Airbus is partnering automotive lidar specialist Luminar Technologies to develop sensors, perception and system-level technologies for autonomous flight.

Luminar will be working with Airbus UpNext, an Airbus subsidiary that works on the development of future flight technologies.

The effort is part of the new Airbus Flightlab ecosystem launched in January 2021 that spans across the entire scope of Airbus’ business lines, and uses flight testing as the principal means of evaluating future technologies. 

The collaboration with Luminar will see teams of experts from both companies working closely to enhance sensing, perception, and system-level capabilities to ultimately enable safe, autonomous flight.

The primary goal of the platform is to increase aircraft safety and ultimately enable autonomous operation with automatic obstacle detection. 

“As the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer, Airbus has a long history of actively setting a new bar for the future of the aerospace industry, and the Luminar partnership with Airbus UpNext only furthers that trend,” said Austin Russell, CEO and Founder of Luminar Technologies. “We’re able to directly re-apply what we’ve accomplished for the automotive industry into aviation, an established nearly $1 trillion industry. We believe that automation and safety enhancements will transform how we move across all modes of transport as we take our technology from roads to the skies. We look forward to accelerating our shared vision to define the future of flying.”

“Partnering with Luminar, an industry leader in safe autonomous technologies, will help us define and explore the next step towards more autonomous flight vehicles,” said Dr. Sandra Bour Schaeffer, CEO of Airbus UpNext and Head of Airbus Group Demonstrators.