AVL's Reimagine Mobility Podcast

LIDAR Illuminated: Navigating the Future with Paul Drysch

• AVL, North America

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In our latest episode of the Reimagined Mobility Podcast, Stephan Tarnutzer dives deep with Paul Drysch from PreAct Technologies into how LIDAR technology is transforming not just the automotive industry but also other sectors by enhancing safety and operational efficiency. From his journey from Honda Motor to pioneering affordable LIDAR solutions, Paul shares invaluable insights into the challenges and opportunities of innovation in automotive safety. Join us as we explore the versatile applications of LIDAR beyond vehicles, the evolving consumer perceptions around vehicle safety, and a glimpse into the future of mobility and technology. Don't miss this insightful conversation on driving the future forward. 

Paul Drysch is co-founders and CEO of PreAct Technologies, and he is responsible for the launch a suite of flash LiDAR sensors to address various use cases across multiple industries including agriculture, healthcare, smart cities, retail, security, transportation, education or any field that requires detailed 3D mapping and modeling. Paul is a proven business leader, motivator and manager who is excellent at leading early/mid stage startups to their full growth potential. He has closed more than $2.5 billion in deals in the automotive, mobility and connected car markets over the past 17 years. He has founded two companies in this space and and co-founded two more. His passion and knowledge is dedicated to the autonomous mobility space.

 

PreAct Technologies is the market leader in near-field software-definable flash LiDAR technology and integrated SDK (software development kit). Its patent-pending suite of sensor technologies provides high resolution, affordable LiDAR solutions to a wide range of industries including robotics, healthcare, ITS, logistics, security, industrial, consumer electronics, trucking, and automotive. With unmatched quality and accuracy, PreAct’s edge processing algorithms drive technology resulting in 3D depth-maps of small objects at sub-centimeter accuracy up to 20 meters. PreAct’s LiDARs and SDK enable companies and innovators to address the industry’s most pressing business and technology needs. The firm is headquartered in Portland, Oregon, with offices in Ashburn, Virginia, and Barcelona Spain.

If you would like to be a guest on the show contact: namarketing@avl.com

Welcome to the Reimagined Mobility Podcast. I'm here with Paul Drysch from PreAct, Paul. We go always back and I'm pretty sure our listeners will be very much interested to to hear your story of where you're coming from, what you've done, and certainly what the current company that you're leading is doing. And then after that short intro, then let's jump in together and explore here how we re-imagine mobility together. All right. Sounds good. Sounds good. And yeah, we we do go back a ways. Yes. Yeah. And my background for those people who don't know car guy my whole life started with a tier one, went to Honda Motor and had the difficult duty of managing the Caribbean as my very first job, which was good. But then I got promoted and had all of Latin America and that was, that was quite interesting. In the mid-nineties when, let's see, the Shining Path controlled Peru. The the drug cartels were fighting it out in Colombia, you know, central America was one civil war after another between Nicaragua and El Salvador and all this stuff going on. So, yeah, lots of travel in the bullet and bombproof cars back then. Anyway. Kind of. Ever since then, though, I've been doing kind of technology startups and in the automotive space and got into automotive telematics, you know, connected car stuff way back in 1999, kind of with the founding members of wireless car. And then we went off and sold that. I think that's what owned by Volkswagen these days ran kind of connected car sales at Jasper and we sold that company to Cisco for a billion and a half and had a couple of other start ups, some good, some bad. And then we started PreAct, which was all about developing a low cost LIDAR solution, primarily for automotive. At least that was how we started. Since then, though, there's a lot more use cases outside of automotive. And so honestly, we're probably 80% non automotive these days. And that and where we are in automotive, it's more on the heavy trekking side actually, it's been kind of where we've had success. So anyways, that's me in a nutshell. Perfect. So let's jump right in. I know you were at CES. I was at CES 2024 here just a few months ago or a month ago. And I have to say, Paul, I still feel every auto store or every other exhibit was either a LIDAR or something with A.I., so I'm just going to point it dried out or throw it right out to you to answer, because I think others kind of see that as well. Over the last 2 to 3 years at CES and in other events. Right. Every other booth, every other exhibit, another leader with supposedly something, yet another better, faster. Yeah, whatever. Higher capable, better to integrate, more capable A.I. yada yadda yadda. Yeah. Product. Tell me, do we really need that many LIDAR companies now? Is there really that much difference? What am I missing here? Yeah. No God no we we don't Luckily PreAct for better or worse. You know, we kind of came late to the game and so we knew there's there's already 60 or 70 people trying to do long range automotive LIDAR. I wasn't a big believer in kind of the when self-driving vehicles were going to get started I had come out of that space I did 18 months at a startup doing high definition mapping for autonomous vehicles, and I could see the technical deficit too, to get those things in, in a cost effective and functionally effective role was, you know, decades away. So when we found it, we we went after existing market, you know, the short range sensing typically controlled by, you know, RGV cameras, ultrasonic sensors and short range radar, you know, $30 billion existing market versus long range light hour, which their existing market was zero, literally zero. And even today, I know how much is it? It's a few you know altogether mall road and the $20 million a year in revenue. I mean it's it's nothing. It's just minuscule, you know. Okay. How many self-driving cars are on the road today? You know, it's not not a lot. So anyway so yes, there's way too many. And you see a lot of them trying to pivot kind of like we did. Like there's there's cool stuff that can use LIDAR. The problem is a lot of those are still, you know, two, three, four or $5,000 a piece because they're not one of the things I want to talk about today. Some of these applications that are are good for light are like great, now, you know you'll see light are in a lot of airports and big train stations and that and they're doing people counting people tracking thing kind of operational efficiency related things. But you know you don't need a million light hour to do that in an airport, you know and you need all different flavors of light hour. So we're you know, we're not a spinning LIDAR where, you know, we have a field of view and it's just a solid state lighter. So we're good in hallways and entrances and things like that. You know, where is this big spinning lighters? Good. Like in the ceiling of the main terminal being able to see wide and far. So take some mix, Anyway, the back to your question, the original question are are there too many. Absolutely. Even in our space, there's still too many. I think I was approached by as many investment bankers saying, Hey, so-and-so is kind of for sale, you know, or of any interest or know anybody. So you're going to see a lot fewer, I will add, I agree with what you said, but the thing that wasn't kind of conspicuously absent the you know, for last few years, 4D radar was all the rage. And is this true? You know, that's going to be as good as LIDAR, you know, but, you know, not have any effects from weather because it's radar that was like none of that. Now, and I know, you know, talking to OEMs, they're like, yeah, it doesn't really exist yet. You know, we still can't get samples from from people in our. So I that was kind of the biggest surprise to me because I you know, I thought 4D radar helped great promise and it and that seems to be kind of disappearing for some reason or I don't know. Yeah, yeah. I think you're right with that, Paul. I agree. Not that I'm thinking about that. It was definitely something over the last several years was always there, and this year I can't remember seeing one, but I'm sure they were there. But as you said, nowhere near as prominent. Yeah, well, then let's let's let's jump in what you just said. Right. And again, we're reimagining mobility here on this podcast. So so you said your your sense are more sort of replacing existing short range, right. So radar cameras and ultrasonic right? So so explain to and to our listeners what makes your solution, what makes LIDAR your solution? That's fine. Better than than what's existing that coming from an OEM working in the supply base. Right. I know how we look at it. Yeah you might be cheaper. Yeah you lighter might be the future but you know we know cameras, we know radar, we know ultrasonic for the last ten, 15 plus years and we're comfortable. It's cheap. We know how to deal with it. So why should they replace it? Share a little bit of what you're seeing there. Yeah, that's. And that's, you know, like like you and I, you know, having been around that space in automotive forever, you know, OEMs and tier ones, just, you know, it's it's worse than trying to move a battleship. You know, they, they do not change, you know, and if it's not broken, you're not going to replace something, you know, ultrasound. I'll kind of explain the technologies it's and really simple term. So if you think of like a camera in terms of resolution and that of hearing on your camera of ten megapixel or whatever it might be, well, ultrasound is so low resolution, it's like a single pixel. It's just it just shows there is a blob somewhere. Couldn't tell you where it is, but it's just kind of in my range, you know, Could be an inch away, could be five feet away. You know, it's just like a single pixel. Something is there? Yeah. Radar will get you the range, but it's still just there's a blob somewhere out there and that and then there's lots of other issues with, with radar anyway. And the camera is great, you know, shows you in five I think five megapixels is typical automotive RGV camera. So tons of resolution, but it needs illumination to see you know can't see in the dark whereas the other can you know whether effects it shadows and reflections trick it. You know you can use AI which requires a lot of processing power and which costs money, you know kind of the the Tesla model. But even that gets fooled, you know, 5% of the time. You know, that's why Tesla's autopilot doesn't work all the time, you know, and it's a full self-driving because still a two dimensional image that, you know, you don't have depth with. You can kind of insinuate depths and there's a lot of tricks that work. Yeah, 95% of the time. So so that's the thing. And LIDAR has much higher resolution, not as high as like a camera, but every pixel that comes back has like an X, Y and Z coordinate, you know, the depth and the exact position of that pixel. So you can see edges and you can compare it. You can see the curb of the road versus whatever the object is and and that it doesn't need illumination, but it's affected by weather, especially like rain and fog are, are bad for LIDAR. It really reduces the range because each each little bit of water is like a retroreflector, you know, so that the light going into it gets reflected back, you know. And so it you, you know, if it's raining hard or very foggy, not a lot of your light is going out. So yeah, that's a problem. So then again, going back, why then do I mean, you explain now essentially we have two technology advantages at least. Maybe substitute a LIDAR for a ultrasonic. Right. You may still need a camera. I mean, I still need a radar for some of the wetter or other related things. But why? Explain a little bit. Why don't we see more LIDAR solutions to replace, let's say, my my parking sensors that I need or the or my backup system that maybe cameras shouldn't be necessarily based on because of cross traffic, because of somebody sitting, you know, a toy, a small child. All these scenarios that we're all very familiar with, why don't we see more OEMs pushing for this? Is it is it They are. We just haven't seen it come out yet. Is it really? Yeah, there's a two, three, five, maybe 10% improvement, but it doesn't warrant the new system. Share a little bit. Why are we why are we struggling not to reimagine mobility, but to create the new mobility ecosystem as it relates at least to these type of sensors? What do you see? Paul Yeah, well, it's it's a couple of things. One, it's again, you know, it's a lot of work to change both for the Tier one who's building these systems and then the OEM. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it. You know, you know, the other thing is a good example. I've met multiple times over the years with like the head of safety at one of the big three OEMs in Detroit. And at the end of every meeting, it's almost like it's like programed into the corporate culture. He'll say if it costs$0.05, but how has it But I do I don't want to screw this up. We are not going to spend$0.05 more than it takes to meet the federal safety requirements. So if we've got it met and your solution is better, but it costs $0.05 more, we're not going to do it now. You know, and this is the head of safety, you know. Yeah. You know, I mean, we see I mean, the statement doesn't surprise me, right? It it may surprise some of our listeners, but it's it's in some cases innovation or to reimagine kind of mobility is stifled by the fact that there is a law and in other cases, the law is there and it almost pulls innovation away from other areas that the industry feels it's could be more productive. Right. We have this discussion now again with these hybrids. And ICEs right where regulation says one thing. Companies and technology experts say something different, at least slightly different. Yet there's a conflict, I guess, with regulation. And so then maybe jumping back to what your earlier talked about, you know, airports and hallways and all that stuff. Yeah, contrast that industry Paul with us a little bit as we look at mobility that we just talk about. And again, if your latest statement, a perfect description of some of the challenges to mobility industry basis, which is regulations both good and maybe bad in some cases, how do you how is it done in the security and in the monitoring industry? I'm not sure I used the right words here for those industries, but those other industries you mentioned, how is it there? Yeah. So let me I want to go back to my my past state, because I don't I don't want, you know, this anybody to think I'm kind of bashing this one kind of safety executive because it's people don't want to pay for safety, too. So it's not and I don't blame the OEM for not wanting spending more money because, you know, it's like insurance. You know, you don't think you need it. You hate buying insurance. Most people don't have insurance, you know, like life insurance or that sort of thing, because they're like a, you know, it's expensive. I'm not going to die next year, you know, that sort of thing. So I don't I don't blame, you know, because it doesn't countless studies show safety doesn't sell. So so that's kind of a a good transition into the other markets because there it's you're talking about very simple ROI models that these guys share. Like a good example is an area we're working in and kind of like technically be called like facilities management. You know, that makes you think of like janitors and, you know, people that clean a school at night or whatever. And it is that but it's it's everything. It's the HVAC systems, it's electrical, it's everything that takes to run a facility or building or that a good example is like airports. Airports are all about efficiency and being able to reduce costs. And so and their business is very speedy. You know, a plane from China lands and all sudden there's, you know, 300 people in a bulk, you know, just attack a bathroom or the bathrooms right there, destroy them and then move on, you know, maybe go through the the gift shop, you know, you know that sort of thing on their way to, you know, wherever and then nobody for an hour and that. And so how do you staff for that kind of traffic you know both cleaning as well as the fast the you know the quick service restaurants along the way and that so this this allows you if you're kind of monitoring people and you see so we have a solution for bathrooms now you're not allowed to put a camera in a bathroom, but you can put a LIDAR because this is just a point cloud. You know, it's GDPR compliant, which is a European thing about data privacy, but it complies in the U.S., too. And all you're doing is, you know, how many people have come in. You can see how messy it is. You can see if people have slipped and fallen. You can see if there's like a homeless person, you know, just camped out. You know, you can tell if the bathrooms empty at night, you know, so you don't have to somebody doesn't have to actually, like physically walk the floor and check before you close the building. Maybe that's a school or high rise, that sort of thing. So it's stuff like that, you know. You know, it's just a easy ROI model for that. Sure. You know. Yeah. So we're we're all on that. We do cargo management, so we put a little LIDAR in a 53 foot trailer that goes behind the semi and it snaps a picture of what the cargo load is number that picture, you know, it's a LIDAR point cloud and it measures the volume. So when you open that door says, there was, you know, X cubic feet of volume taken and a certain amount of floor space open and then it say like how much cargo went off and on during that stop. And then when they doors closed again, how much cargo is there so that that helps prevent kind of theft and shrinkage and and settles disputes when say you're an Amazon and you dropped off five pallets of dog food at the Walmart dock and Walmart calls up and said hey I only got four pallets they can go know five pallets worth of cargo got off. So that means probably somebody on your end is, you know, shrinkage. You know as they call it. Interesting stuff. You know trying to think patient monitoring is a big area for us. So nursing homes for like really older sick people, people with dementia, you know, they only get checked a couple of times a day, you know, And again, you don't want a camera watching your 94 year old grandmother all day. And that's really creepy. But if you just have this indistinguishable point cloud that just on the edge can say, you know, my grandmother just fell on the ground and she's laying there, it alerts the nurse's station, you know, takes care of that sort of thing. You know, you know how often that a nurse or somebody came and checked on your grandmother and that sort of thing. So there's lots of things around productivity, efficiency in that. And, you know, they don't have the three year design in cycle that a car company has, you know, now. No, it's a very interesting point. And I never thought about the privacy. It's a very good point and great advantage from the get out, you know, in our night hours, very low cost, you know, one unit cost $350 and it goes down from there. You know, the cheapest kind of you know, I don't want to mention names kind of, but the the big light hour companies, you know, 2000 is like it's cheapest you get for one unit. You know, most of them are in that kind of four or $5,000 if Velodyne Park, you know, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Let's let's go quickly to more question. I want to quickly go back to the statement you made at safety doesn't sell. I agree with you. And at the same time, I don't. Right. And the reason I don't is I was very surprised to hear that my 20 year old daughter about six months ago, she said, I'm going to buy myself a Volvo. I'm like a Volvo. Where is that coming from? Nothing against Volvo like some of their cars, but having to work for them. I'm like, I a Volvo in the U.S., right? It's not like a major brand. And she's like, Well, because it's safety. I'm all about safety that I'm like, okay, So, I mean, you and I probably know this. For years when we grew up, Volvo was considered the safety car. I was very surprised at my daughter. Even though we don't talk much Volvo or in this household here, that Volvo still with the college age kids is a safety And then I see certainly not replace I mean just saw GM rag with Cruze very concerned about the safety obviously and the reputation and how we progress autonomous driving very different facets there as well. But still safety. And I think when it comes to now, the sort of the reversal from, hey, we want to all drive in an autonomous vehicle to hey, and you all want to drive in a safe vehicle with level two, level two plus maybe level three ADAS or autonomous systems in. It's because we can make it safer. We can make it better. So I want to bring this back and say, do you see because I mean, your device is a quote unquote, safety device either in the nursing home ride or in the car. Yeah, you really see that that safety going forward. As we look forward as you look forward over the next five years is not coming back again and playing a much bigger role in in selling a car. Do you feel like it's just always going to be something you expect a certain level of safety, Which regulation will cover everything else? People don't care about? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's kind of the latter. You know, there is a certain percentage of population that does, you know, buy their life insurance regularly and considers a Volvo. You know, I have no idea. You know, I'm in the auto industry like you, you know, it's hard for me to believe that a Volvo is actually safer than any other car now. But they spent, you know, our childhoods, you know, they spent decades and they went after that niche hard. Yeah. You know, and they were little player and and they were they were the only ones going after that niche. So I think their reputation has just lasted. But, you know, as an engineer and knowing the auto industry, I think most cars, you know, pretty darned similarly safe these days. But you know, that's good. You know, there's a reason each brand sells. You know, there's that's true. Some reputation. They're marketing. Right. And they they have safety. So good for them. Yeah. All right. And Paul, last question. What's going to be the next car you buy and why? Tough car? I haven't actually had my own car for a couple of years now, and I kind of enjoy it. I have some like, you know, I have my AMG Gullwing and, you know, some exotics, but I don't have a daily drive. But I've been looking for an EV that will also fit my bicycle. So the, the new Macan, EV, the Porsche Macan, the I've got my eye on that one. So I want to go electric and I know some of my friends will cringe when I say that because they're die hard internal combustion guys. But yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the only one right now that strikes my fancy Tesla. Scott Great cars. I don't find them attractive at all. And I'm such a car guy. I have to like, like I love the look of my car. You're still a design guy. Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, you know, again, Tesla probably best technology but can they they just not attractive cars to me you know I wish you know it's that's probably what I buy but okay anyways that's good that's perfect answer. So Paul, thank you very much for your insight. Very insightful, very educational for me to see those other areas that again you explained LiDAR is using and and certainly also the perspective on on the automotive space with short range radar. Yeah short range radar sorry short range lidar that can replace short range radar. Very interesting. Thank you, Paul.