SAIL lab and the Carnegie Mellon Field Robotics Center and continues through the DARPA Grand Challenges and today’s “lidar stampede.”

A Brief History of Automotive Lidar updates and expands upon Neff’s earlier work and is a quick, readable primer for anyone interested in the origins and potential of a technology poised to be a key enabler of the coming self-driving revolution.