CES 2019 in Review: Driving Toward the Future
What an exciting ride our first CES was! It was thrilling to work alongside the Honda team to showcase to tens of thousands of visitors how we enable self-driving cars and highly automated human-driven vehicles to safely and smoothly interact with one another. And it was a great opportunity to meet our customers, partners, and other automated driving stakeholders from all over the world.
The week kicked off with a media breakfast organized by the team at Toyota AI Ventures and hosted by Jim Adler, one of our key investors. It was an excellent opportunity to update the automotive and technology press on our work and to catch up with the founders of some of Toyota’s other portfolio companies.
During the show we collaborated with Honda to showcase how our behavioral science influenced technology gives human intuition to self-driving systems and next generation driver assistance systems. Visitors sat in a driving simulator to watch our technology assess the state of mind of pedestrians, cyclists, and other motorists.
The exhibit was packed with visitors pretty much the entire four days, which kept our very own Natasha Fahey and Pete Valle literally on their feet. Through real-world scenarios, visitors got to see how our technology detects behavioral cues for people on the road and helps automated vehicles to drive more smoothly and safely. We showed scenarios with pedestrians, cyclists and other motorists cutting into our lane or intending to cross in front of the car, for example.
The scenario showing a driver cutting into our lane without signaling and the scenario of a pedestrian standing at the edge of the road near a crosswalk looking at their cell phone were the examples that resonated most with visitors. “Wow, this happens a lot when I drive” was a common reaction.
One indicator for the level of interest in our work is the visit of Continental AG’s senior leadership team, including CEO & Chairman of the Board, Elmar Degenhart. We discussed our work and learned more about Conti’s focus on safety and transparency in mobility and transportation — a focus that aligns closely with our own.
In addition to our exposure on the show floor, I’m very happy that we were able to spend quality time planning for the future with existing and new automated driving and robotics customers and partners. While the WiFi at Westgate left much to be desired, I’m grateful that we could convene in our Westgate hospitality suite, only minutes away from the crowds at the convention center for focused discussions during an intense week.
We also had a great time with friends in the automated driving community. For example, our CTO & Co-Founder, Sam, hung out with our friend Alex Roy, co-host of the Autonocast podcast. CNBC and many other media organizations also stopped by to cover our mission to bring human intuition to machines.
It was wonderful to bring our technology to life for a broad CES audience and we hope that visitors to our exhibit enjoyed themselves as much as we did. We’d like to thank Honda for allowing us to be part of their CES exhibit, and we look forward to everything 2019 holds in store for us as we work to shape the future of mobility.
If you’re interested in following our journey, connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn. If you’d like to join us in pursuing our mission to bring human intuition to machines, check out our job openings. We’d love to hear from you!
