Luminar car drivers#
Luminar car manual#

I suspect most consumers will not, and we actually know that most consumers use assisted driving in a way that is, frankly, closer to drivers would behave if they were expecting full autonomy. Wood: I understand the technical difference that you’re describing between autonomy and assisted driving. It doesn’t necessarily mean that initially every car that you buy will be able to convert, like a transformer, into a sleep pod. Ultimately, it’s up to the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) to determine the specific functionality and domain that is specifically determined and fully tested and validated over these various use cases to be safe in. Russell: I mean, the main difference between a level two assisted driving system and an automated driving system, like in this case, it has end-to-end functionality within a given operational domain. If I straight up go to sleep on the freeway, and then the expectation is I’ll wake up in time to take my exit, I can kind of see where that could go wrong in a hurry. This feels like it almost even increases the opportunity for that. We’ve already sort of seen people over-rely, let’s say, on technology, like Autopilot - not take control when they need to. Molly Wood: This approach, though, has also been referred to as kind of the mushy middle of automation. That’s something they can actually put into a consumer vehicle, something that you could buy. We’re talking costs on the order of $1,000, as opposed to $100,000 for these kinds of autonomous vehicles.

Luminar car manual#

And then a couple minutes before the final exit, have a planned manual takeover to drive to the final destination.

The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.Īustin Russell: You’ll actually be able to get on a highway with this, enable autonomous mode, take your hands off, eyes off, read a book, use your phone, work on your laptop, watch a movie, take a nap. He told me getting self-driving cars working in cities is hard, but autonomous highway driving is easier and cheaper. I spoke with Austin Russell, CEO and founder of Luminar. It’s kind of like what Tesla promises with Autopilot, except less human intervention required. It plans to enable autonomous driving on highways by 2022. A few years ago, I visited a super promising company called Luminar, which makes LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, technology that helps autonomous cars see the world around them.