Luminar Releases Lidar Receiver with Cost of $3 to Get Clearer Images

Before the self-driving car changed people's daily life, the sensor system of the car had to reduce its cost on a large scale first, and the price of Lidar is still more expensive than the car and the state of being out of stock forever has become a development of the unmanned vehicle industry. A huge stumbling block.

In order to achieve this goal, the leading laser lidar manufacturers have made great efforts. Reliability is the hardest requirement of a laser sensor. For example, Velodyne can send millions of laser spots per second to measure how far the signal rebounds. However, competition in the industry has always been fierce. For example, Waymo, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, has its own dedicated laser radar. CIS, a subsidiary of GM’s self-driving car department, recently acquired a start-up called Strobe, and this article will introduce the latest challenger, Luminar.

Luminar was founded by a Stanford drop-out teenager, Austin Russell. They recently released a new product that is adequate to see 120-degree angles from the front of the car. It also shows that cheap and efficient production of laser radar has become possible.

*Austin Russell *

A year ago, Luminar, who completed a $36 million seed round of financing, showed off the products he had polished from scratch. Russell said that their laser radar uses wavelengths of 1550 nanometers, with a detection range of over 200 meters and a resolution 50 times higher than similar products, giving them the ability to see objects in the dark, even in extreme non-reflective situations.

People who have watched product comparison demos told the media that the Luminar Lidar's images were clearer than those of Velodyne and Quanergy.

Russell dismissed the competition and said that they "cannot meet the safety requirements of self-driving cars." However, their own products are also faced with the dilemma of high cost and difficult production.

Now things are finally getting better and Luminar has increased its production capacity. Russell said: "It took a whole day last year to make a set of equipment - it needs to be manually assembled by Dr. Optics. Now we have 136,000 square feet (12,600 square meters) of manufacturing center, only 8 minutes Can be assembled."

Throughout 2017, Luminar produced only 100 lidars. By the end of this year, they plan to increase production capacity to 5,000 units per quarter. Russell said, "The platform can be expanded to tens of thousands, allowing our partners to equip a larger fleet of self-driving cars. By the end of this year, the company will be able to drive every self-driving car on the road. LIDAR sensor available."

However, there is no need to worry that the company will trade off quality by sacrificing quality. Their systems are 30% lighter and energy-efficient. The effective distance is increased from 200 meters to 250 meters, and even lower reflectivity can be detected. Objects - such as people walking in the dark in black clothes.

Luminar's lidar is basically the same principle as its kind: emitting a laser beam and calculating the return time. They all need a receiver, which is a photosensitive surface to identify the returned photons.

But Luminar's receiver is not the same as someone else's home.

Most photoreceptors used in digital cameras and other LiDAR systems are based on silicon. This material is well-studied, inexpensive, and the manufacturing process is mature.

But Luminar developed the system from scratch using a compound called indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs). Indium gallium arsenic-based photoreceptors can be applied to different optical frequencies (1550 nm instead of 900 or so), causing less harm to human vision and greatly improving the capture efficiency.

The general rule is that the more light you get, the better the sensor. The same applies here. Luminar's indium gallium arsenic receiver and a single radar transmitter produce much better images than similarly sized or powered devices, and use fewer moving parts.

Like most of the good things that are powerful, indium gallium arsenic has one drawback: it's too expensive, and it also requires specialized design capabilities. The talents who can use it are scarce...

In order to solve this problem, Luminar can only minimize the use of indium gallium arsenide, and only use this kind of material only when necessary. They have taken some engineering measures instead of using a series of photodetectors like other LiDAR systems.

Now, Luminar finally announced that they have significantly reduced the cost of the receiver, from tens of thousands of dollars down to 3 dollars.

How did you do it? The answer is to acquire a like-minded and still powerful chip company.

Last year, Luminar and a company called Black Forest Engineering co-designed chips and found that their methods are extremely similar. So Luminar acquired this company, and Luminar has since greatly increased the power of laser radar while reducing the cost of manufacturing.

At the same time, Luminar also introduced internal designers to customize its own optoelectronic receivers and various chips. "We developed our own ASIC. We used only a little indium gallium arsenide to put it in the chip. We also customized the chip." Russell said.

Luminar now has about 350 employees, including 30 from Black Forest and 200 later recruited. They also hired former Jason Wojak, an employee of Motorola, to appoint him as chief hardware officer, and to let the former Harman employees lead Alejandro Garcia.

The company announced in September last year that it had reached cooperation with the Toyota Research Institute. It is said that there are three other car manufacturers working with them, but Luminar declined to disclose the company's name. The specific price of the Luminar LiDAR is still not clear, and Russell only said that after the mass production, the production cost of each laser radar is “much lower” than 1000 US dollars.

Shaded Pole Motor

Shaded Pole Motor,Shaded Pole Induction Motor,The Shaded Pole Motor,Shaded Pole Single Phase Motor

Hangzhou Jinjiu Electric Appliance Co Ltd. , http://www.jinjiufanmotor.com