Are you ready to cede control of your commute to an autonomous vehicle, or buckle your loved ones in and send them off without a driver? Several technologies need to become mainstream before most people will be ready, and one of them is advanced light detection and ranging systems.
Lidar sensors bounce light beams off objects and use the data generated by those beams to create images of the objects. A Silicon Valley startup called Luminar claims to have reimagined lidar technology, and one of the startup’s investors claims automakers are ready to buy as many chips as Luminar can produce, regardless of the price.
Instead of silicon, Luminar is using an indium gallium arsenide alloy, which it produces in-house. Indium gallium arsenide can react with 1.5 micron infrared light. This light does not pose a risk to the human eye so Luminar can use beams of higher intensity than those used by its competitors and its lidar can detect objects that are up to 250 meters away. The company has patented its hardware and software, and says its sensors will have 10-times the range and 50-times the resolution of current lidar systems.
Luminar was founded by Austin Russell, a 22-year-old who applied for his first patent a decade ago, and more recently dropped out of Stanford to work on lidar technology with a grant from a foundation backed by investor Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal.
Luminar’s competitors include Waymo, which is owned by Google parent Alphabet and is used to help control Google’s self-driving cars. Velodyne Lidar, another competitor, is backed by Ford Motor Company and already has several lidar sensors on the market.
Production of Luminar lidar sensors is set to start this year in Florida. According to one report, the startup hopes to sell its sensors for $1,000 each.
