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​What's New:

• This week’s Foundations & Frontiers essay on lidar covers how an exciting technology that combines quantum physics and nanophotonics is quickly augmenting the power of computer vision.
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• Over at Contrary Research, new reports on Chime, Nuro, Gecko Robotics, AssemblyAI, and Relativity Space.

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Foundations & Frontiers

The ability to perceive objects, discern their dimensions, and contextualize them alongside our relative position in space is a core ingredient in humans’ evolved ability to think, learn, and direct our own actions. For this reason, teaching perception to machines is key to the advancement of both artificial intelligence and robotics.

Lidar, short for “light detection and ranging” has emerged as a technology that significantly improves perception for both humans and machines. While traditional visual perception relies on capturing light to create 2D images and then infusing them with depth information, lidar captures a 3D model of its environment from the get-go.

Though its core technology has been around for over half a century, it’s only within the previous twenty years that lidar has found its killer app: autonomous driving. The demand from the self-driving industry has transformed lidar from a rarity to an increasingly ubiquitous technology that’s already installed in all modern iPhones.

It unlocked new vistas, allowing us to do everything from measure continental drift, dock spacecraft to the ISS, and discover lost cities. But there’s still a lot of potential for further advancement with lidar, because the economics of scaling haven’t even fully kicked in yet. With the prospect of Moore’s Law-like improvements in precision and cost for lidar technology over the coming years, it’s high time to review the history of lidar and explore its potential impact across the future of industries and consumer goods.

Read the full piece →

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Further Reading on Lidar

• A post from Ouster describing how digital lidar works in modern iPhones.
• Adam Kell's great explainer on how lidar works, supported by terrific graphics.
• An essay in Foreign Policy covering what lidar technology is teaching us about ancient civilizations.
• A long-read in Places Journal imagining how lidar might help us produce better maps of our world.
• A look at how lidar is helping us stack stock of the Earth's forest inventory.
• An excerpt from Jeff Hecht's Laser Pioneers profiling the race to make the laser.
• An overview of the unique features enabled by optical phased arrays in Lidar Magazine.

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Contrary Research

Contrary Research publishes thoughtful analysis of the best private technology companies. Here are the latest reports published this week:

Chime: In the United States, 4.5% of households were unbanked in 2021, meaning that no household member had a checking or savings account. Lack of accessibility is one reason for this; many traditional banks require a minimum account balance and charge high fees, making it difficult for low-income individuals to access essential financial services. Read the full report here.

Nuro: In 2021, Americans drove 325 billion more miles than they did in 2020, and 1% less than the 3.3 trillion miles they drove in 2019. Traffic deaths rose 12% in the first 9 months of 2021 to 31.7K, representing the highest number of traffic deaths in a year since 2006. Nuro is a company that creates autonomous delivery vehicles for local goods transportation and aims to transform the last-mile delivery landscape. Its goal is to help merchants deliver goods to customers quickly, affordably, and safely. Read the full report here.

Gecko Robotics: In the 2021 “Report Card for America's Infrastructure”, an evaluation of infrastructure every four years conducted by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the US received a 'C-'. Modern infrastructure inspections mostly involve human visual checks. Traditionally, humans dangle from harnesses or crawl around dangerous areas to inspect infrastructure. Gecko Robotics builds wall-climbing robots and enterprise software to protect the physical infrastructure that underpins the economy. Read the full report here.​

AssemblyAI: An average US adult listens to digital audio for ~1.5 hours a day. Meanwhile, 47% of Americans pay for a digital audio subscription, and the share of digital listening taken up by spoken-word audio increased by 40% from 2014-2021. AssemblyAI offers APIs to transcribe and understand audio data. It converts audio files and live audio streams to text. Read the full report here.​

Relativity Space: The market for LEO missions is expected to grow to $312 billion by 2035 due to increasing demand and technological advances on the supply side. Relativity Space is an aerospace company that designs, develops, and builds 3D-printed rockets. Its goal is to automate the rocket manufacturing process, reduce the number of parts in a rocket, build a launchable rocket in two months, and sustain Martian colonies using methane as rocket fuel. Read the full report here.​

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Events

Contrary NYC Design Week: Networking Happy Hour

We’ll be hosting a series of events at Contrary NYC as part of NY’s Design Week. Join us for the kick off Happy Hour on Tuesday, May 16th to network with other top designers and founders in tech. RSVP here.

Contrary NYC Design Week: From 1 to 10 - Scaling Your Team as an Early Designer

Design Week at Contrary NYC continues with an interactive panel discussion on Thursday, May 18th featuring David Hoang, Operating Partner, Design + Research at Replit, Angela Liu, Head of Design at Flexpa, and Maroun Najjar, Head of Design at Patch. RSVP here.

Contrary Research Presents Merge: A Startup Story

On Wednesday, May 17th we're thrilled to be hosting Merge co-founder Shensi Ding and Accel Partner Ben Fletcher for our latest Research event – a way for us to bring private company stories to life through the lens of the founders themselves. Register here.