Lidar is the technology that’s going to unlock eyes-off, hands-free driving.
In Europe, the company at the forefront of development is Israel's Innoviz, which supplies BMW to enable level-three self-driving in the 7 Series and will also drive similar level-three set-ups in Porsche and Audi.
'Lidar' is an acronym for 'light detection and ranging'. Essentially a 3D camera, it fires lasers ahead of it to create a ‘point cloud’ that helps the car understand the relationship between objects around it.