Here at PAVE, we believe that education is the key to maximizing the benefits of autonomous driving technology, which is why we examine AVs and their potential impacts through such a diverse mix of lenses. From our look at equity-related issues during February to discussions about the legal, social, political and economic factors related to this technology, we want to empower the public to help guide our transportation future. But, of course, a single topic is at the center of all of these educational efforts: the technology itself.
During March, we’re focusing on this topic of autonomous driving technology — in our weekly virtual discussions and beyond. After all, it’s impossible to truly understand the broader impacts of this complex technology without a firm grasp of how it actually works. We’re breaking self-driving technology down to its constituent parts, looking in-depth at critical components like mapping and perception, development tools like simulation, and then putting it all together with a look at system-level safety.
Whether you’re new to the technology or deeply involved in the AV world, we hope you find the next month of conversations and content useful in demystifying the self-driving “stack.” You can read about — and register for — our weekly virtual panels below, but this month’s technical education won’t stop there. Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube for even more facts, resources, and insights from the experts who are shaping our autonomous future.
Autonomous vehicles are technological masterpieces, which bring a number of cutting-edge technologies together into a single, incredibly advanced system. From cameras, radar and lidar to a dizzying array of machine learning and AI techniques, each piece of the AV stack is its own endless rabbit hole of novel and rapidly-changing technologies to learn about. To help you make sense of this intimidating array of technologies, we’re bringing back our #AVAnswers series and giving you the opportunity to get answers from some of the leading AV developers and technical gurus. If there’s a question about how AVs work that you just haven’t been able to find an answer to, please submit it when you register or tweet it to us @PAVECampaign and/or using the #AVAnswers hashtag.
Panelists:
- Oliver Cameron — Co-founder & CEO, Voyage
- Anuja Sonalker — Founder & CEO, STEER
For humans, maps serve one major function: helping us understand where we are, where we want to go, and how to get there. For AVs, on the other hand, navigation is just the starting point for what machine-readable maps can do. In this week’s PAVE virtual panel we look at the various ways that maps for AVs are made and updated, but also the many different roles they can serve to make AVs safer, smarter and more efficient.
Panelists:
- Tal Babaioff — Vice President, Mapping and Localization, Mobileye
- Richard Lucquet — VP Operations, DeepMap
- Aaron Nathan — Founder and CEO, Point One Navigation
- Sheila Nedelcu — Sr. Director for Automotive Products, HERE
As a safety technology, autonomous vehicles must be tested in real-world situations, which can inherently carry a degree of unpredictability and risk. AV developers have instituted robust safety protocols to ensure the highest level of public safety, a core component of which is the use of simulation testing. In this week’s PAVE virtual panel, we look at this critical technology and examine the various forms it takes, roles it plays, and techniques it enables.
Panelists:
- Matt Cragun — Senior Product Manager, NVIDIA
- Varun Mittal — Head of Customers and Product, Applied Intuition
- Andreas Wendel — VP of Engineering, Kodiak Robotics
Long before we drive, walk, or even crawl, we learn to perceive the world around us. Automated vehicles are not so different: perception is fundamental to how an AV operates. In this week’s PAVE virtual panel, we focus on this critical layer in the autonomous driving technology stack, how it works, what it does and how it supports the rest of the system.
Panelists:
- Felix Heide — CTO, Algolux
- Hod Finklestein — CTO, Sense Photonics
- Chris Posch — Engineering Director Automotive, FLIR
The rise of autonomous driving technology has been facilitated by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, which plays a central role in some of the most important functions of an autonomous vehicle. This has led many to frame autonomous driving as “an AI problem,” when it is in fact a systems engineering challenge with a significant AI component. In this week’s PAVE virtual panel we explore how the various components and technologies that make up autonomous vehicles come together as a system, and the role of safety in shaping this system-level design and engineering.
Panelists:
- Steve Kenner — Director of Safety Standards, Aurora
- Robert Dingli — Director of Vehicle Engineering, PLUS
- Kartik Tiwari — Head of Systems and Safety, Gatik
