Traditional LiDAR systems require moving parts to operate, making them less cost-effective, robust, and safe. Cibby Pulikkaseril is the Founder and CTO of Baraja, a company that has reinvented LiDAR for self-driving vehicles by using a color-changing laser routed by a prism. After his Ph.D. in lasers and fiber optic communications, Cibby got a job at a telecom equipment company, and that is when he discovered that a laser used in DWDM networks could be used to reinvent LiDAR. By joining this conversation, you’ll hear exactly how Baraja’s LiDAR technology works and what this means for the future of autonomous vehicles. Cibby also talks about some of the upcoming challenges we will face in the world of self-driving cars and the solutions his innovation offers. Furthermore, Cibby explains what spectrum scan LiDAR can offer the field of robotics more broadly. 

Key Points From This Episode:

• Cibby’s background in fiber optic communications and what led him to found Baraja.
• Realizing that a laser used in DWDM networks could be applied to LiDAR. 
• Why Cibby decided that autonomous vehicles (AVs) were a good application for the laser.
• How the laser used by Baraja can steer a LiDAR beam without any moving parts thus making the system cheaper.
• Velodyne’s contributions and other innovations in the LiDAR space.
• A description of how the spectrum scan LiDAR works using a color-changing laser routed by a prism.
• The infinite resolution made possible by colored light and how AI will make use of it.
• Hazards around the over-proliferation of conventional LiDAR laser and how Baraja’s tech gets past this.
• Other challenges Cibby predicts will exist once AVs start to proliferate.
• How Baraja’s solid-state LiDAR technology will advance other fields of robotics.
• Cibby’s level of involvement in the coding and R&D at Baraja as the CTO.
• Technical areas that the Baraja team is researching and developing such as homodyne detection.
• Advice from Cibby for how to innovate in the already cutting-edge space of computer vision.

Tweetables:

“We started to think, what else could we do with it. The insight was that if we could get the laser light out of the fiber and into free space, then we could start doing LiDAR.” — Cibby Pulikkaseril [0:01:23]

“We were excited by this idea that there was going to be a change in the future of mobility and we can be a part of that wave.” — Cibby Pulikkaseril [0:02:13]

“We are the inventors of what we call spectrum scan LiDAR that is harnessing the natural phenomenon of the color of light to be able to steer a beam without any moving parts.” — Cibby Pulikkaseril [0:03:37]

“We had this insight which is that if you can change the color of light very rapidly, by coupling that into prism-like optics, this can route the wavelengths based on the color and so you can steer a beam without any moving parts.” — Cibby Pulikkaseril [0:03:57]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Cibby Pulikkaseril on LinkedIn

Baraja