The Secrets of Term 3 Revealed!
Go behind the scenes of Udacity’s Self-Driving Car Nanodegree Program, and discover the projects you’ll build in the final term! Includes never-before-seen footage!
“Self-driving cars are at an amazing moment right now. Thousands of jobs are opening up, and we have dozens of hiring partners who are really excited about hiring graduates out of this program onto their autonomous vehicle teams.”
This quote comes from David Silver. He’s the Team Lead for the Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree program at Udacity, and he’s just finished making you a pretty remarkable video. You can watch it below:
Why is it incredible? Because for the first time ever, he gives you a sneak peek into the projects you’ll build in Term 3 of the Self-Driving Car program! (Hint: Term 3 is when you get to test your code … on a real self-driving car!)
In the video, David also shares excerpts from an exclusive interview, in which a certain somebody tells you exactly what a world-class company looks for when they’re hiring for their autonomous vehicle team. (Hint: The name of the company rhymes with … oh never mind, it’s Mercedes Benz!)
Before getting into those Term 3 details, David first walks you through Term 1, which focuses on Deep Learning and Computer Vision. One of the projects he explains is the Behavioral Cloning project. How does it work? Essentially, you drive a car in simulation. Then, you use data from your own driving in the simulator, to train a neural network to drive the car for you.
After that, David tells you bit about Term 2, which focuses on Sensor Fusion, Localization, and Control. Here’s David, on what you’ll learn:
“This is hard-core Robotics that every Self-Driving Car Engineer needs to know in order to actuate and move the vehicle through space.”
Finally, it’s the sneak preview you’ve been waiting for, the Term 3 projects! Here’s David Silver on what you can expect as you enter the final month of the program:
“The final month of the program is System Integration. This is the most exciting month in the whole program, and it’s where we take all the different pieces we’ve learned, and we put them together, and you get to design code that actually goes on the Udacity Self-Driving car, and see how well it runs the vehicle. We think of this as an ‘Only at Udacity’ opportunity, and it ‘s a great way to stand out as you apply for jobs in the field.”
When David talks about graduates of the program getting jobs in the field, he know what he’s talking about firsthand from people like Axel Gern, who just happens to be the Head of Autonomous Driving for Mercedes-Benz. Are you interested in hearing how Axel completes sentences like these?
“When hiring people for the autonomous driving team, we are looking for …”
“When preparing for the interview, the applicants should brush up on their …”
Then definitely watch David’s video!
You may also be interested to know that Axel has this to say:
“I think the Nanodegree program is a great thing to get the right experience in the field. If you have a really solid foundation in Computer Science, and you have successfully achieved the Nanodegree credential, you are a pretty good candidate for us.”
I’m guessing you’re getting pretty fired up to enter this program now, right? Well, good news! Applications are still open for the July class! But don’t delay. Monday, June 19th, at 11:59pm PDT, is your last chance to apply for the July class of the Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree program.
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This post was written by Christopher Watkins, Senior Writer and Chief Words Officer, Udacity.
