The investment arms of BMW and the Chinese search technology giant Baidu, along with a large original equipment manufacturer for the auto industry and a slew of technology investors, have all come together to back Lunewave, a startup developing new sensor technologies for autonomous vehicles.

Lunewave was co-founded by brothers John and Hao Xin and is based on research that Hao conducted as a professor in the University of Arizona's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Hao previously spent years working in the defense community for companies like Raytheon and Rockwell Scientific after graduating with a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000.