In this photo taken on Monday, April 10, 2017, Luminar CEO Austin Russell gestures while looking at a 3D LIDAR map during a demo drive in San Francisco. Russell, now 22, wasn’t old enough to drive when he set out to develop a safer navigation system for robot-controlled cars. Five years after he co-founded Luminar Technologies, a Silicon Valley startup aiming to take the rapidly expanding self-driving car industry in a new direction, his ambitions are being put to the test. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
Austin Russell, now 22, wasn’t old enough to drive when he set out to develop a safer navigation system for robot-controlled cars. His ambitions are now being tested.
Five years ago, Russell co-founded Luminar Technologies, a Silicon Valley startup aiming to take the rapidly expanding self-driving car industry in a new direction. Luminar remained fiercely protective of its work until Thursday, when the company announced that it is far more powerful than LiDAR, a key sensing technology used in self-driving cars designed by Google, Uber and major automakers. Russell has revealed the first details about the product he is promoting.
LIDAR systems work by reflecting a laser off nearby objects and measuring the reflections to build a detailed 3D image of the surrounding environment. This technology is similar to radar, which uses radio waves instead of lasers.
Russell said Luminar’s version is comprised of unique, patented hardware and software that provides 50 times the resolution and 10 times the range of current LIDAR systems. These improvements will allow self-driving cars to reach the mass market more quickly, he said.
Seal backbone
During an interview in an empty warehouse on the San Francisco Pier where Luminar is testing lidar, Russell isn’t afraid to make big claims about his company’s technology. “When you see your car powered by Luminar, you know it’s safer,” he said. “We need to get to the point where humans don’t need to be constantly babysitting or controlling self-driving cars.”
In this photo taken on Monday, April 10, 2017, Jason Eichenholtz, Luminar’s chief technology officer, points to a 3D LIDAR map displayed on a screen in San Francisco. Luminar Technologies, a Silicon Valley startup, is taking the rapidly expanding self-driving car industry in a new direction. Luminar remained fiercely protective of its work until Thursday, when the company announced that it is far more powerful than LiDAR, a key sensing technology used in self-driving cars designed by Google, Uber and major automakers. Russell has revealed the first details about the product he is promoting. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
If Luminar’s lidar works as promised, some of the world’s largest technology and auto companies could be elevated through the ranks by a precocious entrepreneur who memorized the entire periodic table of elements at the age of two. Maybe. Russell says he was tinkering with supercomputers by the age of 11.
Like another tech genius, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Russell had early support from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. Thiel became a billionaire after investing $500,000 in Facebook during its early years.
One of Luminar’s early investors is a venture capital firm backed by Thiel and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Russell also won the Thiel Fellowship, which pays students $100,000 to work on promising ideas in exchange for a degree, and dropped out of Stanford University after just three months.
Cost or safety?
Like Zuckerberg, Russell is also the CEO of his company. Most of Luminar’s roughly 150 employees are older than him, including 45-year-old Jason Eichenholtz, a former photonics guru who is now the company’s chief technology officer. Mr. Russell’s father, a former commercial real estate specialist, is the company’s chief financial officer.
Now Russell will have to prove that he has truly invented something revolutionary.
In this photo taken on Monday, April 10, 2017, Luminar CEO Austin Russell gestures while speaking to reporters in San Francisco. Russell, now 22, wasn’t old enough to drive when he set out to develop a safer navigation system for robot-controlled cars. Five years after he co-founded Luminar Technologies, a Silicon Valley startup aiming to take the rapidly expanding self-driving car industry in a new direction, his ambitions are being put to the test. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
LIDAR is a key component of self-driving technology, but some wonder if Luminar is tackling the wrong problem. Alex Rideau, CEO of lidar chip supplier Efficient Power Conversion, said the big problem with lidar systems these days is cost, not safety. Currently, systems cost several thousand dollars each.
“We don’t need a solution that stops the car before the insect hits the windshield,” Rideau said. “The question becomes: How much accurate information does a car need to make the right decision every time?”
Luminar plans to manufacture 10,000 lidar units this year at its 50,000 square foot factory in Orlando, Florida. Mr. Russell would not disclose the cost. About 100 LiDAR systems will be tested by four self-driving car manufacturers, which Luminar did not specify. Partners include technology companies and automakers, Russell said.
Rider’s scenery
Luminar will compete with other lidar suppliers such as Velodyne and Quanergy Systems, which have each raised $150 million to date. Velodyne’s backers include Ford Motor Co., which invested $75 million last summer.
By comparison, Luminar has raised $36 million, some of which was used to establish its headquarters in a former Silicon Valley ranch that housed a collection of vintage military tanks.
In this photo taken on Monday, April 10, 2017, Luminar CEO Austin Russell gestures while speaking to reporters in San Francisco. Russell, now 22, wasn’t old enough to drive when he set out to develop a safer navigation system for robot-controlled cars. Mr. Russell’s ambitions are about to be tested five years after he co-founded Luminar Technologies, a Silicon Valley startup aiming to take the rapidly expanding self-driving car industry in a new direction. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
Waymo, a company spun off from Google’s early self-driving car development, also looms as a strong competitor. The company hopes to sell its technology, including lidar systems, to automakers.
One sign of LIDAR’s importance: Waymo accused Uber of stealing its technology in a high-profile legal battle. Uber denied the allegations and insisted it had designed its own superior lidar system.
Waymo’s LiDAR has a proven track record. The company’s self-driving cars have traveled more than 2 million miles in self-driving mode on city roads without being involved in a major traffic accident. Most of the approximately 30 accidents Google reported last year were due to fender benders.
Russell is not impressed. “It’s very easy to build self-driving cars that are safe 99 percent of the time,” he says. “The remaining 1% is the hard part.”
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Source: Aspiring tech genius tries to reroute self-driving cars (April 13, 2017) https://phys.org/news/2017-04-aspiring-tech-prodigy-re-route-self Retrieved September 27, 2024 from-driving.html
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