The Luminar press release is, shall we say "confusing" on the point of Level 3 due to selective quoting of Marcus Schaffer as it may be misinterpreted as suggesting Mercedes used Luminar for Level 3 approval.
Mercedes teams with Luminar on lidar sensor technology ... (eenewseurope.com)
Mercedes-Benz and lidar expert Luminar Technologies, Inc. have entered into a partnership to develop future technologies for highly automated driving.
www.eenewseurope.com
Mercedes teams with Luminar on lidar sensor technology Business news | January 23, 2022
By Christoph Hammerschmidt
...
Ju
st recently, Mercedes-Benz became the first automotive manufacturer in the world to receive an internationally valid system approval for highly automated driving (SAE Level 3) – a milestone in automotive development. The “Drive Pilot” highly automated driving system is to go into series production this year in the S-Class and the EQS. However, the lidar sensors for these models do not come from Luminar. Instead, Valeo supplies these components. Luminar, on the other hand, supplies its technology not only to Mercedes Benz, but also to Daimler Truck AG and Volvo. In addition, Luminar cooperates with Nvidia and Mobileye – so one can assume that their platforms for autonomous driving are equipped with Luminar lidars.
Luminar has a foveated lidar system which it enables it to increase the density of laser points in areas of interest. This enables it to increase the effective range of its lidar detection.
Furthermore, we cannot exclude the possibility that Akida will be used in conjunction with Luminar's lidar.
Luminar think neural networks are software:
US2022076432A1 NEURAL NETWORK FOR OBJECT DETECTION AND TRACKING 20200904
View attachment 45794
[0014] FIG. 3 is a block diagram of an example software architecture for an autonomous vehicle in which the techniques of this disclosure can be implemented;
PS: The Wikipedia article on Luminar is interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminar_Technologies