Direction of bright solid state rays based on meta materials of liquid crystal
Lumotive, a Washington -based company backed by Bill Gates, recently announced an impressive increase in Serie B $ 45m (with a $ 200m rating) to continue its journey to the Metasurface Technology Control Technology (LCM ™) for the defined scan of Lazer beam software. LCM ™ enables non -mechanical scan and rigid staircase. Participation from previous investors (Gates Frontier, Metavc Partners, Call Funds, USAA, and Himax Inc.) was supplemented by new SwissCom ventures investors, East Bridge, Edom, Grazia, Hokuyo Inc. and tsvc. It is interesting that one of the new investors, Hokuyo, is a Lidar industrial power plant. At a time when existing Lidar companies are increasingly difficult to generate significant income and benefits, lumot growth is particularly impressive.
More than 70 Lidar companies have withdrawn $ BS of corporate and enterprise funds over the past decade. Many of them have been acquired or declared bankruptcy. Survivors continue to struggle with finding applications (Automobile ADA and Autonomy are attractive, but difficult, slow and expensive to penetrate) with successful ones based mainly on China and strengthening the EV internal revolution and autonomy. Lidar business is at a crossroads – surviving players have matured technology and mechanically scanned products which is expensive to produce and suffer from high reliability, durability and latency for ROI scan (region of interest). The assembly process requires accurate placement and gluing of discrete opto-mechanical ingredients that is expensive. Electronically scanned lidar using vcsel hinges (laser that release the vertical surface of the cavity) and Spad (single photon photon diodes) exist and are located on smart apple phones, but are more expensive in higher performance applications because they require large zones of the semi -decisor Vcsel of laser modules.
A new generation of lidars which are simply based on semiconductors are emerging, with lumot LCMs supporting architecture in Figure 1 (optical phase strings and intermittent optical strings are other accessible access by companies such as analog photonics and VOY). The lack of moving parts provides compact, low energy solutions and high reliability solutions (especially in harsh shock and vibration environments). Real-time re-configuration of operation parameters (such as string and fov) depending on the environment and application requirements is possible. Production processes based on the semiconductor Mass simplify the accuracy setting and testing of different optical components, resulting in lower cost, scaling and high quality. All of these advantages issue new applications that were previously inaccessible to traditional Lidar systems.
Figure 1: Lumotive Ltm Schematic for the Lidar of the Solid State
With the exception of the laser chip, the lumot metal platform is based on a CMOS process. LCM operating by packing thousands of tunable optical resonators on the surface of a CMOS semiconductor chip. By allocating the characteristics of each resonator, a phase profile can be created across the surface of the chip that makes the incident photons reflected in the desired direction. LCM acts as a programmable overview, electronically controlled without moving parts.
Mossing the chip -scale lidar
The displacement of the lumoti in the industrial libraries occurred in 2021 with Dr. Sam Heidari joining as CEO. He is a seasoned semiconductor executive who has led companies like Quantenna Communications, helping him go to income and products during the 2011-2019 time frame. Quantenna was sold to semiconductors (ON) in 2019 for $ 1.1b, with 2018 annual revenue of $ 220 million.
Over the past 3 years, the company’s strategy has evolved from the construction of lidar systems to its supply of its LCM rigid state scan for other applications such as Lydar, free -space optical communications (land and satcom) and optical transition to densely packaged databases. The solid state aspect enables the control of the low -delay beam direction (in the microsecond order) which is an aid to these applications. The elimination of moving parts provides compact, low energy solutions and high reliability solutions (especially in harsh shock and vibration environments).
According to Dr. Heidari, Chip Scale Lidar powered by the company’s LCM technology creates a paradigm change where the specific application program directs the value of the evaluation rather than the hardware alone. During CES 2025, Lumotive announced a collaboration to integrate its LCM product with Sony’s Spad depth sensors, which “addresses the distinct needs of the automotive and industrial sector, providing customers a single, adaptable solution that gives incomparable accuracy and reliability“ Publicly announced clients about the LCM Chip and Lidar reference model include Hokuyo, E-Photonics and Namuga. Currently, a total of 30 clients are in the pipeline.
Customers and apps for chip scale lidar
Hokuyo is a felt company and 75-year-old Osaka-based automation, Japan. She has been in the laser scan and Lidar’s business for the last 20 years, mainly for security and logistics applications in industrial environments. It is an investor in Lumotive and has a strong cooperation with the company for the integration of LCM into its current Lidars scanned-mechanically scanned. According to Koi Iwata
Manager, Marketing Strategy Department, LCM involvement has 3 main advantages – 35% lower, acoustic noise (critical when people are present) and longer durations. Figure 2 shows the integrated LCM product that advertises “Lumotive Inside” to emphasize technology and financial partnership between the two companies. The product is currently being examined to select customers.
Figure 2: Hokuyo Solid State Lidar Industrial with “Lumotive Inside”
E-photonics, based in Saudi Arabia, aims to use LCM LCM LCM and Lidar reference models to develop and produce lidar products in its place for industrial robotics and safety applications. Mohamed Alghaith, is the founder and CEO of the company, and also goes high in the East Bridge Capital who is an investor in Lumotive. According to Mr. Alghaith, computer vision is the leading artificial physical intelligence trainer (AI) and the melting of Smart Lidar and HD cameras provides the vision of the next generation computer that can capture events in complicated scenes and process them with minimal delay, and low energy and storage cost. Saudi Arabia awaits the pilgrimage of eating with 2 million ~ fans who visit a 10-day period every year. The ability to monitor the crowds for safety and medical considerations is the critical and intelligent computer vision (HD and Lidar Adaptive cameras) are the main skills. Lumotive partnership “It perfectly illustrates our commitment to the Saudi 2030 vision, bringing advanced technology skills that will create considerable value and progress the technological infrastructure of our region.”
Namuga (“Linking Vision”) Established 20 years ago and currently offers computer vision solutions for personal equipment such as laptops, smartphones and smart home devices. It has an annual income of $ 400 million and is ranked in Kosovo (Nasdaq Korean). Currently sends 130 million camera modules to these applications, with 25% of these on Samsung smartphones. Dan Lee is CEO and he feels strongly that today (sensors of things) is a critical skill for the physical one in applications such as mobility (robots, vehicles), safety and access to the perimeter, clothing (AR/VR glasses) and biomedical. The company developed itof sensors (indirect flight times) with Sony in 2015, and these are integrated with their camera modules. With new applications that appear in the physical space of him, Mr. Lee believes that DTOF (direct flight time) is required. The lumoting solution is attractive as it enables high performance Lidar in compact formats and without moving parts. Companies are collaborating in short and long -range Lidar modules called the Stella Serie that uses LCM and DTOF LCM and Lumotive references. According to Mr. Lee, “Our cooperation with lumotative brings unparalleled skills to the market. The Stella Series demonstrates our commitment to provide innovative solutions that meet the real -world setting needs.”
Advances in the management of state solid light and lidar chip scale are emerging, promising the ability to feel the 3D determinable, chip scale. These advances are ready to disrupt traditional Lidar products in various applications such as robotics, transport, protection, mines, agriculture, safety and industrial robotics. The size, power, reliability and advantages of system integration make it possible to integrate these systems with high -performance cameras and create new opportunities such as consumer clothing, AR/VR, drones, smart glasses and smartphones.