Driverless car firm growing in Orlando

A company that produces technology used in driverless cars in Orlando has more than doubled its workforce and footprint during the last year.

Luminar Technologies employs 225 people at a 136,000-square-foot production facility at University of Central Florida’s Research Park.

The company emerged from a self-imposed stealth mode to reveal its 50,000-square-foot facility and 75-person workforce here about a year ago. Luminar also has about 100 employees at its Portola Valley, Calif., headquarters and recently acquired a 30-employee business in Colorado that builds microchips for the company.

Luminar has developed a system that helps autonomous vehicles detect objects using lidar, which relies on laser lights to detect objects in much the same way radar relies on radio waves.

The news comes less than a month after an autonomous vehicle in Arizona struck and killed a pedestrian.

The company’s Orlando-based Chief Technology Officer Jason Eichenholz did not comment specifically on the incident.

However, he said the acquisition of the company that had been producing the microchips that power Luminar’s technology will improve its system, which should boost safety.

“The automotive industry has been asking for higher-performance lidar systems but they have been capacity-constrained and unable to buy these systems at the performance or volumes required,” he said.

Orlando officials next week will propose a new fund that would provide grants to groups in the city that support tech companies.

The Orlando Technology Community Support Pilot Program would give grants between $1,000 and $10,000 to agencies that develop activities or programming for the city’s tech community. Programs that receive the money would be required to match the funding.

The proposal will be heard at today’s city council meeting.

“We are always trying to identify opportunities to support the tech community,” city business development manager Sherry Gutch said. “We thought the timing was right.”

Overall, the city would allocate $65,000 for the program in its first year, with the hope of eventually expanding it.

University of Florida team has put the brakes on an augmented reality app that shared SeaWorld’s animal-captivity practices.

Sid Dobrin and his team, whose app “SeeWorld” shared criticism of the theme park with users in the app, had labeled the app as a “counter tour.”

“The SeeWorld ARc offers oppositional voices a place to speak alongside the company’s highly managed discourse,” a narrator explains in a promotional video.

But shortly after the app was publicized, Dobrin appeared to have been asked trademark-related questions about the app.

“I’m going to have to delay our conversation until we address a trademark issue. My apologies,” the email read.