OURS, like Aurora, has a thoughtful and speedy approach to integrated FMCW lidar development. A leader in integrated photonics, OURS’s proprietary design and development process has enabled it to produce four generations of lidar technology in just three years. Its fourth-generation lidar is massively smaller (one-tenth the size!) and cheaper, and this capability will enable Aurora to produce FirstLight at scale.
Here's how we accelerate our path to market with OURS's technology and team:
Drive costs down
Driven by integration and silicon photonics, our next-generation FirstLight system is expected to cost dramatically less, helping to evolve FirstLight into an automotive-grade commercial product that we can produce at scale.
Smaller size, with even more performance
Today's lidar is almost entirely mechanically steered, so OURS’s groundbreaking solid-state scanning mechanism is another lidar game-changer, as its lidar-on-chip method replaces bulky, unreliable, and expensive mechanical parts. This increases the reliability of our hardware and the uptime of the Aurora Driver, meaning we can handle more rides and deliver more goods, faster and more efficiently.
Flexibility to customize
OURS has the ability to rapidly customize and create new capabilities on chip unlike other developers who are often limited to foundries' off-the-shelf capabilities. This ability to customize gives us even more control of the lidar, while also providing us commercial flexibility to work with the right set of partners.
With the proprietary long-range capabilities of FirstLight, combined with our ability to scale the technology, Aurora has the only lidar solution that will unlock high-speed self-driving at scale, making FirstLight the highest performance, automotive-grade lidar available for the driverless market. And as seen by how quickly we got FirstLight onto our trucks, we have the expertise to rapidly turn prototypes into scalable products.