Luminar acquires lidar data company Civil Maps
by Umar Shakir from The Verge - All Posts on (#67G1P)
Photo by Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge Lidar hardware company Luminar announced it has acquired Civil Maps, a lidar data company based in San Francisco. The acquisition brings ultra-detailed and automatically updating 3D maps of various cities into Luminar's fold as it plans to bring fully autonomous vehicles into reality.
Luminar will integrate the Civil Maps assets, which include navigation data, into its Sentinel platform. Sentinel is the company's full-stack software suite solution that's currently in development for lidar-equipped cars, like the upcoming Volvo EX90.
The news comes during CES 2023, where Luminar is set to showcase vehicles from its partners, Volvo and Chinese automaker SIAC. The vehicles are equipped with fully integrated lidar systems, including a fairly...