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The tech industry has spent the last decade asking whether self-driving cars need lidar sensors, cameras, or all of the above. Lidar company Ouster says it has a new answer: put them both in the same sensor.<\/p>\n
On Monday, the San Francisco-based company announced a new lineup of lidar sensors it calls \u201cRev8,\u201d all of which offer so-called \u201cnative color lidar.\u201d These sensors are capable of capturing color imagery and three-dimensional depth information at the same time, doing the work of two sensors in one. <\/p>\n
Ouster CEO Angus Pacala said the development has been a decade in the making at his company, and he wasn\u2019t shy about his ambitions for the new product lineup in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch, calling it the \u201choly grail of what a roboticist has always wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor all of human history, it\u2019s been: you buy a lidar sensor, you buy a camera, and you try to make sense of the combination with some higher level reasoning, and waste an enormous amount of time doing this,\u201d he told TechCrunch. \u201cAnd companies only get really halfway there in terms of calibrating and fusing the data streams.\u201d <\/p>\n
Ouster\u2019s new sensors, he said, change this equation. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal is to obviate cameras. There\u2019s no reason that one sensor can\u2019t do both,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Rev8 lineup arrives at a dynamic moment for lidar companies. There has been a years-long wave of consolidation happening, with Ouster buying Velodyne, and Luminar\u2019s assets recently getting acquired in bankruptcy.<\/p>\n
Techcrunch event<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco, CA<\/span> At the same time, the market for sensors is exploding. Waymo and others have finally deployed working robotaxis and are scaling quickly. Robotics companies \u2014 humanoid and industrial \u2014 are hoovering up investment dollars and need sensors to perceive the world. There\u2019s so much interest in the space that new companies like Boston-based Teradar are popping up and testing the waters with entirely new modalities. (In Teradar\u2019s case, it\u2019s using terahertz imaging.)<\/p>\n A color lidar that combines pinpoint depth information with camera-quality image data could be especially valuable to the robotics players, Pacala said. And he said Ouster worked with Fujifilm and image science company DXOMARK to understand \u201cwhat it means to build a great camera.\u201d <\/p>\n In fact, Pacala claims Ouster\u2019s color lidar is \u201cimproving in many ways on a modern camera\u201d thanks to the way the company already designs and builds its sensors. <\/p>\n Ouster uses so-called \u201cdigital lidar\u201d architecture. Instead of the analog approach, which involves many moving parts, Ouster captures the lidar info directly on its custom chip using what\u2019s known as single photon avalanche diode (SPAD) detectors. <\/p>\n The company is using this same SPAD technology to capture the color image data in the Rev8 sensors. Pacala said this novel technique allows its image capture to be more sensitive than a normal camera.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s 48-bit color, 116 dB of dynamic range, like mega pixel resolution. These are top line numbers that make it pound for pound good camera. But it just so happens it\u2019s coming as a pre-fused data stream as a 3D colorized point cloud,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can actually use the data as a camera stream as well, but it\u2019s that\u2019s one of the powers of this system, is you can use just the lidar data stream, you can use just the camera data stream, or you can use the pre-fused data stream, depending on how kind of forward-thinking your perception team is.\u201d<\/p>\n Pacala said his company has already shipped samples to existing customers and that it\u2019s now taking orders. He said he\u2019s particularly proud of the OS1 Max sensor, which he said he considers to be \u201cthe industry\u2019s best long range lidar.\u201d It can see 500 meters in all directions and is smaller than other long range lidar \u201cby a big margin.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had a long range LiDAR, but it hasn\u2019t been just like clearly a cut above everything else,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s a big leap for Ouster. I think it means that we\u2019ll start to see it much more on high-speed robo-trucking, robotaxi applications, I think a lot of drone stuff will transition to the OS1 Max.\u201d <\/p>\n Other new lidars built on the Rev8 platform will include the OS0, OS1, and OSDome, according to a press release.<\/p>\n Ouster isn\u2019t the only company that has started talking about color lidar. Last month, Chinese company Hesai announced its own color lidar platform that it says will enter mass production by the end of this year. Other companies, like Innoviz, have previously pitched their own takes on \u201ccolor lidar.\u201d<\/p>\n Pacala says most other players trying to \u201cfuse\u201d cameras and lidar sensors are basically packaging them together in a box, though. The approach Ouster (and, to be fair, Hesai) is taking is putting the lidar and imaging tech on the same chip.<\/p>\n This dramatically cuts down on the amount of work Ouster\u2019s customers have to do to make sense of the competing sensor streams, Pacala said, and it also sets those customers up to eventually eschew cameras altogether \u2014 all while being cheaper and smaller than Ouster\u2019s previous technology.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is kind of fundamentally changing the value proposition of what we\u2019re selling to a customer from this stage forward,\u201d he told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n