Volvo partners with Luminar for automotive autonomy

Volvo Cars has partnered with Silicon Valley-based Luminar to bring LiDAR and perception technology to its first fully self-driving technology for highways.

Volvo said its next generation Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) 2 will be available as hardware-ready for autonomous drive from 2022, with Luminar’s LiDAR integrated into the roof.

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Cars based on SPA 2 will be updated with software over the air, and drivers be able to opt into the Highway Pilot feature that will enable fully autonomous highway driving.

“Autonomous drive has the potential to be one of the most lifesaving technologies in history, if introduced responsibly and safely,” said Henrik Green, chief technology officer at Volvo Cars. “Providing our future cars with the vision they require to make safe decisions is an important step in that direction.”

Volvo Cars and Luminar are also exploring LiDAR’s role in improving future advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), with the potential for equipping all future SPA2-based cars with a LiDAR sensor as standard.

Luminar’s technology is based on its high-performance LiDAR sensors, which detect where objects are by scanning the environment in 3D, creating a temporary, real-time map.

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