The Toyota Research Institute (TRI) unveiled its newest autonomous test vehicle, Platform 2.1, featuring Luminar’s sensing technology.

“We moved swiftly and early to adopt the Luminar platform into our fleet, and as a result we’re rapidly advancing our program,” said James Kuffner, chief technology officer, Toyota Research Institute. “The level of data fidelity and range is unlike anything we’ve seen and is essential to be able to develop and deliver the most advanced automated driving systems.”

Since last April, Luminar has scaled up its partnerships with a select few companies – TRI being the first to deeply integrate the new sensing platform.

“We’re proud to enable the most advanced and rapidly evolving autonomous vehicle programs,” said Luminar Founder and CEO, Austin Russell. “As the group defining the future of vehicle autonomy for the largest auto manufacturer in the world, TRI has the greatest opportunity to lead the charge in deploying life-saving self-driving technology at scale. By equipping vehicles with the best quality 3-D data, better-than-human perception can finally become a reality – charting the fastest, safest course for full autonomy.”

Luminar’s LiDAR delivers more resolution than current sensors and the ability to see dark objects, such as a tire (10 percent reflectivity) at more than 200 meters, compared to less than 40 meters. The sensor also is the first to allow resolution to be concentrated where it’s needed most, in real time, enabling the car to clearly see and recognize cars, people and objects, even at distance.

Five years ago, Luminar was founded and began development of a new LiDAR architecture, becoming the only platform to achieve the necessary sensor requirements to ultimately deliver safer-than-human autonomous vehicles. To get there, Luminar took a new approach by building all major components in its system from the ground up: lasers, receivers, scanning mechanisms and processing electronics. The radical architecture requires only a single laser, single receiver, and ultra-fast scanner to collect millions of points of information in the environment from just a fraction of the components used in today’s LiDAR systems.