Tag: lidar

Lidar-maker Luminar files for bankruptcy

Posted on by faz_business


Lidar company Luminar has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after months of layoffs, executive departures, and a legal fight with its largest customer, Volvo.

The company aims to sell off its lidar business during the bankruptcy proceeding, and has already reached a deal to sell its semiconductor subsidiary. While the company will continue to operate during the bankruptcy process to “minimize disruptions” for its suppliers and customers, Luminar will eventually cease to exist once it’s completed.

“After a comprehensive review of our alternatives, the board determined that a court-supervised sale process is the best path forward,” Paul Ricci, Luminar’s CEO said in a statement. “As we navigate this process, our top priority is to continue delivering the same quality, reliability and service our customers have come to expect from us.”

The bankruptcy case, filed in the Southern District of Texas on Monday morning, comes at the end of a tumultuous year for a company that was valued at more than $3 billion when it went public in a reverse merger in 2020.

Luminar founder Austin Russell abruptly resigned from the CEO role in May following a “code of business conduct and ethics inquiry,” though he remained on the company’s board. In October, he launched a new effort called Russell AI Labs and made a bid to buy Luminar outright. (It’s unclear if Russell plans to pursue the lidar assets in the bankruptcy case; representatives for the former CEO did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)

The company, meanwhile, cut 25% of its workforce — its second layoff of the year. Luminar’s chief financial officer left the company, the company defaulted on a number of loans, and the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation.

Luminar was also hit with an eviction lawsuit in October at one office and it exited a lease on another in November.

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Another big blow came in November when Volvo, an early backer of Luminar and its largest customer heading into this year, canceled a five-year-old contract with the lidar-maker. Luminar said it has taken legal action against Volvo over the dissolution, but it has also been hit with its own legal claim from the contract manufacturer that actually made the lidar sensors.

Luminar is claiming to have between $100 million and $500 million in assets and between $500 million and $1 billion in liabilities, according to the bankruptcy filings. Among those liabilities is a $10 million debt owed to Scale AI, which was helping Luminar with data labeling. Luminar also owes more than $1 million to AI software company Applied Intuition.

How a PhD Student Discovered a Lost Mayan City From Hundreds of Miles Away

Posted on by faz_business


A new Mayan city, lost in the dense jungle of southern Mexico for centuries, has been discovered from the computer of a PhD student hundreds of miles away. This is the story of how he did it.

The settlement, named Valeriana after a nearby freshwater lagoon, has all the characteristics of a classic Maya political capital: enclosed plazas, pyramids, a ball court, a reservoir, and an architectural layout that suggests a foundation prior to 150 AD, according to a newly published study in the journal Antiquity.

And how did Tulane University graduate student Luke Auld-Thomas find it? The answer lies in lasers. Until recently, archaeology was limited to what a researcher could observe from the ground and with their eyes. However, the technology of detecting and measuring distances with light, known as lidar, has revolutionized the field, allowing us to scan entire regions in search of archaeological sites hidden under dense vegetation or concrete.

Let’s travel back in time. It is 1848 and the governor of Petén, Guatemala, Modesto Méndez, together with Ambrosio Tut, an artist and chronicler of the time, rediscovered Tikal, one of the most majestic archaeological sites of the Mayan civilization. In the middle of the 19th century, little was known about this advanced culture—which calculated lunar, solar, and Venusian cycles, and invented hieroglyphic writing and the concept of the number zero with hardly any tools.

The dense rainforest surrounding Tikal and its lack of roads made it extremely difficult to reach the remains. But the Guatemalan government went deep into the heart of the Petén jungle anyway, in search of its cultural heritage. Guided by the rumors of the locals, machete in hand, along with tape measure and compass, they entered the Petén jungle on an almost impossible mission. Arriving at the Tikal site, Méndez and his team were amazed at what they saw: gigantic temples and pyramids, mostly covered by the jungle. The most imposing constructions, hidden by nature, towered above the tree canopy. Tikal, although partially buried, retained its majesty and gave clues to the enormous size of the city.

History repeated itself in 2024—but with some important variations. Rather than a machete, Auld-Thomas armed himself with a search engine. WIRED spoke this week with him and Marcello Canuto, director of Tulane’s Middle American Research Institute, about the discovery.