United Kingdom-headquartered Delphi Automotive PLC has joined hands with Israel-based Innoviz Technologies to push forward the development of light radar, or lidar, technology in autonomous vehicles.

According to Dephi, long-range lidar is critical for enabling Level 3 and Level 4 autonomous vehicles to travel at high speeds, as these vehicles will need to identify objects at far-off distances and in great detail in order to operate safely.

"Along with radar and vision technology, lidar is an essential component to Delphi's automated driving perception suite," said Glen De Vos, Delphi's senior vice-president and chief technology officer.

Innoviz's proprietary lidar sensing solutions will be integrated into Delphi’s systems to provide automakers with a comprehensive portfolio of autonomous driving technologies, said Delphi, which has also made a minority investment in Innoviz.

Innoviz's lidar technology utilizes a solid-state design to provide longer-range scanning performance, as well as superior object detection and accuracy capabilities.

Omer Keilaf, co-founder and CEO of Innoviz, said, "By challenging the conventions of lidar design, we were able to develop a lidar solution that delivers superior performance at a reasonable price and in a much smaller footprint – three factors that are required to help autonomous driving achieve mass commercialization."