![]() ![]() (This restriction goes hand in glove with the “fewer moving parts” and single laser method.) Luminar only got away with it by minimizing the amount of InGaAs used: only a tiny sliver of it is used where it’s needed, and they engineered around that rather than use the arrays of photodetectors found in many other lidar products. It’s expensive as hell and designing for it is a highly specialized field. The problem is that indium gallium arsenide is like the Dom Perignon of sensor substrates. And so it is here Luminar’s InGaAs sensor and a single laser emitter produced images tangibly superior to devices of a similar size and power draw, but with fewer moving parts. The more light you’ve got, the better your sensor - that’s usually the rule. An InGaAs-based photodetector works at a different frequency of light (1,550nm rather than ~900) and is far more efficient at capturing it. Luminar, however, decided to start from the ground up with its system, using an alloy called indium gallium arsenide, or InGaAs. ![]() Silicon is well-understood, cheap, and the fabrication processes are mature. Most photosensors, like those found in digital cameras and in other lidar systems, use a silicon-based photodetector. That means you need a photosensitive surface that can discern just a handful of photons. Luminar’s lidar systems, like all others, fire out a beam of light and essentially time its return. The secret - to just about the whole operation, really - is the sensor.
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