What a robot car might see on a drive through Detroit

On a monitor mounted inside a BMW X5 driving through Detroit; yellow steam poured from a manhole cover, cars moved in red or blue; and trees and buildings, including the iconic Michigan Central Station, were outlined in white.

Stephen Crouch, chief technology officer of Blackmore, was driving on this April morning, explaining the way his company's lidar system could help a robot car see the world around it.

Numerous lidar companies with names such as Velodyne, Ouster, Innoviz and TetraVue are also promoting their own technologies. But a Free Press reporter was asked to ride along with Crouch on the morning of April 9 to get a view of what his Bozeman, Montana-based company's lidar can see.

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The company says its lidar borrows from technology used in Doppler radar, providing visibility of more than a quarter mile to see rotating tires at a distance or even the limbs of pedestrians.

"Most lidar companies measure the fluctuation in the intensity of light bouncing off objects, or what is called amplitude modulation. ... Blackmore uses quantum mechanics to see an electric field around the vehicle," according to a company news release.

Of course the technology isn't cheap. A company fact sheet sets the price at $20,000 per unit but notes that it is "expected to drop with scale." Some in the industry have said they expect units to eventually be priced in the hundreds of dollars.

Elon Musk famously described lidar as a crutch, but most experts say it offers crucial redundancy for driverless cars, which also use cameras and radar as they navigate their surroundings. Consider what happens to your car's backup camera after you drive on a mud-covered road. 

Contact Eric D. Lawrence: elawrence@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @_ericdlawrence.