LiDAR News: Livox, Voyant, Aeye, Conti, Luminar, Daimler

 Livox announces two new products, Mid-70 and AVIA:

Livox demos 500m detection range of its LiDAR:

Voyant Photonics President Peter Stern talks about Apple LiDAR:

"The iPhone time-of-flight LiDAR, probably built with the same amazing SPAD array used in the iPad, coupled with a VCSEL array for illumination, is an engineering marvel. It’s absolute magic.

After working on LiDAR three decades ago that could detect telephone lines kilometers away from a fast-moving, low-flying helicopter, I have been waiting for this kind of LiDAR magic for a long time.

At Voyant, we have a different approach. No VCSELs, no SPADs. Adapting microscopic optical components from datacom chips to active sensing, we have created a coherent pixel array for LiDAR, similar to the ubiquitous CMOS image sensors found everywhere. Each pixel both transmits and receives light at 1550 nm wavelengths.

We expect the sale price for our initial imaging LiDAR to be less than $500 by 2023 and drop quickly as production ramps up. To put that in perspective, our initial product price for 2023 is less than Velodyne’s plan for 2024."

Aeye switches between its CEO and President. The new CEO, Blair LaCorte, used to be the company's President, while Luis Dussan, AEye founder and former CEO, becomes the new President.

Aeye also announces that Continental has invested into the company. By partnering with AEye, Continental complements its existing short-range 3D Flash LiDAR technology, which goes into series production later this year. This start of production of the High-Resolution 3D Flash LiDAR (HFL) is a key milestone for Conti. It is said to be the first high-resolution solid-state LiDAR sensor to go into series production in the automotive market worldwide.

“We now have optimum short-range and world-class long-range LiDAR technologies with their complimentary set of benefits under one roof. This puts us in a strong position to cover the full vehicle environment with state-of-the-art LiDAR sensor technology and to facilitate Automated Driving at SAE levels 3 or higher in both passenger cars and commercial vehicle applications,” said Frank Petznick, head of the ADAS business unit at Conti.

Techcrunch, BusinessWire: Daimler’s  trucks division has invested in Luminar  as part of a broader partnership to produce autonomous trucks. The undisclosed investment by Daimler is in addition to the $170M that Luminar raised as part of its reverse-merger IPO. Y year go, Daimler took a majority stake in Torc Robotics,  an autonomous trucking startup that had been working with Luminar the past two years.

The deal comes just days after Daimler and Waymo announced plans to work together to build an autonomous version of the Freightliner Cascadia truck. is the latest action by the German manufacturer to move away from robotaxis and shared mobility and instead focus on tracks.