David Hall: A Driving Force in the Industry
David Hall may not be a household name, however, he and his company, Velodyne, are absolutely changing the world, as we know it. With continuous innovation in cars that drive themselves, it seems like only a matter of time before they proliferate every street and intersection within our cities, and Velodyne is helping to usher in that new age of technology. Here in California, where Hall’s company is based out of, driverless cars are already beginning to creep onto the roads of San Francisco and Los Angeles. But, who is David Hall? David Hall is an invaluable resource to the self-driving car industry.
Today, when mentioning the aspect of self-driving cars, many might first think of Google’s Waymo, Tesla, or even Uber. Many might ONLY think of Google, Tesla, or Uber. Only few know that it all started with an agency by the name of DARPA, short for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, funded by none other than the Department of Defense. DARPA, an agency holding credit for inventing the Internet, now tasked with the conundrum of how to bring the possibility of autonomous driving vehicles into reality, was completely bewildered. So much so that DARPA opened its very secretive doors to the world in hopes of cracking this very puzzle.
In 2004, the agency opened the problem up to anyone and everyone under the rallying cry known as the DARPA Grand Challenge. People from all walks of life came to participate in this competition, consisting of “innovators, engineers, students, programmers, off-road racers, backyard mechanics, inventors and dreamers” (qtd. in DARPA). Contestants would be required to race across the Mojave Desert along a route that spanned 142 miles — without a driver. The victor of this contest would go to win a whopping one million dollars; however, not a single car was able to cross the finish line that day and collect the reward (DARPA, pars. 1–4).
It became obvious after that first contest as to why DARPA was so puzzled on how to solve the self-driving car predicament. The strongest candidate to win the prize that day only went a mere 7.4 miles, explains Cadie Thompson, a deputy editor at Business Insider (par. 10). DARPA would later go on to host two more Challenges, and to keep things interesting; the agency would also increase the ante to two million dollars. Present for the first two events was David Hall, and although he did not participate in the third, “by 2007, when DARPA’s Urban Grand Challenge rolled around, Hall had requests from more than 10 other teams looking to utilize his technology,” according to popular technology news network ran by Vox Media, The Verge (Popper, par. 33). In fact, it was because of Hall’s invention that team, Tartan Racing, led by Dr. William “Red” Whittaker of Carnegie Mellon University, won that year (Ohnsman, par. 13). Fast forward to 2018, and Hall’s company, Velodyne, is now a leader in autonomous driving innovation. Despite not winning any of the past Challenges, Hall is certainly not losing the war.
As told by Forbes, Hall’s company is currently the top manufacturer for LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology, a technology similar to SONAR and RADAR that uses light waves through lasers, instead of radio or sound waves. And, it shows, gaining customers such as, GM, Uber, Google and Caterpillar, and garnering investments from Ford and Baidu (China’s version of Google) of around $150 million. At $8000 to $85000 a pop, business for Velodyne is definitely booming. Hall is not doing too bad for himself either, owning more than half of a company that is purportedly worth 2 billion dollars puts his own net worth at approximately $1 billion (pars. 1–15).
However successful, as stated in The Verge, to bring autonomous driving vehicles to a consumer scale, an obstacle that Velodyne faces is that LiDAR technology is still too expensive to be economically viable for mass production. And, since its sensors continuously rotate to provide a 360° view, they also require a lot of maintenance. Akhilesh Kona, an analyst in LiDAR technology, states that, “upwards of 60 percent need to be sent back to the manufacturer for recalibration” (qtd. in Popper, par. 44). Brought to the consumer market, a revolutionary innovation made during the DARPA Grand Challenge is now proving to be the Achilles’ heel of LiDAR development.
David Hall doesn’t fret at these industry impediments and has a lot of great ideas towards the future to tackle these very problems. On April 2017, Velodyne disclosed its new product, Velarray, a “fixed-laser, solid-state” LiDAR sensor. This new sensor will be more economically feasible than its predecessors to appeal to the consumer audience, and will not be continuously rotating, that is, fixed in place to drastically reduce maintenance requirements while maintaining a 120° horizontal and 35° vertical periphery (Business Wire).
In addition, as written by Andrew Krok, a news editor for CNET, Velodyne “has [also] cut the price of its most popular LiDAR system, the VLP-16, in half” on January 2018 (par. 2). The reality of owning a self-driving car keeps coming closer as Velodyne continues to come out with new advancements in the industry. David Hall is bringing the inevitable technology just right around the corner. This is thanks to “developing automated manufacturing for LiDAR sensors,” says Hall (qtd. in Krok). Hall has set his eyes on building a fully robotic factory in which to make fully robotic cars.
Originally just an audio equipment company, it feels as if Velodyne came out of nowhere into the self-driving car industry. Founded in 1983, Velodyne came to be a successful manufacturer for high-end products within the audio industry; however, as the Recession was dawning, Hall found himself landing in DARPA’s first Grand Challenge after a stint on the television series, Robot Wars (Popper, pars. 3–5). In an interview, Hall explains how the audio industry was also beginning to outsource all of its manufacturing and suppliers, signaling to him that it was time to move production to China where it is still being produced today. Afterwards, with an empty factory and a chronic itch for inventing and production, Hall was looking for something else to fill that void. After the first Grand Challenge, Hall found his answer in LiDAR (Scoble).
However, LiDAR is far from something new. LiDAR technology has been around since the 1960’s, originally designed to survey atmospheric particles, and in the 1980’s, used in airplanes to gather topographical data on shallow waters (Carter et al. 11). In the first Grand Challenge, many participants, in fact, used LiDAR, but their applications were crude at best, evident by the non-existent winner of that 2004 race. That was the first time Hall ever heard the term, and the more he researched about LiDAR, the more interested Hall became (Popper, pars. 7–15). After that first race, the rest is history. In a 2017 personal blog, Hall recalls:
When I invented the spinning LiDAR sensor leading up to the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, I was writing code as we drove across the desert and right up to the starting line. The previous month, I’d spent three days lining all 64 laser channels by hand — for what became our first commercial sensor, the HDL-64. My thumb and forefinger went numb for a month afterward (Hall par. 1).
Hall has definitely come a long way since.
With a company now employing 530 workers and amidst developing a factory that does not require those workers, let alone him, to assemble, Hall no longer requires to make his fingers numb with doing it all by himself. Hall only wants to improve. Forbes says he wishes to increase his company’s capabilities of manufacturing thousands of LiDAR units to a million a year — at least (Ohnsman, pars. 6–18). Working tirelessly, Hall and his company, Velodyne, are achieving their goals, improvement after improvement. Once they finally discover the right formula to make LiDAR affordable for mass production, perhaps, then will be the day it is brought to the consumer doorstep, and so will begin the new era of autonomous driving.
Since DARPA opened up its doors by inviting the world into solving autonomous driving cars, the technology has made great strides. Hall’s company continues the tradition by donating its products to a program where university students participate in designing their own self-driving car. According to Sally Frykman, a blogger on Velodyne’s website, SAE International and General Motors hosted the AutoDrive Challenge in Arizona this year. Velodyne has supported the event, which ran in April, by contributing VLP-16 sensors, its most popular product, to aid students in the program (pars. 1–3). While being at the forefront of self-driving car technology, Hall still finds a way to give back.
15 years ago, everyone would have laughed at the idea of bringing self-driving cars to life. With recent advancements in technology, that dream is on the verge of becoming true, and Velodyne is part of the movement on the cusp of transforming science fiction into non-fiction. Soon, no longer will people have to be encumbered by the woe of having to drive themselves. David Hall has a hand in that, as he currently guides the car industry into a new era. Hall may not have been born in the auto industry, but he is now definitely a leader in it.
Works Cited
“The DARPA Grand Challenge: Ten Years Later.” DARPA, 13 Mar. 2014, pars. 1–4, https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2014-03-13. Accessed 29 Jun. 2018.
“Velodyne LiDAR Announces New “Velarray” LiDAR Sensor.” Business Wire, 19 Apr. 2017, https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170419005516/en/Velodyne-LiDAR-Announces-New-%E2%80%9CVelarray%E2%80%9D-LiDAR-Sensor. Accessed 1 Jul. 2018.
Carter, Jamie, et al. “LiDAR 101: An Introduction to LiDAR Technology, Data, and Applications.” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coastal Services Center, 2012, p. 11, https://coast.noaa.gov/data/digitalcoast/pdf/lidar-101.pdf. Accessed 1 Jul. 2018.
Frykman, Sally. “Velodyne Attends SAE AutoDrive Challenge as Official Supplier.” Velodyne LiDAR, 26 Apr. 2018, pars. 1–3, http://velodynelidar.com/newsroom/as-official-supplier-velodyne-attends-sae-autodrive-challenge/. Accessed 1 Jul. 2018
Hall, David. “128 Lasers on the Car Go Round and Round: David Hall on Velodyne’s New Sensor.” Velodyne LiDAR, 29 Nov. 2017, par. 1, http://velodynelidar.com/newsroom/128-lasers-car-go-round-round-david-hall-velodynes-new-sensor/. Accessed 1 Jul. 2018.
Krok, Andrew. “Velodyne Just Made Self-Driving Cars a Bit Less Expensive.” CNET, 2 Jan. 2018, https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/velodyne-just-made-self-driving-cars-a-bit-less-expensive-hopefully/. Accessed 1 Jul. 2018.
Ohnsman, Alan. “How a 34-Year-Old Audio Equipment Company Is Leading The Self-Driving Car Revolution.” Forbes, 8 Aug. 2017, par. 1, https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2017/08/08/how-a-34-year-old-audio-equipment-company-is-leading-the-self-driving-car-revolution/#129992915d40. Accessed 30 Jun. 2018.
Popper, Ben. “The Billion-Dollar Widget Steering the Driverless Car Industry.” The Verge, 18 Oct. 2017, par. 33, https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/18/16491052/velodyne-lidar-mapping-self-driving-car-david-hall-interview. Accessed 30 Jun. 2018.
Scoble, Robert. “Velodyne: On Sound, LiDAR, and Marine Technologies.” YouTube, uploaded by Rackspace Studios, SFO, 8 May 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KsnvGqyi3g. Accessed 1 Jul. 2018.
Thompson, Cadie. “These Images Show How Far Self-Driving Cars Have Come in a Few Short Years.” Business Insider, 22 Oct. 2015, par. 10, http://www.businessinsider.com/the-first-self-driving-cars-that-competed-in-darpa-grand-challenge-2015-10. Accessed 29 Jun. 2018.
