AID is center of excellence for development of urban autonomous driving technologies across the Volkswagen Group.

Autonomous vehicle sensor platform company Luminar has announced its collaboration with German company Autonomous Intelligent Driving (AID).The aim of the partnership is to provide the forward-facing high fidelity and long-range LiDAR technology and accelerate plans towards AID’s first fully autonomous deployments in 2021. AID plays a key role as the urban autonomous driving technology supplier for the Volkswagen Group, including brands like VW, Audi and Porsche.

“Together, our teams are able to achieve rapid development with an agile, hands-on approach - combining hardware and software expertise to enable autonomous mobility service by 2021,” commented AID´s Chief Technology Officer, Alexandre Haag.

After launching in March 2017, AID approached Luminar to become its first partner in June 2017 to help realize its vision to deploy true and safe autonomy in urban environments and beyond. Luminar remains a key player as part of a larger partnership program by AID to accelerate its full-stack developments.

Haag continued, “Our aim is to work with the best brands within the industry to accelerate our vision that will be realized across the entire VW Group. Perception remains a bottleneck today for autonomous mobility and we have been working to find the most powerful sensors to make the perception task easier.

“That is where Luminar comes in – the technology is clearly leading the pack in terms of range and density, which is important for solving the most challenging problems in autonomy.”

Munich testing

AID is currently testing its fleet on roads in Munich with Luminar sensors powering its forward-facing high fidelity and long range perception. Headquartered in the heart of Munich, the team of now numbering 140 staff across the globe, AID is working all aspects of software, including machine learning for perception and prediction, localization, trajectory planning and interfaces.

AID uses proprietary software and deep learning-based approaches to process all sensing modalities such as LiDAR point clouds, camera pixels, and radar echoes. This perception data models the vehicle’s environment, both near and far, by detecting objects, vehicles, pedestrians and other challenging obstacles.

“AID is an ideal partner for Luminar with the backing and resources of the world’s largest OEM, while maintaining a fresh software-minded spirit of a high-growth startup,” said Luminar founder and chief executive officer, Austin Russell. “Together, our teams are able to achieve rapid development with an agile, hands-on approach - combining hardware and software expertise to enable autonomous mobility service by 2021.”