![]() ![]() ![]() The races, known as the DARPA Challenges, became the Big Bang event for self-driving cars, and Hall's LiDAR forever changed Velodyne from a modest family-run business into a hot commodity: a 34-year-old startup whose technology is remaking transportation and robotics. "It was revolutionary," says William "Red" Whittaker, a roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University and a father of the autonomous-vehicle movement. ![]() Over a couple of years, Hall refined a roof-mounted LiDAR (for "light distance and ranging") unit consisting of 64 lasers spun by a small electric motor the device became a favorite of the race's winning teams. It promised to be both fun and an excellent proving ground for his engineering chops. ![]() But always itching to keep inventing, in the early aughts Hall became obsessed with a seemingly fantastical contest: a Defense Department-sponsored race for autonomous vehicles. Velodyne, which he had founded in 1983, was a successful business known for specialized audio equipment. In 2006, Hall patented one of his inventions-a multi-beam spinning LiDAR sensor-that put Velodyne, albeit almost accidentally, at the center of a revolution that's disrupting the auto and tech industries. ![]()
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