Video Transcript
Scott Faris, Chief Business Officer, Luminar Technologies, Inc. [00:00:03] For the last hundred and thirty years, automobiles and mobility in general has been defined by a human effectively driving the vehicle. What we’re now doing is we’re starting to pioneer an era where computers can start to drive and navigate vehicles.
So if we expect cars to be able to drive themselves, the cars need to be able to understand and recognize the environment around them. That’s really the core of Luminar is to figure out how we provide computers and cars that capability.
So LiDAR is our core technology and by definition, as we’re using light to accomplish radar, thus that’s called LiDAR. What’s really cool about that is when you use LiDAR to create images and see images, you get really rich contextual knowledge about the environment.
So it makes things really easy not to understand that there’s an object out there, but most importantly, to understand what that object is. So if you think about driving, the best defense in driving is to be able to predict and see things further and further out.
And so what really makes Luminar unique is not only can we see things and understand what they are, but we also can do that at great distances, which allows us to create a very safe environment for autonomous driving.
Orlando is the Silicon Valley of LiDAR. We probably have the most number of people here that understand LiDAR technology not only how to design it, but how to test it, how to manufacture it.
One of the greatest things about being in central Florida is it’s a really rich technology community and it’s something a lot of people don’t really recognize predominantly because a lot of it has been historically focused on military applications.
But if you look at the size and diversity of companies that are in the Orlando area that are focused on developing advanced technologies, it’s actually pretty impressive.
The second thing to think about in this marketplace is the density of students within a 100 mile radius of downtown Orlando. We have close to half a million college students, which is a great pipeline of new talent. Universities that are in the area are also great research universities. So, not only do we have the students that are coming out but we have great research coming out of these universities as well.
Orlando is a major part of the Luminar organization. We have operations all over the United States. But Orlando is really core to what we do.
