Aurora Voices with Randy Reibel
By: Aurora Team
Tags: Trucking, Autonomous Cars, Autonomous Vehicles, Lidar, Tech

Meet Randy Reibel, Aurora’s VP of Lidar and the founder of Blackmore

At the heart of Aurora’s technology and mission are the individuals behind it. In our series, Aurora Voices, we share the unique voices and stories of the people of Aurora, celebrating our backgrounds as well as personal and professional experiences.

Randy Reibel is a founder and entrepreneur at his core. He built and led Blackmore, the industry-leading lidar company acquired by Aurora last summer, and his team played a big role in the recent launch of Aurora’s next-generation trucks. As Aurora’s VP of Lidar, Randy’s team is responsible for FirstLight Lidar, the FMCW technology that enables trucks to see further than ever before, unlocking the ability to pursue autonomous trucking. When Randy’s not working, he can be found playing Pickleball or doing strength-training.

Here’s a timeline showing the deliberate path we’ve taken in building our autonomous trucks and the important role that acquiring Blackmore and its FMCW lidar has played.

What is your role at Aurora?

Aurora’s vehicles “see” the world around it using different sensors — cameras, radar, and lidar. As the VP of Lidar, I work across the organization to set the vision for our internally-developed lidar products: determining the appropriate requirements for our product roadmap and then ensuring the lidar team has the resources to make it happen.

What makes FMCW lidar such a game-changer?

Before I joined Aurora, I was the CEO at Blackmore, where we were developing FMCW lidar. FMCW lidar has three major benefits when compared to traditional lidar sensors. First, FMCW lidars are incredibly sensitive and that allows long-range sensing. Second, these sensors measure both range and velocity, allowing additional information to be collected at every single point in the pointcloud, which enhances perception. Finally, the sensors are not sensitive to interference, allowing them to operate directly in bright sunlight or when other lidars are on the road in close proximity. Given highway speeds, FMCW lidar’s longer range and precision perception are essential for self-driving trucking applications.

The power of Aurora’s FirstLight Lidar.

What is your proudest moment at Aurora?

Making the first-generation FirstLight Lidar and seeing that on our fleet. It brought folks together from across the company — perception, calibration, software, mechanical and electrical engineering, optical engineering, and production — and it was a true “win together” moment for Aurora.

Tell us about one of the coolest challenges you’re trying to solve.

Following the launch of FirstLight Lidar, we need to mass-manufacture these systems for our future commercial fleet needs. To do so, the engineering team is working to design photonic integrated circuits that effectively reproduce many parts into a single semiconductor chip that can be stamped out in large quantities at commercial foundries. This process is very similar to producing silicon chips. But while these types of processes have been matured by the telecom industry, there are significant differences when doing it in our industry. Our team has already made significant advancements in producing the world’s first mass-manufacturable FMCW lidars.

You were a founder and entrepreneur and then joined Aurora. Why did you and the team join Aurora?

One of the most important traits an entrepreneur can have is a flexible and open view of the world and what’s possible. It is through flexibility and openness that new ideas can be discovered and curated. As we thought about Blackmore’s core technology and path, we understood what we’d gain by joining forces with the Aurora team. Now we’re able to move faster working together and we’ve gained a diversity in skillsets and perspectives.