LiDAR News: Luminar, Mobileye, Voyant, Tesla, Broadcom, Sense Photonics

BusinessWire, Forbes: Luminar has struck a deal with Mobileye, an Intel company, to supply Luminar lidar for the company’s Autonomous Vehicle (AV) Series solution in its next phase of driverless car development and testing.

As part of the agreement, Mobileye will collaborate with Luminar to use its lidar for the first generation of its level 4 Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) pilot and driverless fleet in key markets around the world, including Tel Aviv, Israel; Dubai, UAE; Paris, France; and Daegu City, South Korea.

Financial terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. They don’t include Mobileye taking an equity stake in Luminar.

“The camera gets you the first 99%” of visual data for self-driving vehicles, says Austin Russell, Luminar CEO. “Lidar gets you that last 1%.” 

Voyant Photonics responds to Elon Mask statement "you need to focus on vision because the entire road system is based on passive optical.

So you have to sell passive optical to have a self-driving system that is generally a solution. And once you solve passive optical, you’ve solved self-driving. So, why bother with anything else?"

Voyant says "nobody drove to work with any electromagnetic radiation coming out their eyes. That is not what eyes do. Yet, anyone who drove in a Tesla was shooting 77 GHz radio waves out of their front bumper.

Teslas have 77 GHz radars from Continental pumping data into their Autopilot systems."

Broadcom presents its LiDAR approach at today's EPIC Online Technology Meeting on 3D Sensing:

Sense Photonics presents its flash LiDAR solution at today's EPIC Meeting: