Silicon Valley-based Velodyne Lidar is collaborating with Ford Otosan on product development and testing of autonomous heavy commercial trucks.
Ford Otosan is testing and planning to use Velodyne Velarray H800 lidar sensors to enable safe navigation and collision avoidance in next generation vehicles.
The technology delivers high resolution mapping and object classification tasks for autonomous driving technology.
It will help Ford Otosan create autonomous driving technology addressing edge-cases for driving situations, including curvy roads, potholes, intersections, on/off ramps, residential areas and roadways with unclear lane markings.
It delivers high performance during daylight and at night, enabling the detection of vehicles, pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists and more.
Ford Otosan is already using Velodyne’s Alpha Prime lidar sensors, which provide 360-degree surround-view perception technology to support autonomous mobility.
“Autonomous vehicle technology, powered by lidar, can bring multiple efficiency and safety benefits to the trucking industry,” Ford Otosan assistant general manager Burak Gökçelik says.
“Our autonomous driving initiative with Velodyne looks to improve roadway safety by helping trucks understand and react to approaching road conditions and surroundings.”
Velodyne Lidar is the first public pure-play lidar company and is known worldwide for its broad portfolio of lidar technologies.
Ford Otosan is the biggest commercial vehicle production centre of Ford in Europe. It has annual production capacity of 455,000 vehicles, 70,000 engines and 140,000 powertrains.
The company produces and develops Transit and Tourneo range commercial vehicles, and also serves as the global engineering and production centre for Ford Trucks heavy commercial vehicles and their engine systems.
