A tech startup at central Florida research park on the outskirts of UCF is working towards making driving significantly safer.
Luminar has a goal of saving 100 million lives over the next 100 years with its high-tech, lidar-based remote sensing system. Lidar, which stands for “light detection and ranging,” uses the light from a laser to collect measurements and generate precise 3D information about the shape of the Earth and the characteristics of its surface.
It’s the same technology autonomous vehicles use to avoid obstacles and navigate the roads safely, essentially serving as the self-driving vehicle’s eyes.
However, instead of going all in on driverless cars, Luminar’s 27-year-old founder, Austin Russell, told anchor Justin Warmoth on “The Weekly” he’s more focused on using his company’s lidar to ultimately create an “uncrashable car” by improving driver-assist systems in a big way. The focus is more about enhancing drivers ability and making them better drivers in order to save lives, according to Russel.
Luminar went public in 2020, making Russell the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at the age of 25 after he started the company when he was 17 and since then, signing deals with some of the world’s biggest automotive manufacturers, including Volvo, Nissan and Mercedes-Benz, to install the company’s lidar system in millions of new vehicles over the next few years.
The technology aims for collision avoidance, taking over the braking system and steering wheel to avoid impending accidents.
Russel says that the fact that his company has built everything from the ground up differentiates his company from the rest.
“We make all of our own components, chips, everything that’s gone into it today to achieve this breakthrough level of performance,” he said. “We sort of had our claim to fame by having this huge 10x improvement in performance capabilities, safety, and what we could enable by seeing very long distances, very accurately, in a league no one else could.”
While Luminar has a presence in Silicon Valley, the majority of its production happens at its Orlando headquarters. In fact, the company just cut the ribbon on a new long-range lidar test facility along Barack Obama Parkway.
Russell said Central Florida’s rich talent pool is another major factor in the company’s early success. The largest Department of Defense laser programs, including Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, have a significant presence in Orlando as well.
“When it comes to hardware and these types of lidar systems, Orlando has been amazing,” Russell said. “I think that was really a key driver, and also just seeing the potential of Orlando and Central Florida generally. I think it was substantially underestimated in terms of the capabilities of what you can get out of it.”
This story was first reported by ClickOrlando.com
