Luminar Technologies has partnered with Zenseact – a 550-person team of ADAS and autonomous software experts – to deliver autonomous software for series production vehicles. Volvo Cars is the first launch customer, representing both companies’ first production design win for software.
Luminar says its new product suite, Sentinel, is the industry’s first full-stack autonomous solution for series production. It integrates Zenseact’s OnePilot autonomous driving software solution alongside Luminar’s Iris lidar, perception software and other components, enabling every auto maker to offer highway autonomy and proactive safety capabilities on their production vehicles. While the wider autonomous industry largely focuses on robotaxi applications, Luminar and Zenseact collectively remain focused on delivering systems into series production vehicles.
Sentinel will equip global auto makers with two core functionalities:
Proactive safety: For the first time, vehicles can proactively avoid collisions with evasive maneuvers, leading to seven times fewer accidents. The advanced camera-based ADAS system will only attempt to reactively avoid collisions in ideal conditions, in a straight line, and generally after the driver does not respond.
Highway autonomy: Hands-free, eyes-free, truly autonomous driving on highways – as opposed to the most advanced ADAS systems today, which require constant driver attention and system overrides at a moment’s notice, defeating the main purpose of autonomy – to free-up the driver’s time and substantially improve vehicle safety.
Sentinel is powered in part by Zenseact’s OnePilot software, which helps provide a single user experience throughout the user’s journey. OnePilot continuously assesses the surroundings to enable autonomous highway driving. OnePilot also provides the driver with useful information and warnings and may intervene by overriding controls to make sure the user has a safe journey.
Sentinel also incorporates over-the-air updates to expand the operating domain of autonomy and further improve the safety of vehicles over time.
“Zenseact has greater experience in advanced ADAS and autonomous software for production vehicles than anyone I’ve seen in the industry, having decades of experience delivering to Volvo Cars and nearly a dozen other production programs,” said Austin Russell, founder and CEO of Luminar. “We are working together day in and out to deliver this comprehensive autonomous software solution for Volvo Cars, and now are making this solution available to the industry at large. For Luminar, this is key in our transformation from a lidar provider to a software and systems company, enabling autonomy and improved vehicle safety to become ubiquitous.”
“The whole point of autonomous driving technology is to reduce accidents and save lives. This alliance enables us to make that technology more broadly accessible and thus even more impactful,” said Ödgärd Andersson, CEO of Zenseact. “Early in Luminar’s journey I met Austin and the Luminar team, and realized we share the same vision of relentlessly developing the very best possible technology to save lives. We have collaborated ever since, and I continue to be impressed by the growing team of highly skilled engineers and experts at Luminar and their uncompromising approach to increasing safety on roads.”
Zenseact is responsible for delivering its OnePilot software and Luminar’s perception software to Volvo Cars, while Luminar is responsible for providing its holistic Sentinel solution to other auto makers.