Luminar, a company specialising in lidar sensors and associated technology, is deepening its partnership with Volvo Cars.
The Volvo Cars Tech Fund, which was announced in February, will be investing in Luminar, in addition to other AI, electrification, digital mobility and further AV technology.
Apart from lidar and other core sensing technology, Luminar has developed a ‘perception development platform’ that it will be sharing with Volvo, comprising data infrastructure, labelling and annotation tools, to take full advantage of the new level of data quality produced by its sensors.
“Volvo is at the forefront of autonomous vehicle development, and their safety-centric approach to autonomy is directly aligned with our sensing capabilities,” said Luminar founder and CEO Austin Russell.
“Our lidar is the first to deliver the necessary performance to enable safe and reliable long-range perception, which is required to unlock their goals of autonomy at highway speeds.”
“Lidar is a key technology for enabling autonomous cars to navigate safely in complex traffic environments and at higher speeds,” said Henrik Green, senior vice president for research and development at Volvo Cars.
“Our collaboration with Luminar allows us to learn more about its promising technologies and takes Volvo Cars one step further to the highly autonomous cars of the future.”
This makes Volvo the fourth OEM to partner with Luminar for AV technology after the announcement of the company’s collaboration with the Toyota Research Institute in September 2017.
By Illya Verpraet
