A few years ago, Matthew Carey lost a friend in a freak car accident, after the friend’s car struck some small debris on a highway and spun out of control. Ordinarily, the car’s sensors would have detected the debris in plenty of time, but it was operating under conditions that render all of today’s car-mounted sensors useless: fog and bright early-morning sunshine. Radar can’t see small objects well, lidar is limited by fog, and cameras are blinded by glare. Carey and his cofounders decided to…
