Luminar

Indy Autonomous Challenge CEO Paul Mitchell discusses the past year of racing and what’s in store for the coming year of competition.

Luminar is expanding its software offerings to include high-definition, 3D maps that update automatically. 

In 2020, autonomous vehicles left other technology applications in the dust. Other areas of robotics receiving funding or merger and acquisition activity included supply chain automation, surgical robots, and quadrupeds.

In July 2019, investments in robotics, autonomous vehicles, and drones increased, despite a decline in the number of transactions.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Luminar raised $100 million in funding that will help it scale production of LiDAR sensors for autonomous vehicles. This raises Luminar’s total amount of funding raised to more than $250 million. Luminar also unveiled a sensing and perception platform called Iris that has been in stealth development for the last three years.…

The Toyota Research Institute demonstrated the latest version of its self-driving vehicle platform, Platform 2.1, on a closed course this week. The first version of the platform was only released in March of this year. “In the last few months, we have rapidly accelerated our pace in advancing Toyota’s automated driving capabilities with a vision…