Thousands of beams light the way to the automotive big league

Seeing Google’s self-driving vehicle in 2013, Xenomatix founders Johan Van den Bossche and Dirk Van Dyck knew this wasn’t the way to go. In their eyes, the sensor dome sitting on top of the car was unfit for mass production. “Designers are all-powerful in the automotive industry. Even when those Google cars were technologically sound, no one wants a giant sensor on their roof,” explains Filip Geuens, the current CEO of the Leuven-based company.

While competitors focused on miniaturizing existing technologies, Van den Bossche and Van Dyck decided to develop an alternative from scratch, with the specific needs of the automotive industry in mind: reliability, robustness, long lifespan – all for low cost. The result is a solid-state lidar module that’s small, consists of cheap components and easily integrates in a car. For sensing, Xenomatix has chosen multi-beam technology, which has since been the company’s main differentiator.