(Luminar's roadshow also includes a car with one of those racks, both for a tech comparison and seemingly as something of a reminder of what failure might look like.) He wants to put this tech into cars that people buy and drive, to make autonomy a feature for everyone. Photo: Luminarīut Russell doesn't just want to make technology for its own sake, or that only works in a giant, spinning roof rack. The Blade system also includes a system for trucks that is almost - but intentionally not quite – invisible. "We spent the first two years just making sure we were right," he said, "and then had to go build every part of it for ourselves." Russell is excited about the whole system, of course, which he and the Luminar team have been working on for almost a decade. Three walkers side by side looked like, well, three walkers side by side. Russell pointed to a fast-moving blur of green, which was a scooter rider whipping the wrong way down a one-way street. Iris, of course, is Luminar's real product: a cheap, small lidar rig that can now use a single high-powered laser to collect a real-time, three-dimensional view of the car's perspective, with about a 120-degree field of view and 250 meters of range. Once we settled into the backseat with a keyboard on his lap, Russell began manipulating the images on two large screens, showing a real-time feed of Luminar's Iris system on top of our RAV4. In that sense, the visor serves the same purpose as a racing stripe or a hood ornament: It sends a signal to everyone else on the road about exactly how cool your ride is. Having a subtle way to communicate "this is a car with self-driving technology inside" is a useful thing on the road, but also a distinct status symbol that Luminar thinks might help convince people to buy autonomous vehicles in the first place. It's no spinning rack, but it's not meant to be invisible, either.
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