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Luminar Profile - A safer future for autonomous vehicles

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In the article published on Wired Magazine, our team learned about the startup called Luminar. A company that focuses specifically on creating a more reliable and accurate self-driving solution.


Austin Russel (left)

Luminar is led by 22-year-old CEO Austin Russell, who started this company at the age of 18. Prior to this, he had been focused on the study of photonics and optics. He received funding from Pay-Pal co-founder Peter Thiel to pursue this avenue (The Peter Thiel Fellowship), while then a Stanford Undergraduate student - dropping out to work on Luminar full-time.


LiDAR imaging 

Austin has spent the last 4 years working on Luminar. Having watched various competitors develop cheaper and cheaper solutions, he holds a firm belief that Luminar will be more successful than the competition due to it being technologically superior. This is because with his team he has developed custom LiDAR technology (Light Detection and Ranging - an imaging process that allows computers to map the 3D space around it) from the ground up which operates at a higher wavelength of light over traditional LiDAR systems. This results in an imaging range of over 10 times the distance achievable by its competitors at 50 times the resolution, which gives Luminar's autonomous cars 200m of high-resolution active vision allowing it 7 seconds to process the road ahead. This also means that the solution will have better reactions against edge cases such as a child running on to the road chasing a ball. 

Moreover, compared to current autonomous driving technologies which require 64 LiDAR sensors in order to function, the Luminar solution only requires one. This allows the system to be cheaper to make as well as making it far less harmful to other road users who may be staring at the LiDAR sensor which can be damaging to the eyes. 

Overall Austin plans to roll this out to a larger number of major auto manufacturers, providing 100 units to strategic partners. He is confident that the manufacturers will choose Luminar due to their commitment to providing much better safety to both pedestrians, passengers and other road users with greater assurances against possible failures. 

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