Having worked in everything from manufacturing and engineering to marketing, John Krafcik saw the auto industry from almost every possible angle before becoming the CEO of Alphabet's Waymo division. Now, as head of one of the leading self-driving technology outfits, he's taking on a whole new set of challenges. In an extended conversation recorded just before The Autonocast's 2020 anti-CES party, Krafcik talks moonshots, business models, partnerships and much, much more.
With the Autonocats still recovering from the annual grindfest that is CES, they discuss the most important trends and developments highlighted at the show and preview the episodes that will be running in the coming weeks. Topics range from the infamous annual party, which produced conversations with top AV leaders like Waymo's John Krafcik, Aptiv's Karl Iagnemma and Aurora's Chris Urmson, to Rivian's surprising popularity, and the importance of ADAS and teleoperation. If you missed CES this year, this is your chance to view it through the eyes of The Autonocats.
With a new year upon us, Alex, Kirsten and Ed pull out their crystal balls and try to predict what might play out during 2020. From the continued rise of ADAS and commercial applications of autonomous drive technology to potential acquisitions, a deployment "land grab" and yes, the "million robotaxis" thing, the gang maps out what they see coming in the world of automated driving. Get your timestamps out, and we'll see you back here next year to see how many of these predictions actually panned out.
With another year coming to a close, Alex, Kirsten and Ed look back at some of their big takeaways from 2019. Technical progress has continued, as Ed's driverless Waymo ride proved, but new technologies alone don't create viable business models or solve product-market fit. ADAS also made a comeback over the last year, with lots of OEMs announcing new plans to make up for delayed autonomy plans, but will safety considerations spoil the party? It seems that for every new opportunity, 2019 managed to create a corresponding challenge.
What do Ed's recent driverless Waymo ride, simulation, trust and the NTSB's investigation into a fatal Uber crash have in common? More than you might think. Alex, Kirsten and Ed weave these and other issues together in the latest discussion episode of The Autonocast. If you enjoy conversations like this one, please take a moment to fill out The Autonocast's first-ever listener survey at autonocast.com/survey.
Delivery bots were one of the big topics of 2019, attracting huge amounts of hype and venture capital but also generating a good deal of backlash and mockery. Much of that backlash centered on San Francisco, which banned sidewalk-based delivery bots only to provide a single company the necessary permit to test there: the delivery company Postmates. The company's VP of Special Projects Ali Kashani joins The Autonocast to explain what makes their approach different, and what kinds of design considerations and technology went into building a bot that could be a better citizen of the sidewalk.
Dizzying progress in computer vision is one of the factors that has brought autonomous driving within reach, but as self-driving cars get closer to reality the probabilistic nature of machine learning inference is creating challenges due to the need for extremely high levels of safety. One possible approach to providing a more deterministic "safety checker" in future autonomous drive stacks comes from a company called Outsight, which is developing an active hyperspectral imaging sensor which it calls a "3D Semantic Camera" that holds the promise of (among other things) rapidly classifying objects based on spectral measurements of their material composition... without inference. Outsight co-founder Raul Bravo joins the show to explain how this sensor could be used to solve some of the trickiest perception-level challenges in autonomy, and potentially offer a powerful new tool to autonomous drive system developers.
The Autonocast is just back from LA, where they saw the future of mobility in all its forms... from the ridiculous to the sublime. First up Ed and Alex ask Kirsten for her in-person account of the infamous Tesla Cybertruck reveal, where she battled Youtube influencers for the weirdest new car launch story of the year. Then the gang discusses some of the vehicles they saw at the LA show, wrapping up with an interview Ed and Kirsten did with Ford's Mark Kaufman from the back seat of the Mustang Mach E.
When Intel bought the Israeli computer vision and ADAS company Mobileye for $15 billion, it was a message that the computing and data giant didn't want to miss automated driving the way they'd missed mobile. With over a decade of experience with camera-based automated driving, a leading position in the effort to articulate autonomous vehicle safety and contracts with some of the biggest automakers in the business, Mobileye got Intel into the ADAS and autonomy business in a big way. Intel's Senior Principle Engineer Jack Weast joins the show to explain Intel's approach to integrating the two companies, the relationship between its ADAS and autonomy businesses, the firm's growing safety philosophy and much more.