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Luminar is an American autonomous car development company, established by Austin Russell in 2012 and later joined by co-founder, Jason Eichenholz. Luminar operated in stealth mode since its founding until emerging in April 2017. The company develops and manufactures LiDAR systems, a type of laser-based RADAR, which allows autonomous cars to see and interpret the road ahead in 3D. It set a target of producing 10,000 units of its next generation sensor to start. The firm's 70,000 ft2 manufacturing facility is based in Orlando, Florida, with offices in Portola Valley, in the Silicon Valley area. Peter Thiel's 1517 Fund, and GVA Capital and Canvas Ventures are the main investors in Luminar.

History
Russell, an applied physicist, was programming by age 9, building supercomputers by the age of 12, and worked on developing advanced laser technology at the Beckman Laser Institute as a teenager. In 2012, Russell founded Luminar with the support from his then advisor, now co-founder, Jason Eichenholz to develop a new kind of LiDAR specifically for autonomous cars. Russell was attending Stanford University when entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel awarded him $100,000 to drop out after just three months to focus full-time on Luminar. The sum was given as part of Thiel's Fellowship program which awards $100,000 to budding entrepreneurs aged 22 or younger to skip college and work on an innovative project. Russell's advisor, Eichenholz, became the firm's CTO, and Luminar subsequently acquired his optics productization company, Open Photonics.

As of October 2017, Luminar had 250 employees, most of which are based in the firm's 70,000 ft2 manufacturing facility in Orlando, Florida. The company's office is in the Portola Valley, in the Silicon Valley area, in a building which was formerly a tank repair warehouse. It also uses an empty warehouse on a pier in San Francisco to test vehicles fitted with the technology. Russell has said of his and Eichenholz's process for developing its technology: "We had to find 2000 ways not to make a lidar system before we found the one way that finally delivers on what the industry needs. We made a breakthrough that will allow self-driving cars to be ubiquitous and, most importantly, safe".

Technology
Autonomous cars rely on Lidar, a type of a laser-based radar which allows the cars to view and judge the environment around them in 3D. Though Lidar technology has been around since the 1960s, Russell states that "We’re making our own lasers, our own receivers, our own scanning mechanisms, our own processing electronics—all from scratch." In comparison to most systems for autonomous vehicles using Lidar lasers which use off the shelf components and operate at the 905 nanometer wavelength, Luminar sensors are more dynamic and operate at 1550 nanometer wavelength, making them more powerful. The technology is able to see low reflectivity objects at ten percent up to 250 m, in comparison to 905 nanometer systems only seeing that object at about 30 m to 40 m.  The enhanced laser technology, testament to several years of development from Russell and his team, makes it possible for cars to attain speeds of 75 mph (with 7 seconds reaction time), without breaching eye safety rules, and are able to work in adverse weather conditions, seeing through fog and dust. According to Technology Review, the Luminar sensor is also able to "zoom in on a particular object by directing more laser beams in that direction, using a system of small, moving mirrors that actively steer its laser". Luminar sensors are only slightly larger than a Nintendo Wii and are fitted into the bumper of the cars.

As of April 2017 Luminar was producing 100 units, some of which were integrated into BMW and Tesla cars, though the firm has set a target for 10,000 automotive Lidar units for its next generation. The long term goal of Luminar is to fit the technology into all automobiles, and they plan on commencing much larger-scale operations with hundreds of thousands being produced annually by 2019. Russell has said of development: "An autonomous vehicle that’s 99 percent safe won’t be good enough. This is mission critical. You can’t afford to miss a single object because that object could be a person. There's a huge race to the bottom in the race for commoditization of LiDAR. It's getting to the point where these sensors are more appropriate for Roombas (robotic household vacuums) than autonomous vehicles. They don't have anything close to good enough to drive an autonomous car."

Partners
In 2017, Toyota Research Institute debuted its Platform 2.1 with integration of Luminar sensing platform. The vehicles are being tested on public roads in Silicon Valley, Ann Arbor, Mich., and Cambridge, Mass.