At its inaugural Studio Day in New York City last week, Luminar Technologies, Inc introduced Blade, its vision for the future of design and integration of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology across robotaxis, trucking, and consumer cars. The company also showcased the first consumer vehicle fully integrated with its Iris LiDAR, which is on track for series production with OEM partners starting in late 2022.
“Ultimately, it takes more than just great technology to deliver great design, and that’s exactly why we’re proud to show off the Blade concept with Iris that goes beyond the cars of today and visualizes the robo-taxis and trucks of tomorrow,” said Austin Russell, Founder and CEO of Luminar.
The event kicks off a global customer roadshow to demonstrate the performance, capabilities, and design integration of Iris. The company’s latest perception technology enables both detection and classification of objects out to 250 m (820 ft). It can perceive semantic segmentation classes like drivable space, lane, object, obstacle; object classes such as vehicles, trucks, pedestrians, and motorcycles; and can understand lane lines (whether solid, dashed, and dotted) and roads out to 150 m (490 ft). A single 1550-nm laser enables long ranges with pulse energy of 905 nm. Rather than spinning the whole lidar device, there are two-axis scanning mirrors with 120° x 30° field-of-view.
“Luminar is making the transition from the leader in LiDAR to the leader in automotive autonomy and safety,” added Russell. “Historically autonomous vehicle companies have been exclusively focused on robotaxis, but our focus has been building the technology foundation for autonomy starting with consumer vehicles and moving across verticals including trucks and robotaxis.”
When it comes to passenger cars, the company says that harmony of form, function, and technology is a paramount ideal for consumers and automakers. It bills the Blade as a first-ever concept and a powerful design expression of autonomous technology seamlessly integrated into cars, trucks, and robotaxis—incorporated into vehicle development programs from the onset.
The Blade concepts shown for robotaxi and trucking represent a creative collaboration between Luminar and NewDealDesign, led by acclaimed technology designer Gadi Amit, President / Principal Designer. Amit’s company is no stranger to transportation, having recently designed the Rolla compact, clean, and personal service option for mass transit. The stand-up pod has a full wrap interior to display routes and provide an immersive experience and is designed for automated daily disinfection for safe and healthy rides.
“Many technology companies under-appreciate the importance of design in envisioning fundamental technology architecture, especially when it comes to automotive,” said Amit. “Luminar has redefined AV design with seamless consumer vehicle integration, and it is taking it to the next level with the Blade concept. We hope that Blade can become the manifestation of blending LiDAR, autonomy, and next-generation vehicle design in an optimized and iconic way.”
“To create the best car design and user experience, autonomous technology must be engineered and designed hand-in-hand from the ground up,” added Jason Wojack, Senior Vice President of Product Development at Luminar, who honed his design-meets-engineering sensibility as the chief architect of Motorola‘s Droid RAZR. “Focusing on form and function at not just the LiDAR-level but the vehicle-level has enabled Luminar to spearhead the design integration of autonomous technology.”
Luminar says its Iris is the first autonomous technology designed to marry form and function, seamlessly combining performance, auto-grade robustness, scalability, and automotive aesthetic. It was designed to be cleanly integrated into the vehicle roofline, displacing the roof-rack style modules historically seen on autonomous development vehicles, and leapfrogging bolt-on products in development.
The two Blade designs address the unique use-case requirements for robotaxi and trucking, both integrating the sensing technology into the roofline of the vehicle in an autonomous “blade.”
The robotaxi imagines a sleek and roomy design for autonomous operation on highways and urban environments. Located for best performance, the golden blade runs across the crown of the vehicle, incorporating four LiDARs for 360-degree coverage. The vehicle is built for consumers as well as ridesharing operations as lines between applications blur, according to Luminar.
The trucking design imagines a compact design integration, with a three-LiDAR configuration for long-range sensing in all directions. It has the capability to be retrofitted onto existing Class 8 trucks.
The Blade designs are meant to give Luminar partners a reference for incorporating Luminar’s technology into their future vehicles. It demonstrates the company’s commitment to not only delivering leading-edge technology but also beautiful design integration.
