During Fords presentation at CES 2016 the CEO of the car manufacturer presented the ‘Ultra Puck’ which will enable Ford’s cars to navigate without any human interaction.

The Puck is a LiDAR based 360° 3D scanner with a range of 100m and its juste the size of a coffee mug. The device uses radar technology in combination with some lasers to scan the environment in a range of 100m. This process produces 300.000 points per second.

This 3D mapping or scanning technique can be used to navigate drones, produce a detailed map the environment (as seen below) and even navigate cars.

Velodyne works with companies like Google, Ford, Volvo, Bing, Baidu, Here, Tomtom and Tencent. They offer a range of LiDAR 3D mapping systems. The Puck is the smallest system and the price starts at 7999$.