Engineer Spotlight

Shining a Light on LIDAR

Ron Kapusta is an Analog Devices Fellow (the most prestigious, highest level of achievement in ADI’s technical community), and also serves as a LIDAR System Architect within the Autonomous Transportation and Safety business unit. Ron holds a B.S. and M.Eng. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Upon graduation, he joined Analog Devices, designing data converters and sensor interface circuits for digital imaging systems. In 2014, Ron shifted focus to automotive technologies, where he now works on electronics, photonics and signal processing for LIDAR. Ron has presented papers and educational talks at multiple conferences. He holds more than 30 U.S. patents and has served on the technical program committees for several IEEE conferences.

Ron running in one of his numerous marathons

On ADI’s game-changing technology ...

I used to design analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), particularly for digital imaging applications for cameras.  Now, I’m focused on LIDAR technology for autonomous driving, but, this is another area where high-speed converters play a central role. ADI’s high-speed ADCs are at the heart of LIDAR for autonomous transportation. Though we’re endowed with a strong technology position, the challenge in LIDAR has been to bring system-level knowledge that bridges existing ADI capabilities with customer needs. We do this…and it’s what differentiates and elevates us in comparison to others.

On helping customers “see the light” ...

The “LI” in LIDAR stands for light, and while many customers have significant optical expertise, they usually don’t have our level of electronics know-how.  That’s what we bring to the table: the ability to understand customer pain points, map their needs into our product offerings and increasingly helping them optimize their architectures.  That’s a huge difference-maker. When we demonstrate a deep understanding of the technical challenges our customers face and once they see our capabilities, they “see the light” and great partnerships emerge.

On working on impactful technology ...

Clearly, there’s an expectation that autonomous transportation will change the world, and LIDAR is widely regarded as an essential technology—along with radar and cameras—that will provide the perception function necessary for fully autonomous vehicles. So, I like to think my day-to-day work is actually having a tangible impact on the world. One day soon, I’ll be able to point to an autonomous vehicle and say, “My solution is in that!” That’s pretty cool.

On keeping customers ahead of what’s possible ...

In some sense, LIDAR itself is ahead of what’s possible.  While LIDAR as a sensor has existed for decades, it doesn’t exist in the form factor, at the performance level, nor at the cost point that’s required to deploy in autonomous vehicles.  In our group, we prototype complete LIDAR systems. So, when we go to a customer and tell them, “here’s what we think your problem is…” we can back it up with tangible evidence. When customers see what we’ve built in our labs, they understand we’re not just selling them components (even though our high-performance components help customers move to new levels of LIDAR capability). We help solve their problems by showing them how it all comes together.

On applying LIDAR to other industries ...

It turns out that LIDAR is an interesting sensor for many applications outside of autonomous vehicles, including delivery robots, smart drones, precision agriculture, and many others.   ADI’s first LIDAR signal processor (LSP) leverages our learnings from both the automotive and industrial markets to define a product which provides value, integration, and ease-of-use to customers, across multiple LIDAR architectures in multiple applications.

On LIDAR's growth and impact at ADI ...

Analog Devices is looking to the LIDAR market as we looked to expand our business in sensors for autonomous transportation. I was actively involved with other sensors, but realized that the LIDAR strategy needed to be pulled together at the system level; otherwise we wouldn’t be able to optimize overall performance and fail to realize the promise of what we had to offer.  I was fortunate to be afforded this opportunity and established myself as our first LIDAR system architect.  We’ve since grown this into a team of engineers focused on understanding and helping to solve our customers’ problems, whether that be with algorithms, modeling, or full-system demos.

On what makes ADI special ...

For me, it’s the engineering culture.  When I started at ADI, I knew that I had so much more to learn, and it was the culture of collaboration and teaching that drew me here.  There are obviously many experts here in a variety of areas, but what’s unique is that so many established, successful engineers take time away from their day-to-day tasks to help develop younger engineers.  It’s one thing to hire the best and brightest talent —anyone can do that— and it’s quite another to actually develop that talent into the best engineers possible. And that’s one of the core values that drives ADI.

On mentoring …

It’s very important in career development to have a mentor and at ADI it’s really an essential part of the culture here. I had Katsu Nakumora and Kimo Tam as mentors, both of whom are ADI Fellows. So I’ve been lucky to have such prestigious guidance in my development as a technologist. Now I’m returning the favor as part of the“Pay it Forward” program – which mentors female engineers, and is a particular area of focused growth at ADI.

On what to look for in young engineers …

Young engineers need to have a passion, an excitement for problem-solving, that’s a given.  But they also should have the motivation and resilience to fail faster and shake it off and move on.  That’s a huge part of growing as an engineer.

On his passion outside ADI …

I have four kids — from 1 to 8 years-old — so ‘nuf said, I guess. Seriously though, they keep me grounded and remind me of what’s really important in life.  Outside of my family, I enjoy challenging myself physically, whether that be downhill skiing, running marathons, or, most recently, getting into CrossFit.