Waymo LLC, the self-driving car subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., has started selling one of the core technologies underpinning its autonomous vehicles to other companies.

The Laser Bear Honeycomb is a short-range sensor that the group’s driverless taxis use to detect objects in their immediate vicinity. In the blog post announcing the commercialization effort today, Waymo said the system is one of three LIDAR sensors it has developed in-house to support its autonomous fleet.

LiDAR, short for Light Detection and Ranging, is the most common method used by autonomous vehicles to collect environmental data. Sensors that implement the technique work by continuously firing off laser pulses in a circular pattern and measuring how long it takes them to return. Each pulse forms a single dot in a detailed three-dimensional map that is refreshed as a car moves.

Waymo installs Laser Bear Honeycomb units on the sides of its driverless taxis to fill the blind spots of their longer-range LiDAR systems. The compact sensor can detect objects immediately next to a vehicle, including not only other cars but also small obstacles such as stray traffic cones that are close to the ground.

The system has a 360-degree horizontal field of view and a 95-degree vertical view with a maximum range of 30 feet on flat terrain. It sees objects from double that distance when facing down a slope. A single Laser Bear Honeycomb unit can detect up to four objects at once, which means that a vehicle equipped with several sensors can navigate fairly crowded environments.

Waymo said that it will make the sensor available only to companies outside the autonomous driving market. The Alphabet subsidiary is eyeing industries such as agriculture, security and robotics where LiDAR adoption has been steadily growing in recent years. A production line robot, for instance, might harness Laser Beam Honeycomb to detect when there are human workers nearby and take safety measures.

Waymo claims that a number of companies have already bought the sensor and dozens of others are expressing interest.

Photo: Google