A talented gamer
Priscilla can’t remember a time when she wasn’t fascinated by technology. She began playing the video game Counter-Strike when she was 11, and became so skilled that she was sponsored to travel across the world to compete in tournaments.
Although she’d already recognized she was drawn towards tech, it was this game that took her “closer to technology” than ever before. “I said to my mum, ‘I’m going to play games after school.’ Initially she wasn’t very happy, but when she started noticing I was traveling, she was like, ‘Yeah, OK, as long as it’s not affecting your studies.’” As she grew older, Priscilla’s love affair with technology showed no signs of slowing — eventually she went to university where she studied computing and information systems, before taking on a Masters in Software Engineering.
Driverless cars
In her role as a Product Manager for Connected Mobility at Siemens, it was Priscilla’s job to develop the products and create the systems to bring driverless cars and other vehicles to market, something she thinks will begin to impact our lives in the next five to 10 years.
It made her reconsider her attitude towards technology. And, rather than thinking purely technically, she now imagines its impact on people. “I was trying to think of the whole ecosystem. Who is actually going to be using the products? Who is it going to affect indirectly?”
It was the combination of the human and technical aspects of her role that really excited her. “It’s the impact of one on another, because you can use technology in just so many different ways and you can show the financial and business benefit — but the moment you show a real impact on people, that’s when people actually want to use it.”
Pri talks more about the future of driverless cars in the above podcast.
Positive impact on people
How does she think self-driving cars can have a positive impact on people? “I think it’s going to change people’s lives quite a lot,” she says, explaining that the risk of accidents will reduce, people will travel further, it’ll be easier to find parking spaces, and it will help those unable to drive.
But, looking into the future, how long will it really take until driverless cars start to affect our lives? “I think it’s a matter of public acceptance. How long would it take for people to say, ‘Actually, it’s quite normal for me to share a road with a driverless car?’”
Priscilla thinks we’ll start to notice dedicated motorway lanes for automated vehicles, as there are for buses. Then, driverless cars will start to be seen more widely. Changes will be gradual though: “It won’t come overnight and we won’t suddenly see robots taking over everyone’s jobs or anything like that.”
Priscilla Nagashima Boyd is a Senior Product Manager, and is responsible for the product lifecycle management of core products around traffic controllers and systems within Siemens ITS in North America. She has a Masters in Software Engineering from Oxford University. For her dissertation, she explored how to use machine learning to predict how long specific sets of traffic lights will take to change. If drivers had access to this real-time information they could react accordingly, for example by breaking smoothly, which would help to save fuel. Her research could impact the future of travel. She is based in Austin, Texas.
For more information, watch her TED talk ‘The Overlooked Secret Behind Driverless Cars’. Find out more about working at Siemens.
Illustrations: Charlotte Trounce
Animation: Will Samuel
