Five years ago, Eric Aguilar was fed up. He had worked on lidar and other sensors for years at Tesla and Google X, but the technology always seemed too expensive and, more importantly, unreliable. He replaced the lidar sensors when they broke—which was all too often, and seemingly at random—and developed complex calibration methods and maintenance routines just to keep them functioning and the cars drivable. So, when he reached the end of his rope, he invented a more robust technology—w...