Autonomous Vehicles: Velodyne Invented Modern Lidar—It’S Nearly To Facial Expression Upward Existent Competition

From Ars Technica:

We talked to Austin Russell, CEO of lidar startup Luminar.
David Hall invented modern three-dimensional lidar to a greater extent than than a decade agone for role inward the DARPA Grand Challenge competitions. His company, Velodyne, has dominated the marketplace for self-driving car lidar e'er since. Last year, Velodyne opened a factory that it said had the capacity to arrive at a meg lidar units inward 2018—far to a greater extent than than whatever other maker of high-end lidars.

Now Velodyne is starting to encounter about serious competition. Last week, lidar startup Luminar announced that it was commencement book production of its ain lidar units. The fellowship expects to arrive at 5,000 units per quarter yesteryear the destination of 2018.

Meanwhile, Israeli startup Innoviz is also getting prepare to manufacture its InnovizPro lidar inward pregnant volume. The fellowship declined to give Ars exact production numbers, exclusively telling us it has orders for thousands of units. Innoviz believes it tin sack scale upwards manufacturing rapidly to satisfy that demand.

Obviously, making lidar a mainstream automotive technology scientific discipline volition require millions of lidar units—not simply thousands. At this point, Velodyne's rivals are yet focused primarily on distributing units to companies for evaluation, testing, in addition to development. The ultimate goal is to convince customers to pose inward much larger orders for lidar sensors a twelvemonth or 2 downwards the route for role inward transportation products.

Both Velodyne in addition to Innoviz say they await their lidar units to cost hundreds rather than thousands of dollars inward the long run. But the companies are keeping the exact specs in addition to prices of their products secret, making it difficult to figure out how far they are from this goal or who actually has the lead.

To create his master copy lidar, David Hall mounted 64 lasers on a spinning gimbal that rotated several times per second. Since then, Velodyne has created a pose out of dissimilar lidar models that run on the same basic principle. Today, Velodyne has models that role 16, 32, 64, in addition to 128 lasers.

Luminar in addition to Innoviz withdraw hold a dramatically dissimilar approach from Velodyne's. Both sell lidars amongst a unmarried Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation that scans across the landscape amongst the assist of a tiny moving mirror. There's an obvious cost payoff to using simply i laser, in addition to this approach tin sack give to a greater extent than flexibility virtually the vertical resolution in addition to scanning frequency of a lidar unit.

But a large downside of this blueprint is that it can't supply 360 grade coverage. Luminar says it tin sack encompass 120 degrees horizontally. In practice, this agency that a vehicle needs 4 Luminar units to supply the same 360-degree coverage every bit a unmarried Velodyne unit.

Velodyne is also producing a solid-state lidar called the Velarray. But based on conversations amongst the company, spinning lidars driblet dead on to locomote their primary focus.

Luminar says its lidar is a cutting higher upwards rivals
In an interview amongst Ars, Luminar CEO Austin Russell argued that the large characteristic that sets Luminar's lidar apart from virtually all its rivals is the wavelength of its laser....

...Autonomous Vehicles: The King of LiDAR

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 foremost charge per unit of measurement slice on the backstory of the future.
From The Verge:

The billion-dollar widget steering the driverless car industry
No affair what it took, David Hall was going to kill that clown. He maneuvered Drillzilla for about other ramming run....

For a quick primer on this materials nosotros withdraw hold on offer:

Izabella Kaminska In Conversation With the Financial Times' Auto Industry Correspondent, Peter Campbell, on the Prospects for Autonomous Vehicles

Track the link to the vid.
And a footling exam of your knowledge:

"Mapped: The Top 263 Companies Racing Toward Autonomous Cars"
Think y'all know the players?