Starsky’s VP of Engineering: Disruptive Autonomous Trucking Is Already Here
Nearly every item sold in the U.S. gets shipped by a truck at some point, but the trucking industry is facing a crisis. Between a severe shortage of drivers and skyrocketing shipping costs, the challenge of meeting the demand for trucking is about to have a significant effect on both consumers and businesses. Some industries are hoping fully autonomous vehicles will solve the crisis, but that’s decades away. The market needs a disruptive solution, and it needs it today.
Just a few weeks ago, I joined the Starsky Robotics team as the VP of Engineering. Throughout my career, I’ve always enjoyed working on projects that presented an opportunity to build disruptive technology while targeting a realistic business plan. As much as I love challenging projects, I really get excited about the chance to ship a groundbreaking product. If there’s a common thread to my career, it’s that I get things built. I took this to heart when working on consumer products early in my career at Palm, and later while enabling millions of streaming devices during my time at Netflix. There’s no better sense of accomplishment than having people tell you that your product has made a positive impact on them.
I made my way into the autonomous driving space a couple of years ago, and the technology in this category is about as hard as it gets. If a hardware or software challenge exists, we have it. Given there’s still a heavy research component, many companies in autonomous driving are not focusing on a path to revenue any time soon. While this might be sustainable for larger companies throwing obscene amounts of money at the elusive robo-taxi, that’s not a wise plan for a startup. Building the equivalent of a research project or a select piece of technology and hoping to get acquired is not a business model that excites me. I want to work on business solutions that can be implemented today.
Enter Starsky Robotics. Starsky has been focusing on taking the autonomy challenge and breaking it down into things we can solve today, combined with a vision for even more sophisticated technology in the future. The Starsky approach is a pragmatic one that involves human drivers in the loop with teleoperations to augment the autonomous vehicles. The benefit is that Starsky has a revenue-generating autonomous fleet now, not years from now.
Starsky Robotics is not trying to build trucks that can handle every environment. Instead, our Operational Design Domain (ODD) is specific. We are focusing on known environments and conditions. Starsky trucks drive autonomously on highways under known weather, lighting and traffic conditions. When the truck gets off the highway or the conditions change, our highly-skilled drivers take control of the vehicles using the teleoperations system. By restricting ODD, Starsky has built a safer system without getting bogged down in the intricacies of making vehicles autonomous in every environment. It means we have a solution that can help the trucking industry crisis today.
I had the chance to meet Starsky’s founders Stefan and Kartik in late 2018. I connected immediately with both of them around the opportunity in the trucking space. When I met the whole team, I knew it was a great place to create next-level disruption. Starsky’s parallel approach to business and technology to deliver the first truly unmanned trucking fleet fit my criteria of having a plan for real revenue on the journey to developing a groundbreaking autonomous vehicle system. Stefan and Kartik have managed to assemble a group of talented individuals who truly believe in using autonomous vehicles to change the world in a practical way.
As the VP of Engineering, I want to initially work on getting the team organized and hire great talent to scale our autonomous vehicle solution. We are going to expand the engineering team to deliver a fleet of autonomous trucks with high-quality software, hardware, and services. Our system can help businesses lower freight costs today. They don’t need to wait for an all-encompassing solution that will take years to perfect. We are ready to go now.
Needless to say, I’m excited to join the Starsky Robotics team. I look forward to helping deliver a vision that’s a win for drivers, technology, and businesses!
