Podcasts about DARPA Grand Challenge

Chris Urmson has spent the last 20 years pushing the limits of autonomous driving—first at Carnegie Mellon's DARPA Grand Challenge team, then as co-founder of Google's self-driving car project, now Waymo.On this week's episode, the Aurora CEO retraces that journey—from building robot cars in the desert to leading a public company pioneering driverless trucking.He shares why autonomy was always a matter of when, not if, how he handled a high-profile departure from Waymo, and what it takes to build at the intersection of deep tech, safety, and infrastructure.Now eight years into Aurora, Urmson says the future he's been chasing is finally within reach.Guest: Chris Urmson, Co-Founder & CEO of AuroraChapters: 00:00 Trailer00:43 Introduction01:59 FSD: are we there? 14:31 The competition, a million dollar check from LA to LV22:50 Dream like an amateur, execute like a pro32:30 Operate with integrity42:49 The future is here, unevenly distributed49:36 Underestimated decisions, minimizing regrets1:03:55 Retaining value1:16:45 Integrating self-driving1:28:20 Lifer1:29:25 Who Aurora is hiring1:29:53 What “grit” means to Chris1:30:15 OutroMentioned in this episode: Waymo, Google, Rivian, Dmitri Dolgov, Uber, Tesla, The DARPA Grand Challenge, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, United States Department of Defense, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, FedEx, Werner Enterprises, Hirschbach, Schneider Electric, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Sebastian Thrun, Batman, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Anthony Levandowski, Donald Trump, Apple iPhone, Airbnb, Blackmore, Stripe, Titan, Ford, Volkswagen, RJ Scaringe, Peterbilt Motors Company, The Volvo Group, Continental AG, Dara KhosrowshahiLinks:Connect with Chris UrmsonXLinkedInConnect with JoubinXLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

RACER enables off-road vehicles to travel autonomously and reliably at high speeds over cross-country terrain, enabling new capabilities for our warfighters. Since the DARPA Grand Challenge kicked off more than 20 years ago, the Department of Defense has been very publicly invested in creating the capabilities necessary for ground vehicles to travel autonomously in areas without roads, signs, maps, or even GPS signals. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Stuart Young, who leads the Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER) program, which is creating platform agnostic autonomy capable of operating in complex, mission-relevant, off-road environments that are significantly more unpredictable than on-road conditions. We also speak with Dr. Trent Mills, a Colonel in the U.S. Army and special assistant to the DARPA director. Mills shares a warfighter perspective on what the Army has learned from RACER, and how autonomy is being integrated into the way the Army prepares and thinks about future engagements.  Check out videos from earlier experiments to better envision what testing looks like in the field: RACER Experiment 4 – Heavy Platform Highlight Video RACER Experiment 4 – Cockpit view of an autonomous off-road run in TX RACER Experiment 3 – Highlight video In the interview, Young shares: The importance of real-world experimentation and testing How the RACER program has evolved over its time  How performers on RACER have spun out innovative companies to accelerate bringing new capabilities to the warfighter The confluence of technologies that have made off-road autonomy viable What edge case scenarios RACER is still exploring and trying to solve, and what success means for the program 

Generative AI is making it possible to not only remove the human from the driver seat, but, in the world of trucking and freight, from the vehicle entirely.  This week on Generative Now, Lightspeed Partner and host Michael Mignano speaks with Chris Urmson, CEO and co-founder of Aurora Innovation, a company that makes software for autonomous vehicles with a focus on the trucking industry. Chris shares his journey from participating in the self-driving vehicle DARPA Grand Challenge early in his career, to leading the autonomous vehicle program at Google. Michael also talks with Chris about why Aurora focuses on the trucking and freight industry, the challenge of designing AI systems for self-driving technology, and how technological advancements in radar and LiDAR have helped make autonomous vehicles possible . Chris discusses his insights about developing AI systems to mimic human driving, and how he sees the future of autonomous vehicles for both trucking and personal cars. Chris Urmson is the co-founder and CEO of Aurora Innovation. Before co-founding Aurora, Chris led the development of Google's autonomous vehicle project (later known as Waymo) from 2009 to 2016. As a graduate student, he also led the Carnegie Mellon University team for the DARPA Grand and Urban Challenge as the Director of Technology, winning second and third place in 2005, and first place in 2007. Chris received his BEng in Computer Engineering from the University of Manitoba, and his Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon. Episode Chapters (00:00) Introduction (01:44) Chris Urmson's Early Work (04:43) Founding Aurora Innovation (06:25) Aurora's Focus on Freight and Trucking (09:32) The Challenges in Trucking (17:08) Advancements in Autonomous Vehicle Technology (25:01) Using AI to Enhance Safety in Autonomous Vehicles (27:06) Handling Complex Driving Scenarios (31:40) Addressing Maintenance and Fueling for an Autonomous Vehicle (36:36) Regulatory Considerations (45:47) Predictions for the Future of Autonomous Vehicles (48:57) Conclusion and Final Thoughts Stay in touch: www.lsvp.com X: https://twitter.com/lightspeedvp LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lightspeed-venture-partners/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lightspeedventurepartners/ Subscribe on your favorite podcast app: generativenow.co Email: generativenow@lsvp.com The content here does not constitute tax, legal, business or investment advice or an offer to provide such advice, should not be construed as advocating the purchase or sale of any security or investment or a recommendation of any company, and is not an offer, or solicitation of an offer, for the purchase or sale of any security or investment product. For more details please see lsvp.com/legal.

Corey Clothier, Co-Founder, ARIBO joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss developing and deploying autonomous ground vehicles with the military. In this insightful episode, Grayson and Corey explore the rapidly evolving world of autonomous vehicles, with a special focus on military applications and their spillover into commercial sectors. The discussion begins with a look at the current state of autonomous vehicles outside the well-known robotaxi market. Corey highlights the diverse applications in mines, ports, terminals, and campus-based environments. He emphasizes that autonomy is far more extensive than just passenger vehicles, touching on crucial areas such as logistics, security, industrial operations and military applications. With a background in working with the military on ground autonomy, Corey shares his experiences, detailing projects ranging from autonomous security vehicles to logistics trucks. He discusses the challenges and opportunities in deploying these technologies on military bases and in combat zones, touching on issues like reliability, safety protocols, and regulatory hurdles.The conversation also delves into the future of autonomy in both military and civilian contexts. Corey predicts a steady growth in adoption and innovation over the next decade, with potential catalysts like competition from China and Tesla's anticipated entry into the robotaxi market further accelerating development.Throughout the conversation Grayson and Corey both highlight the interconnectedness of military and commercial autonomous vehicle technologies. Wrapping up the conversation, Corey shares his thoughts and insights on emerging trends, particularly in logistics and campus-based autonomous vehicle systems. He emphasizes the need for collaboration, competition, and strong leadership to drive innovation in this rapidly advancing field.Recorded on Friday, June 21, 2024Episode Chapters0:00 Current State of Autonomous Vehicle Market1:43 Deploying Autonomous Vehicles at Airports6:12 Autonomous Vehicles on Military Bases 11:05 Military Collaboration on Autonomy 16:11 Autonomous Tanks22:04 Reliability 26:51 Leader Follower Program30:25 Opportunities for the Army in Autonomous Vehicles 34:52 DARPA Grand Challenge 36:07 Autonomy Evolving Over the Next Decade42:34 Key Takeaways--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor's Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

March 13 marks the 20-year anniversary of the inaugural DARPA Grand Challenge race which catalyzed interest in self-driving technology. DARPA director Tony Tether, Carnegie Mellon University's Red Whittaker, Waymo's Melissa Dumas Grimm and Pronto's Anthony Levandowski offer reflections on that race and how it steered the course of automated-driving development.

This is a repost of Episode 149, originally aired on April 2, 2023. This conversation was the 3rd most popular Future of Mobility episode in 2023. ... Angus Pacala serves as the CEO at Ouster, which he co-founded in 2015 to make lidar both digital and ubiquitous. Key topics in this conversation include: The fundamentals of digital LiDAR, and the advantages over analog technology Why Ouster and Velodyne merged The potential for digital LiDAR to transform smart infrastructure Ouster's strategic approach to modular product development, and how it enables them to explore various application segments How Ouster is providing LiDAR solutions for L2 and L3 systems, as well as fully automated driving systems Links: Show notes: ⁠http://brandonbartneck.com/futureofmobility/anguspacala⁠ ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/ouster/⁠ ⁠https://twitter.com/ousterlidar?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor⁠ ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/apacala/⁠ ⁠https://ouster.com/⁠ Angus's Bio: Angus Pacala serves as the CEO at Ouster, which he co-founded in 2015 to make lidar both digital and ubiquitous. Mr. Pacala has watched self-driving technology evolve from the early days of the DARPA Grand Challenge to today where he has a unique window into the future of automation through Ouster's work with approximately 700 customers spanning the automotive, industrial, robotics, and smart infrastructure industries. Prior to Ouster, Mr. Pacala co-founded lidar company Quanergy Systems and served as the Director of Engineering. Before that, he was a Battery Engineer at Amprius, Inc. He received his Bachelor and Master degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. About Ouster Ouster (NYSE: OUST) is a leading global provider of high-resolution scanning and solid-state digital lidar sensors, Velodyne Lidar sensors, and software solutions for the automotive, industrial, robotics, and smart infrastructure industries. Ouster is on a mission to build a safer and more sustainable future by offering affordable, high-performance sensors that drive mass adoption across a wide variety of applications. With a global team and high-volume manufacturing, Ouster supports over 850 customers in over 50 countries. Ouster is headquartered in San Francisco, CA with offices in the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East. Future of Mobility: The Future of Mobility podcast is focused on the development and implementation of safe, sustainable, effective, and accessible mobility solutions, with a spotlight on the people and technology advancing these fields. ⁠linkedin.com/in/brandonbartneck/⁠ ⁠brandonbartneck.com/futureofmobility/

If a VC is excited about a deep tech company upfront, what can we do to temper our enthusiasm and make a rational decision on whether to invest? Maryanna Saenko is Cofounder and Partner at Future Ventures, an early-stage VC firm that focuses on mission-driven companies at the cutting edge of disruptive technology. Future Ventures looks to back visionaries who push the boundaries of possibility. Some of their recent investments include Beeflow, Deep Genomics and Earthshot Labs. On this episode of Boost VC, Maryanna joins us to share her definition of deep tech, describing how Future Ventures looks for opportunities ‘unlike anything we've ever seen before.' Maryanna offers her take on why the two-person structure of a venture firm is ideal and discusses some of the deep tech deals she wishes she'd been closer to. Listen in for Maryanna's insight on building organizations around big shifts in science or technology and learn her process for dialing down the excitement after a pitch to decide whether her YES will hold. Topics Covered Maryanna's biggest accomplishments before age 20Recognized she wouldn't survive public high schoolGot into Hopkins prep school on scholarship How Maryanna got into venture capitalWorked for early-stage company out of collegeJob offer from Daimler to figure out driverless carsIntroduced to head of innovation lab at Airbus The most important lessons Maryanna has learned as a VCTrust your intuitionDon't waste time justifying a startup's relevance How Maryanna defines deep tech‘Unlike anything we've ever seen before'Index on novelty at Future Ventures What Maryanna does when she's all-in on a company right awayAsks what she must believe about reality for YES to holdDiscussion with partner to temper her excitement Why Maryanna prefers the two-person structure in ventureIdeal for its efficiency and intellectual honestyNever puts someone in tie-breaker position Maryanna's superpowers as a venture investorConfident in ability to assess tech on first principlesKnow how to build orgs around shifts in science or tech  What deals Maryanna wishes she had been closer toStructure of open AIDeep seabed mining, recycling battery technology Maryanna's definition of successFeel landscape of possibility was totally exhausted‘Everything I could give to this, I did' Connect with Maryanna Saenko Future Ventures https://future.ventures/ Future on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/FutureVenturesVCFuture on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/future.ventures/Future on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/futureventures/Maryanna on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryannasaenko/Maryanna on Twitter https://twitter.com/FutureSaenko Resources Lux Research https://www.luxresearchinc.com/DARPA Grand Challenge https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/-grand-challenge-for-autonomous-vehiclesAirbus BizLab https://www.airbus.com/en/innovation/innovation-ecosystem/airbus-bizlabBeeflow  https://www.beeflow.com/Decoding the World by Po Bronson and Arvind Gupta https://www.amazon.com/Decoding-World-Questioner-Po-Bronson/dp/1538734311Redwood Materials https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin https://www.amazon.com/American-Prometheus-audiobook/dp/B000OZ0J0W/ Connect with Boost VC Boost VC Website https://www.boost.vc/Boost VC on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/boostvc/Boost VC on Twitter https://twitter.com/BoostVCBoost VC on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/boost_vc/ 

CES is an annual event that brings together the world's top tech companies, innovators, and industry experts. This year, CES is 70% larger than 2022, with 3,200 exhibitors across 2.1 million net square feet of exhibit space, and more than 100,000 attendees from 150 different countries. This is more than double the 40,000 attendees from last year.CES brings in lots of moneyDon Baine has been attending for 17 years and has seen the massive changes that have taken place. He remembers the year when the show was so crowded that it felt "shoulder to shoulder". From his perspective, this year feels much more comfortable. CTA Spokesperson Allison Fried, who has been involved for over a decade, agrees.CES brings in a lot of money to Las Vegas. Although the exact figure is not yet known, Fried estimates that the show will have over 100,000 attendees, which is more than double what it had last year. He also recalls that five years ago, the record was somewhere in the 170s. This means that the show brings in an incredible amount of money to the city.It's not surprising that CES brings in so much money. With so many people attending, it means that hotels, restaurants, and transportation services are all benefiting from the show. Allie and Don advise attendees to book their hotels and restaurants early, as prices tend to go up closer to the event. They also recommend that people make reservations for dinner, as it can be difficult to find a place to eat.Innovation solves challengesBeyond the money, CES is also about innovation. This year, the show had an official theme: "Technology Solving the World's Biggest Challenges." This theme was meant to highlight the ways that technology can help us address some of the biggest problems facing humanity today. From sustainable farming to healthcare, technology can be used to make a real difference in people's lives.At CES, startups from all over the world come together to share their ideas and visions. This event is an incredible opportunity for entrepreneurs to connect with industry experts and potential partners. It's also a chance for governments to get involved and provide support to these startups. For example, the United States government had a large booth at the show, offering advice and resources to entrepreneurs.Innovation is the key to solving the world's biggest challenges. At CES, innovators from all over the globe come together to share their ideas and visions. This event provides an incredible opportunity for entrepreneurs to find potential partners and get the resources they need to bring their ideas to life. By supporting innovation, we can make a real difference in people's lives and create a better future for everyone.Inspire the next generationIt is also important to inspire the next generation of innovators. We need to show young people that they have the potential to make a difference and that their ideas can have a real impact on the world. One way to do this is to provide them with opportunities to explore the latest technologies and gain hands-on experience.One such program is the India Autonomous Challenge. This is a nonprofit group made up of university teams from around the world that are programming autonomous race cars. It is similar to the DARPA Grand Challenge and provides an exciting and unique opportunity for students to get involved in cutting-edge technology. The teams are made up of students from different universities who work together to program their AI drivers. They also have industry partners such as Cisco, and the data sets from the race cars are incredibly valuable.The India Autonomous Challenge is a great example of how universities and industry can work together to inspire the next generation of innovators. It provides students with an unforgettable experience that can help them to develop the skills they need to succeed in the tech industry. Furthermore, the success of the program has already led to the founding of a new autonomous driving tech company. This is a testament to the potential of young people to create meaningful change in the world.In conclusion, it is essential that we provide young people with the support and resources to explore their ideas and develop their skills. Events like the India Autonomous Challenge are a great way to inspire the next generation of innovators and help them to create a better future for everyone.Technology is amazingTechnology is an amazing tool that has revolutionized the way we live. It has enabled us to work more efficiently, connect with people around the world, and access endless amounts of information. From the development of the internet to the invention of the smartphone, technology has changed our lives in countless ways.At the CES, there are also areas dedicated to learning technology, university showcases, and dedicated tech zones. This provides an opportunity for people to learn about the latest technology and for companies to showcase their products. Additionally, the CES provides an audited report each year that provides a breakdown of job titles, countries, and areas of focus.The CES also provides an opportunity for people to learn about the latest technology and to connect with industry professionals. For example, the CES has media events that take place in target cities around the world where attendees can meet with reporters and discuss the latest technology. Additionally, the CES provides an opportunity for exhibitors to connect with journalists and make connections.Regulations are key for flying carsOne of the latest developments in technology is the idea of flying cars. This concept is not as far-fetched as it may seem. At the CES, a prototype of a flying car with a hydrogen engine and vertical takeoff was presented. The car works flawlessly and is only a few years away from being released to the public. While the car is impressive, what is even more impressive is the foresight of the company's founder. He is not focused on the car, but on the regulations that will be necessary for these cars to be safely used.Regulations are key for flying cars. Without regulations, there will be chaos in the air. Regulations will need to be put in place to determine where the cars can fly, how high they can go, and how they will interact with other objects in the air. Additionally, there will need to be regulations in place to ensure the safety of the passengers and those on the ground. Without regulations, the use of flying cars could be extremely dangerous.The founder of the company is already working on the regulations for flying cars. He is speaking with governments around the world to ensure that the necessary regulations are in place before the cars are released. This is an incredibly important step that needs to be taken in order for flying cars to be safely used. Without regulations, the use of flying cars could be extremely dangerous.The development of flying cars is an exciting prospect. However, it is important to remember that regulations are key for flying cars. Regulations will need to be put in place to ensure the safety of the passengers and those on the ground. Without regulations, the use of flying cars could be extremely dangerous. It is encouraging to see that the founder of the company is already working on the regulations for flying cars. This is an incredibly important step that needs to be taken in order for flying cars to be safely used.Interview by Don Baine, The Gadget Professor.Sponsored by: Get $5 to protect your credit card information online with Privacy. Amazon Prime gives you more than just free shipping. Get free music, TV shows, movies, videogames and more. The most flexible tools for podcasting. Get a 30 day free trial of storage and statistics.

CES is an annual event that brings together the world's top tech companies, innovators, and industry experts. This year, CES is 70% larger than 2022, with 3,200 exhibitors across 2.1 million net square feet of exhibit space, and more than 100,000 attendees from 150 different countries. This is more than double the 40,000 attendees from last year.CES brings in lots of moneyDon Baine has been attending for 17 years and has seen the massive changes that have taken place. He remembers the year when the show was so crowded that it felt "shoulder to shoulder". From his perspective, this year feels much more comfortable. CTA Spokesperson Allison Fried, who has been involved for over a decade, agrees.CES brings in a lot of money to Las Vegas. Although the exact figure is not yet known, Fried estimates that the show will have over 100,000 attendees, which is more than double what it had last year. He also recalls that five years ago, the record was somewhere in the 170s. This means that the show brings in an incredible amount of money to the city.It's not surprising that CES brings in so much money. With so many people attending, it means that hotels, restaurants, and transportation services are all benefiting from the show. Allie and Don advise attendees to book their hotels and restaurants early, as prices tend to go up closer to the event. They also recommend that people make reservations for dinner, as it can be difficult to find a place to eat.Innovation solves challengesBeyond the money, CES is also about innovation. This year, the show had an official theme: "Technology Solving the World's Biggest Challenges." This theme was meant to highlight the ways that technology can help us address some of the biggest problems facing humanity today. From sustainable farming to healthcare, technology can be used to make a real difference in people's lives.At CES, startups from all over the world come together to share their ideas and visions. This event is an incredible opportunity for entrepreneurs to connect with industry experts and potential partners. It's also a chance for governments to get involved and provide support to these startups. For example, the United States government had a large booth at the show, offering advice and resources to entrepreneurs.Innovation is the key to solving the world's biggest challenges. At CES, innovators from all over the globe come together to share their ideas and visions. This event provides an incredible opportunity for entrepreneurs to find potential partners and get the resources they need to bring their ideas to life. By supporting innovation, we can make a real difference in people's lives and create a better future for everyone.Inspire the next generationIt is also important to inspire the next generation of innovators. We need to show young people that they have the potential to make a difference and that their ideas can have a real impact on the world. One way to do this is to provide them with opportunities to explore the latest technologies and gain hands-on experience.One such program is the India Autonomous Challenge. This is a nonprofit group made up of university teams from around the world that are programming autonomous race cars. It is similar to the DARPA Grand Challenge and provides an exciting and unique opportunity for students to get involved in cutting-edge technology. The teams are made up of students from different universities who work together to program their AI drivers. They also have industry partners such as Cisco, and the data sets from the race cars are incredibly valuable.The India Autonomous Challenge is a great example of how universities and industry can work together to inspire the next generation of innovators. It provides students with an unforgettable experience that can help them to develop the skills they need to succeed in the tech industry. Furthermore, the success of the program has already led to the founding of a new autonomous driving tech company. This is a testament to the potential of young people to create meaningful change in the world.In conclusion, it is essential that we provide young people with the support and resources to explore their ideas and develop their skills. Events like the India Autonomous Challenge are a great way to inspire the next generation of innovators and help them to create a better future for everyone.Technology is amazingTechnology is an amazing tool that has revolutionized the way we live. It has enabled us to work more efficiently, connect with people around the world, and access endless amounts of information. From the development of the internet to the invention of the smartphone, technology has changed our lives in countless ways.At the CES, there are also areas dedicated to learning technology, university showcases, and dedicated tech zones. This provides an opportunity for people to learn about the latest technology and for companies to showcase their products. Additionally, the CES provides an audited report each year that provides a breakdown of job titles, countries, and areas of focus.The CES also provides an opportunity for people to learn about the latest technology and to connect with industry professionals. For example, the CES has media events that take place in target cities around the world where attendees can meet with reporters and discuss the latest technology. Additionally, the CES provides an opportunity for exhibitors to connect with journalists and make connections.Regulations are key for flying carsOne of the latest developments in technology is the idea of flying cars. This concept is not as far-fetched as it may seem. At the CES, a prototype of a flying car with a hydrogen engine and vertical takeoff was presented. The car works flawlessly and is only a few years away from being released to the public. While the car is impressive, what is even more impressive is the foresight of the company's founder. He is not focused on the car, but on the regulations that will be necessary for these cars to be safely used.Regulations are key for flying cars. Without regulations, there will be chaos in the air. Regulations will need to be put in place to determine where the cars can fly, how high they can go, and how they will interact with other objects in the air. Additionally, there will need to be regulations in place to ensure the safety of the passengers and those on the ground. Without regulations, the use of flying cars could be extremely dangerous.The founder of the company is already working on the regulations for flying cars. He is speaking with governments around the world to ensure that the necessary regulations are in place before the cars are released. This is an incredibly important step that needs to be taken in order for flying cars to be safely used. Without regulations, the use of flying cars could be extremely dangerous.The development of flying cars is an exciting prospect. However, it is important to remember that regulations are key for flying cars. Regulations will need to be put in place to ensure the safety of the passengers and those on the ground. Without regulations, the use of flying cars could be extremely dangerous. It is encouraging to see that the founder of the company is already working on the regulations for flying cars. This is an incredibly important step that needs to be taken in order for flying cars to be safely used.Interview by Don Baine, The Gadget Professor.Sponsored by: Get $5 to protect your credit card information online with Privacy. Amazon Prime gives you more than just free shipping. Get free music, TV shows, movies, videogames and more. The most flexible tools for podcasting. Get a 30 day free trial of storage and statistics.

Angus Pacala serves as the CEO at Ouster, which he co-founded in 2015 to make lidar both digital and ubiquitous. Key topics in this conversation include: The fundamentals of digital LiDAR, and the advantages over analog technology Why Ouster and Velodyne merged The potential for digital LiDAR to transform smart infrastructure Ouster's strategic approach to modular product development, and how it enables them to explore various application segments How Ouster is providing LiDAR solutions for L2 and L3 systems, as well as fully automated driving systems Links: Show notes: http://brandonbartneck.com/futureofmobility/anguspacala https://www.linkedin.com/company/ouster/ https://twitter.com/ousterlidar?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor https://www.linkedin.com/in/apacala/ https://ouster.com/ Angus's Bio: Angus Pacala serves as the CEO at Ouster, which he co-founded in 2015 to make lidar both digital and ubiquitous. Mr. Pacala has watched self-driving technology evolve from the early days of the DARPA Grand Challenge to today where he has a unique window into the future of automation through Ouster's work with approximately 700 customers spanning the automotive, industrial, robotics, and smart infrastructure industries. Prior to Ouster, Mr. Pacala co-founded lidar company Quanergy Systems and served as the Director of Engineering. Before that, he was a Battery Engineer at Amprius, Inc. He received his Bachelor and Master degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. About Ouster Ouster (NYSE: OUST) is a leading global provider of high-resolution scanning and solid-state digital lidar sensors, Velodyne Lidar sensors, and software solutions for the automotive, industrial, robotics, and smart infrastructure industries. Ouster is on a mission to build a safer and more sustainable future by offering affordable, high-performance sensors that drive mass adoption across a wide variety of applications. With a global team and high-volume manufacturing, Ouster supports over 850 customers in over 50 countries. Ouster is headquartered in San Francisco, CA with offices in the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East. Future of Mobility: The Future of Mobility podcast is focused on the development and implementation of safe, sustainable, effective, and accessible mobility solutions, with a spotlight on the people and technology advancing these fields. linkedin.com/in/brandonbartneck/ brandonbartneck.com/futureofmobility/

In this latest MAX episode, Tu & Lei chat with Zack Anderson, Co-founder & CTO of ClearMotion. ClearMotion's mission is to transform the quality of time in motion and its solution uses a combination of hardware and software to drive comfort, productivity, performance and safety to new limits for modern vehicle platforms.Zack shares with Tu and Lei his journey from Darpa Grand Challenge participant as an undergrad all the way through to his current role as CTO of ClearMotion and why he thinks now is the right time for their company. He tells a great story and gives a blueprint for how tier 1s can evolve to become major players in what's become the largest-ever disruption of the transportation space by embracing software, technology and data. And yes, all roads lead to China.

No one could have imagined how the COVID-19 pandemic would shape the future of work. The number of people working from home tripled between 2019 and 2021, from 5.7% to nearly 18%, according to 2022 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Many employees would rather quit than return to an office full-time, valuing flexibility and autonomy over higher paychecks. While several employers have adopted a hybrid model to accommodate employees' preferences, some interactions simply aren't the same over Zoom.  As a software engineer in 2017, Renji Bijoy noticed that collaborating virtually was difficult in hybrid settings. This inspired Renji to become the CEO/CTO and Founder of Immersed, a Techstars startup, to enhance remote working environments with virtual reality. It wasn't until remote work became the norm in 2020 that his company gained traction with Meta and Microsoft to build virtual reality offices. Now, Immersed has raised $12M to date and it doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon. Renji chats with Tommy about the importance of flexibility in a startup environment, the key to selecting a high-performing team, and the role virtual offices will play in the next generation of the workforce. Key Takeaways [02:08] - Renji's entrepreneurial journey. [07:35] - The DARPA Grand Challenge. [10:20] - The idea that Renji initially brought to TechStars. [12:40] - How Renji pivoted to solve a new problem. [14:34] - How Renji secured a partnership with Meta. [15:29] - The financial hardship Renji faced in 2019. [17:23] - Renji's unconventional approach to hiring. [20:38] - Renji's secret to building a top-performing team.  [23:13] - How crowdfunding works. [25:57] - How Immerse became a fundraising success. [28:45] - The virtual reality experience. [31:37] - The future of virtual reality. [36:50] -The next step for telepresence. [39:00] - Renji's favorite business contractor. [43:54] - The best way to reach out to Renji. Quotes [35:35] - “Immersed is not something that we're building because we love remote work, it's something that we're building because we actually hate remote work. We are trying to unite our world in such a way that actually allows people to get to the same space, regardless of where you're at.” ~ Renji Bijoy [43:06] - “Zoom is not the solution for hybrid remote teams now that companies want people in the office and only half of them want to come back.” ~ Renji Bijoy [45:04] - “You start creating a global workforce as if you had everyone on-site. This is going to be the next generation of the workforce.” ~ Renji Bijoy Links  Renji Bijoy on LinkedIn Renji Bijoy in Forbes 30 Under 30 Immersed on LinkedIn The Grand Challenge Sebastian Thrun on LinkedIn Ryan Yep on LinkedIn Techstars Wefunder U.S. Census Bureau - Working From Home Connect with our hosts Mammoth Tommy on LinkedIn Subscribe and stay in touch Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts Learn more about Mammoth Scientific's Health & Tech Fund 1 When you move beyond the point of making sure your retirement goals are on track, your investment opportunities are wider than just publicly traded funds. Step into the world of investing in venture capital by learning more about Mammoth Scientific's Health & Tech Fund 1. Curated by some of the leading medical and fintech experts, Mammoth's Fund 1 is paving the way for health science and tech innovation. If you're interested in helping patient care, provider insight, and instrumentation go beyond possibility and into reality, check it out today at Mammoth.vc. Visit Mammoth.vc today!

Bibhrajit Halder is the Founder & CEO of SafeAI, a leader in autonomous heavy equipment. Key topics in this conversation include: - Bibhrajit's background in automated driving, starting with the DARPA Grand Challenge - Why heavy equipment presents a compelling application for automation - The best initial use cases for automation at mining and construction sites - How automating mining equipment is similar to on-road automated driving, and how it is different - The importance of optimizing machine operation at a site-level Links: ● Show notes: http://brandonbartneck.com/futureofmobility/bibhrajithalder ● LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bibhrajit/ ● SafeAI website: https://www.safeai.ai/ Bibhrajit's Bio Bibhrajit Halder is the Founder & CEO of SafeAI, a leader in autonomous heavy equipment. He got his start in autonomy during the early aughts at the DARPA Grand Challenge, and went on to autonomous projects at Caterpillar, Ford, Faraday Future and Apple before founding SafeAI in 2017. Halder holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Vanderbilt University, and an MS in Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering from Ohio University. About SafeAI SafeAI is a global autonomous solutions provider for heavy equipment leaders focused on advancing modern industry. SafeAI retrofits heavy equipment for autonomous applications in mining and construction to serve a massive ecosystem of industry players with complex needs. SafeAI enables equipment owners to transform existing machines into self-operating robotic assets with aftermarket hardware, advanced, proprietary autonomous technology and a scalable framework for deployment. SafeAI is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA and has offices in Perth, Australia, Tokyo, Japan and Delhi, India. Future of Mobility: The Future of Mobility podcast is focused on the development and implementation of safe, sustainable, effective, and accessible mobility solutions, with a spotlight on the people and technology advancing these fields. linkedin.com/in/brandonbartneck/ brandonbartneck.com/futureofmobility/ Edison Manufacturing: At Edison Manufacturing, our specialty is building and assembling highly complex mobility products in annual quantities of ten to tens of thousands utilizing an agile, robust, and capital-light approach.

Fully autonomous vehicles are closer to commonplace than you might expect, as cars and big rigs gain the ability to operate safely on our streets and highways. As one of the pioneers in the field, Chris Urmson has been there from the beginning, competing in the landmark DARPA Grand Challenge before going on to lead Google's self-driving car initiative. Now he's following through on the vision as the CEO of Aurora, which is developing self-driving technology for use by a variety of car and truck makers. On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we're playing highlights from our conversation with Urmson at the recent GeekWire Summit. With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Summary Machine learning is a transformative tool for the organizations that can take advantage of it. While the frameworks and platforms for building machine learning applications are becoming more powerful and broadly available, there is still a significant investment of time, money, and talent required to take full advantage of it. In order to reduce that barrier further Adam Oliner and Brian Calvert, along with their other co-founders, started Graft. In this episode Adam and Brian explain how they have built a platform designed to empower everyone in the business to take part in designing and building ML projects, while managing the end-to-end workflow required to go from data to production. Announcements Hello and welcome to the Machine Learning Podcast, the podcast about machine learning and how to bring it from idea to delivery. Predibase is a low-code ML platform without low-code limits. Built on top of our open source foundations of Ludwig and Horovod, our platform allows you to train state-of-the-art ML and deep learning models on your datasets at scale. Our platform works on text, images, tabular, audio and multi-modal data using our novel compositional model architecture. We allow users to operationalize models on top of the modern data stack, through REST and PQL – an extension of SQL that puts predictive power in the hands of data practitioners. Go to themachinelearningpodcast.com/predibase today to learn more and try it out! Building good ML models is hard, but testing them properly is even harder. At Deepchecks, they built an open-source testing framework that follows best practices, ensuring that your models behave as expected. Get started quickly using their built-in library of checks for testing and validating your model’s behavior and performance, and extend it to meet your specific needs as your model evolves. Accelerate your machine learning projects by building trust in your models and automating the testing that you used to do manually. Go to themachinelearningpodcast.com/deepchecks today to get started! Your host is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Brian Calvert and Adam Oliner about Graft, a cloud-native platform designed to simplify the work of applying AI to business problems Interview Introduction How did you get involved in machine learning? Can you describe what Graft is and the story behind it? What is the core thesis of the problem you are targeting? How does the Graft product address that problem? Who are the personas that you are focused on working with both now in your early stages and in the future as you evolve the product? What are the capabilities that can be unlocked in different organizations by reducing the friction and up-front investment required to adopt ML/AI? What are the user-facing interfaces that you are focused on providing to make that adoption curve as shallow as possible? What are some of the unavoidable bits of complexity that need to be surfaced to the end user? Can you describe the infrastructure and platform design that you are relying on for the Graft product? What are some of the emerging "best practices" around ML/AI that you have been able to build on top of? As new techniques and practices are discovered/introduced how are you thinking about the adoption process and how/when to integrate them into the Graft product? What are some of the new engineering challenges that you have had to tackle as a result of your specific product? Machine learning can be a very data and compute intensive endeavor. How are you thinking about scalability in a multi-tenant system? Different model and data types can be widely divergent in terms of the cost (monetary, time, compute, etc.) required. How are you thinking about amortizing vs. passing through those costs to the end user? Can you describe the adoption/integration process for someone using Graft? Once they are onboarded and they have connected to their various data sources, what is the workflow for someone to apply ML capabilities to their problems? One of the challenges about the current state of ML capabilities and adoption is understanding what is possible and what is impractical. How have you designed Graft to help identify and expose opportunities for applying ML within the organization? What are some of the challenges of customer education and overall messaging that you are working through? What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Graft used? What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on Graft? When is Graft the wrong choice? What do you have planned for the future of Graft? Contact Info Brian LinkedIn Adam LinkedIn Parting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest barrier to adoption of machine learning today? Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to check out our other shows. The Data Engineering Podcast covers the latest on modern data management. Podcast.__init__ covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes. If you’ve learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email hosts@themachinelearningpodcast.com) with your story. To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes and tell your friends and co-workers Links Graft High Energy Particle Physics LHC Cruise Slack Splunk Marvin Minsky Patrick Henry Winston AI Winter Sebastian Thrun DARPA Grand Challenge Higss Boson Supersymmetry Kinematics Transfer Learning Foundation Models ML Embeddings BERT Airflow Dagster Prefect Dask Kubeflow MySQL PostgreSQL Snowflake Redshift S3 Kubernetes Multi-modal models Multi-task models Magic: The Gathering The intro and outro music is from Hitman’s Lovesong feat. Paola Graziano by The Freak Fandango Orchestra/[CC BY-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

Will fully autonomous vehicles make my job safer or will they replace me? This is a question that many people are asking of their employers. In some cases this may be true, but in other cases other opportunities become available. The main advantage of a fully autonomous vehicle is to remove people from dangerous jobs or working conditions. Bibhrajit Halder is the Founder & CEO of SafeAI, a leader in autonomous heavy equipment. He got his start in autonomy during the early aughts at the DARPA Grand Challenge, and went on to autonomous projects at Caterpillar, Ford, Faraday Future and Apple before founding SafeAI in 2017. Halder holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Vanderbilt University, and an MS in Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering from Ohio University. Twitter @Bibhra LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/bibhrajit/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/safeai Website URL https://safeai.ai/

Interest in autonomous vehicles dates back to the 1920s. It wasn't until the 1980s that the first truly autonomous vehicle prototypes began to appear. The first DARPA Grand Challenge took place in 2004 offering competitors $1 million dollars to complete a 150-mile course through the Mojave desert. The prize was not claimed. Since then, rapid The post Autonomous Driving Infrastructure with Vinoj Kumar appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

Interest in autonomous vehicles dates back to the 1920s. It wasn't until the 1980s that the first truly autonomous vehicle prototypes began to appear. The first DARPA Grand Challenge took place in 2004 offering competitors $1 million dollars to complete a 150-mile course through the Mojave desert. The prize was not claimed. Since then, rapid The post Autonomous Driving Infrastructure with Vinoj Kumar appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

Interest in autonomous vehicles dates back to the 1920s. It wasn't until the 1980s that the first truly autonomous vehicle prototypes began to appear. The first DARPA Grand Challenge took place in 2004 offering competitors $1 million dollars to complete a 150-mile course through the Mojave desert. The prize was not claimed. Since then, rapid

Interest in autonomous vehicles dates back to the 1920s. It wasn't until the 1980s that the first truly autonomous vehicle prototypes began to appear. The first DARPA Grand Challenge took place in 2004 offering competitors $1 million dollars to complete a 150-mile course through the Mojave desert. The prize was not claimed. Since then, rapid The post Autonomous Driving Infrastructure with Vinoj Kumar appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

Una corsa automobilistica senza piloti. Fonti: Hello World. Essere umani nell’era delle macchine - https://amzn.to/3iswKjC  Wacky Races - https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wacky_Races Attrezzatura: Shure Microfono Podcast USB MV7 - https://amzn.to/3862ZRf Neewer NW-5 Pannello fonoassorbente - https://amzn.to/3rysTFP Utilizzando i link affiliati, il costo di un qualsiasi acquisto non sarà maggiore per te, ma una piccola parte del ricavato servirà per sostenere il progetto. Sostieni il progetto Sostieni tramite Satispay Sostieni tramite Revolut Sostieni tramite PayPal Sostieni utilizzando i link affiliati di Pensieri in codice: Amazon, Todoist, ProtonMail, ProtonVPN, Satispay Partner GrUSP (Codice sconto per tutti gli eventi: community_PIC) Schrödinger Hat Crediti Sound design - Alex Raccuglia Voce intro - Maria Chiara Virgili Voce intro - Spad Musiche - Kubbi - Up In My Jam, Light-foot - Moldy Lotion, Creativity, Old time memories Suoni - Zapsplat.com Cover e trascrizione - Francesco Zubani

Una corsa automobilistica senza piloti.Fonti:Hello World. Essere umani nell'era delle macchine - https://amzn.to/3iswKjC Wacky Races - https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wacky_Races Pensieri in codice si sostiene grazie alle tue condivisioni, ai tuoi contributi e alla tua partecipazione. Scopri di più su https://pensieriincodice.it/ ---Affiliazioni:ProtonVPN - https://go.getproton.me/SHN0 ProtonMail - https://go.getproton.me/SHMB Todoist - https://doist.grsm.io/valeriogalano5066 Satispay - https://bit.ly/3fQUVaU Amazon - https://amzn.to/3CPOWgC Attrezzatura:Shure Microfono Podcast USB MV7 - https://amzn.to/3862ZRf Neewer NW-5 Pannello fonoassorbente - https://amzn.to/3rysTFP Utilizzando i link affiliati, il costo di un qualsiasi acquisto non sarà maggiore per te, ma una piccola parte del ricavato servirà per sostenere il progetto.Crediti:Sound design - Alex Raccuglia - https://ulti.media/ Voce intro - Maria Chiara Virgili - https://linktr.ee/dannatiarchitettipodcast/ Voce intro - Spad - https://mercuriopodcast.com/ Musica - Kubbi - Up In My JamMusica - Light-foot - Moldy LotionMusica - CreativityMusica - Old time memoriesSuoni - Zapsplat.com

Steve Lambright, CMO of AEYE joins us for a look into AEYE's iDAR technology for autonomous vehicles.  This episode is just as entertaining as it is informative!  We cover how iDAR differentiates AEYE from LiDAR vendor offerings, AEYE's epic rise culminating with a listing on the NASDAQ: (LIDR) last week.  Finally, Steve shares what he sees as the future of autonomous travel and AI's role in tying it all together into an ecosystem where vehicles and infrastructure communicate as one.  It's an unbelievably lofty goal and a great overview of their story starting back in the DARPA Grand Challenge days! John provides Intro on Company and Guest Background:   00:37 – 02:15 Steve gives an overview of his background and the company:   02:17 - 05:39 Don't SUCK Fun Fact about Steve:   05:40 – 07:19 Steve discusses taking on the AEYE marketing challenge and what was required to educate people on the technology's goal of matching the power of human perception :   07:19 -  12:17 Steve shares some of the technical challenges of marketing to the automotive industry and passing the tests on the 6 levels of autonomy:  12:18 -  15:55 Steve discusses on this technology comes to the market so that we as consumers can start to benefit from it:   15:56 - 18:09Steve gives us some insight on AEYE's new partnership with Continental and how the partner ecosystem and business model integrates with automotive OEM's:   18:10 - 20:24 Steve looks into the AI crystal ball and predicts what he sees in the very near future as it pertains to AI, iDAR and infrastructure playing a part in the autonomous driving landscape:   20:25 - 22:05  22:47 Contact Info: Steve Lambright – slam@aeye.alCompany Site:  Aeye.ai LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/aeye-inc./ Conclusion:  23:25 Bob Miller Intro with Music Fade

Lee Redden, Chief Scientist & Co-Founder Blue River Technology and Chief Scientist of the Intelligent Solutions Group at John Deere joined Grayson Brulte on The Road To Autonomy Podcast to discuss how See & Spray can help farmers optimize farms.The conversation begins with talking about growing up in Nebraska and how having a shop at the back of his house would have a profound impact on his life.We had a shop on the back of my house and I would spend 4 or 5 hours a day in the back of the shop just putting things together. I built a couple of go-karts, I built a car, I just have so many fond memories of just being back there welding something up, grinding something down, and building. – Lee ReddenLee's hands-on experiences in the shed led to him enrolling at the University of Nebraska where he designed microcircuit boards for miniature surgical robots. During his time on campus, Lee watched a documentary about the DARPA Grand Challenge. Little did Lee know at the time, but the documentary would change his life.One of the things growing up in Nebraska, I wasn't really exposed to a lot of computer science. What that documentary did was show that there was this computer science group that was basically taking a stock car and adding a couple of sensors to it, but not putting too many sensors on it.Then it was a computer science problem and it really kind of paved and showed me the way for what was possible with computer science in an area that I thought was really cool and was cars and autonomy and I just saw that as like oh my gosh if you can make this car do things it couldn't do before, it just becomes so much more useful. Totally game-changing in the possibilities. – Lee ReddenThe documentary exposed Lee to the possibilities of machine learning, computer vision, and AI. Eventually, he enrolled at Stanford to learn computer vision.I knew this is what I needed to do to really get up to speed to work in the field I wanted to. – Lee ReddenAt Stanford, the seeds were planted for the founding of Blue River Technology when Lee met his co-founder, Jorge Heraud. From autonomous lawnmowers to the autonomous weeding of carrots to the thinning of lettuce. Lee and Jorge kept pivoting until they had their breakthrough moment with high-precision weeding machines.During the early days of See & Spray, farmers provided invaluable feedback on the system as it was rolled out to farms in the United States. With feedback from farmers in hand, Blue River began to test in different geographies to build the data sets that are required to fully optimize the system.The diversity of data you have really matters. – Lee ReddenIn 2017, John Deere acquired Blue River Technology. Being part of John Deere is allowing Blue River to take a longer-term view on the development of the technology.It has been really fantastic for the company to be able to have that longer-term view. – Lee ReddenAfter the acquisition, Lee took a step back to focus on control systems.We will see shifts in machine form and how machines are designed and put together based on control systems. – Lee ReddenWhile control systems are next, Lee is still dedicated to See & Spray. With an estimated 250 species of herbicide-resistant weeds, uncontrolled weeds result in annual losses of approximately $43 billion in corn and soybean crops, Blue River is using their computer vision technology to identify the weeds to help farmers save money when they use the See & Spray system.The See & Spray system reduces the number of herbicides used by 77%, having a positive economic impact on farms and a positive impact on the environment.Higher precision and plant by plant care is a win, win, win situation. – Lee ReddenWrapping up the conversation, Grayson and Lee discuss the global population growth and how automation on farms can help feed the growing global population.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In episode 18 of our host Pieter Abbeel meets Chris Urmson. Chris is one of the world-leading pioneers in self-driving. He led the Google self-driving project for several years - which later became Waymo. Then, in 2017, he co-founded his own self-driving company, Aurora where he is currently the CEO. In this episode, he discusses his involvement of the DARPA Grand Challenge, departure from Google, and his (and Aurora's) vision for the future of autonomous vehicles. | Visit therobotbrains.ai and follow us on Twitter @therobotbrains, Instagram @therobotbrains and YouTube TheRobotBrainsPodcast | Host: Pieter Abbeel | Executive Producers: Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias Jones | Audio Production: Kieron Matthew Banerji | Title Music: Alejandro Del Pozo See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

España quiere crear la ÑASA / Muere John Warner / Gobiernos tecnológicos / WordPress cumple 18 años / Fotografías atómicas / Secuela de Solar Winds / Ingenuity casi se estrella en Marte Patrocinador: Llegan los nuevos programas de inmersión lingüística de verano https://cursosnle.com/ de Nathalie Language Experiences. Pensados para niños de 10 a 18 años, podrán viajar a Londres, Malta o Pirineos y aprender inglés con profesores nativos https://cursosnle.com/ y con familias de acogida. — Pide más información sin compromiso hoy mismo https://cursosnle.com/. España quiere crear la ÑASA / Muere John Warner / Gobiernos tecnológicos / WordPress cumple 18 años / Fotografías atómicas / Secuela de Solar Winds / Ingenuity casi se estrella en Marte  España planea su propia agencia espacial. Esta hipotética ÑASA (nombre no real), serviría de catalizador de inversiones científicas y tecnológicas civiles https://elpais.com/ciencia/2021-05-27/el-gobierno-anuncia-la-creacion-de-una-agencia-espacial-espanola.html, especialmente entre el tejido académico e industrial. Sumaría a otros países https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government_space_agencies como Italia, Francia o Alemania con sus propias agencias además de la ESA paneuropea.  España tiene el Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instituto_Nacional_de_T%C3%A9cnica_Aeroespacial con 1.500 empleados, que aunque no es una agencia militar per se, está bajo el Ministerio de Defensa, y que fue fundado en 1942, una década y pico antes que la NASA.  Murió John Warner, el político que apostó por los coches autónomos. Un veterano militar y luego senador estadounidense https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/26/us/politics/john-warner-genteel-senator-from-virginia-dies-at-94.html?referringSource=articleShare, abogó en los 90 por financiar proyectos civiles y militares, especialmente los muy fructíferos DARPA Grand Challenge https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/darpa-urban-challenge donde salieron verdaderos avances https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/-grand-challenge-for-autonomous-vehicles en ingeniería de software.  De estos retos, participados por las grandes academias norteamericanas, acabaron surgiendo los cerebros https://www.autonews.com/shift/family-tree-self-driving-tech detrás de Waymo, Aurora, Tesla, Argo, Cruise, Uber, etc.  ¿Por qué la gente quiere estar gobernada por una IA? Los españoles, europeos, y sobre todo los chinos, están abiertos a la posibilidad de un aparato legislador informatizado https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/27/europeans-want-to-replace-lawmakers-with-ai.html#Echobox=1622100043, con un 66, 51 y 75% de personas a favor respectivamente. En EE.UU. la cifra es mucho más baja.  Tiene que ver con la percepción de corrupción y del embarramiento del debate político.  WordPress cumple 18 años. El software que revolucionó la publicación digital y que es usado por aproximadamente el 40% de los dominios entra en edad adulta https://ma.tt/2021/05/wordpress-18/, 18 años después de comenzar como un fork de B2 https://wordpress.org/news/2003/05/wordpress-now-available/ directamente en versión 0.7. — Desde entonces ha dado forma a Internet de formas inesperadas, entre ellas catapultando otras tecnologías como el duo PHP+MySQL.  ¿Cuántos millones de personas dan de comer a su familia porque se dedican a instalar, mantener, gestionar y demás un proyecto con WordPress? Viva el código abierto y libre.  Consiguen la imagen más clara de unos átomos. Científicos de la universidad de Cornell han usado una técnica nueva llamada ptychografía de electrones que, con varios barridos, permite tener una imagen microscópica muy precisa (zoom 100 millones) para ver claramente los átomos de una estructura cristalina https://newatlas.com/physics/highest-resolution-atom-image-electron-ptychography/.  Microsoft encuentra una secuela del ataque a Solar Winds. Empresas y gobiernos del mundo aún se recomponen de la infiltración masiva de servidores en diciembre, y ahora Microsoft revela una segunda ronda de ataques destinados https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2021/05/27/new-sophisticated-email-based-attack-from-nobelium/ a agencias gubernamentales de ayuda humanitaria, ONGs y demás, por parte del mismo grupo ruso.  Los lobos reducen los accidentes de tráfico en zonas rurales. La repoblación y la vuelta de estos cánidos a los bosques y praderas no solo equilibra la población de ciervos y alces, también les aleja de las carreteras creando unas "zonas de terror" para estos animales, y consiguen reducir los atropellos hasta un 24% https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/wolves-create-a-landscape-of-fear-slowing-deer-car-collisions/.  Ingenuity casi se estrella en Marte en su sexto vuelo. Un fallo en sus sistemas visuales de guiado, le hizo subir y bajar de forma repentina y errática https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/space-robots/mars-helicopter-lands-safely-after-serious-inflight-anomaly antes de poder aterrizar de forma segura a unos cinco metros del punto designado. La NASA va a revisar toda la telemetría, buscar posibles parches y evitar que vuelva a ocurrir.  La cadena de bloques de Chia ya ocupa 12 millones de terabytes entre todos los ordenadores que son hacen de nodos en esta innovadora criptomoneda que, aunque consume menos electricidad, necesita amplias cantidades de almacenamiento. Cuatro veces más que hace dos semanas https://www.newscientist.com/article/2278696-bitcoin-rival-chia-destroyed-hard-disc-supply-chains-says-its-boss/.  Leo reportes de que están subiendo el precio de los discos duros y SSD, pero solo encuentro subidas individuales en algunos modelos, nada general de momento.  La policía británica buscaba una granja de marihuana y encuentra una de Bitcoin. Sensores de calor y avisos de los vecinos, alertaron a la policía que acabó encontrando una operación de minería de Bitcoin que robaba electricidad de la red pública https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-57280115.

By Walt HickeyWelcome to the Numlock Sunday edition. Each week, I'll sit down with an author or a writer behind one of the stories covered in a previous weekday edition for a casual conversation about what they wrote.This week, I spoke to Alex Davies, the author of the brand new book Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car. It's just out as of last week and is an enthralling read about the events that led us to the present-day state of the art of autonomous vehicles.I've been looking forward to this book since it was announced, and it doesn't disappoint: from the iconic if shambolic 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge to the legal battles that threatened to tear the industry apart, the creation of this tech could change the world. It's a great story.For the first time, I recorded one of these to be podcast-quality so you can actually listen to the interview up top. Let me know if you enjoy that, and maybe I'll do more of them!The book is Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car and can be found wherever books are sold, and Alex is on Twitter at @adavies47. This interview has been condensed and edited. Unless otherwise indicated, images are from DARPA. Podcast theme by J.T. Fales.Alex, you are the author of the brand new book, Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car. You cover all about transportation, you cover all about vehicles and you've also covered a lot about the technology that goes into them. There's been a lot of talk about driverless cars recently, you were talking about how this is a really long journey. How far back have we been working on driverless cars?I think the people first started talking about the driverless car right around the time people came up with the car itself. The car was a great invention for all sorts of reasons but one thing people noticed very quickly was that when you got rid of the horse, you got rid of the sentient being that would stop you from driving off a cliff or into a wall if you, the human driver, stopped paying attention. You see these stories from the ‘20s and ‘30s of people coming up with ways of remote-controlling cars using radio waves. And in the ‘50s, you start seeing programs from General Motors and RCA working on embedding electric strips into the road, which obviously didn't work for various reasons, that would help guide a car along the highway. You see examples from the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs in New York where GM is talking about, "oh, cars that will drive themselves and you'll have these things like air traffic controllers saying, okay, your car is clear to go into self-driving mode," or back then they would have used the word autonomous.Ford Pavilion, 1939 World's Fair, via Library of CongressSo, the idea itself is really old but technologically, I think you've got to date this work from the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. That's when you first start seeing the technology that undergirds the way we think about building self-driving cars today, which is not by following any kind of radio path, nothing built into the infrastructure and the system, but the basic idea of giving the car the tools it needs to drive itself the way a human operates a car. You've got three basic buckets: one is you have to recreate a human's senses, so that's where you see things like cameras, radars, LiDAR sensors, giving the car the ability to see the world around it. You have to replace what a human's arms and legs do or hands and feet, really, and those are just kind of servo motors built into the car that give the car the ability to turn the steering wheel or pump the gas and brakes. And, actually, in today's cars, that's all done purely over software, it's not even really mechanical in there anymore. And then the last, the really tricky thing is how do you replace the human's brain? The step between the senses and actually carrying out the decisions you need to make.I start my story with the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge. I give a little bit of the history of the robotics and artificial intelligence research that happened before it. But for me, the Grand Challenge is really the starting point. DARPA is that really kooky arm of the Pentagon that is basically charged with making sure the U.S. government is never surprised on the technological front. It came out of the Soviets launching Sputnik, which really shocked the Americans to hell, and they're like, “okay, we need an arm of the military that's just going to do the kooky kind of far out stuff.” So DARPA, a lot of big hits — the internet, GPS, stealth bombers. Some not so great moments — DARPA was instrumental to the creation of Agent Orange. Whoops.Oops, yeah no, don't want to do that one.That one, not so nice.Look, they're not all hits, they're not all hits and that's okay. We are friends, we have been friends for a while now. I feel like you have told me the story of the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge many times, as this deeply formative event, not only for self-driving cars but also robotics and Silicon Valley and how government can work together on different things. Do you want to go into what went into creating this event and kind of what happened at it? Which I feel like is a very, very cool story that I imagine is a solid chunk of the book.It is a solid chunk of the book. It's also, personally, my favorite part of the book. To me, this is really the heart of the story. DARPA was tasked with helping the U.S. military develop autonomous vehicles and the basic thinking there was that vehicles were a way a lot of soldiers got hurt, especially in the early 2000s, as we were starting to get mired down in these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We wanted autonomous vehicles so soldiers didn't have to be in vehicles that were being hit by IEDs, so you could send cars by themselves on convoys and dangerous missions, and basically, it was to save the lives of the troops. DARPA had been funding all sorts of research into autonomous driving for decades by this point and the guy running it, DARPA director Tony Tether, was frustrated that he just wasn't seeing the kind of progress he wanted to see, it just felt like one internal research project after another.So, he said, “do you know what?” DARPA had, at the time, a relatively new power to give out prize money and he could give out up to a million dollars without needing congressional approval. So, he created a thing called the DARPA Grand Challenge with a $1 million first prize. It was a race for autonomous vehicles across the Mojave Desert in California. You would go from this real dusty little town called Barstow in the California Mojave Desert to just across the line to Primm, Nevada, which is a pretty sad town because it's the least driving you have to do from California to legally gamble in a casino. If you're like, “I don't have the energy to drive the extra 45 minutes to Las Vegas,” you go to Primm.Oh no.And so, Tether's original idea, very briefly, it was we're going to have the cars go from Los Angeles to the Las Vegas Strip and they'll go on the freeway. And the guy at DARPA who was actually in charge of putting on this race was like that is completely insane, you can't do any of that. These robots don't work, we don't even know what they're going to look like. So, they ended up doing it in the desert, which made more sense for the military application anyway when you think about what your driving in the Middle East would be like. But the key part of the challenge was that it was open to anybody, this was not just Lockheed Martin and Boeing and Carnegie Mellon University, the big contractors who had been doing this kind of work. Tony Tether just said, “anybody who can build a self-driving car, we'll bring them all to the desert and we'll do this big race.” And so, you see this wide range of characters who come into this.I think, foremost among them, interestingly, is Anthony Levandowski, who at the time is just about 23 years old. He's an graduate student at UC Berkeley and he decides he really wants to be in this because he loves robotics, even though he doesn't have a ton of robotics training. He's like, “I'm going to build a self-driving motorcycle.” So, that's his idea. You've got the big players like Carnegie Mellon and that's where Chris Urmson, who becomes Anthony Levandowski's great rival once they're both at Google years later, comes in. Chris Urmson is a big player, Carnegie Mellon is the robotics powerhouse in the world, probably the best roboticists in the world and have been doing tons and tons of self-driving research over the decades. They field this team as a powerhouse of a team and you've got this guy, Red Whittaker, who's the old roboticist there.This is amazing.I have been yelled at by Red Whittaker more times than I care to remember. Really!He's just very cantankerous, he's an ex Marine, he's now 70 years old, he's well over six feet, he's 250 pounds, the guy is built like a redwood and he's just always yelling. And he builds robots, someone pointed this out to me once, he builds robots that look like him, in a sense. They're always these enormous, hulking things and for the Grand Challenge, they built this Humvee. And Red Whittaker, someone told me, he has this penchant for saying really bombastic things that sound crazy and don't actually make any sense. So, he once told someone, this project, it's like a freight train, you've just got to grab on and it'll rip your arms off.It sounds terrible.When he told me this, it's like, what does that even mean? But he has this incredible talent for really developing young engineers. And Chris Urmson is among his many proteges who are now pushing this technology into the world.And so, you have this collection of wacky racers, gathering to win a million dollars from the Defense Department in the desert. And the first one is 2004, what happens at the first one?It is a disaster. The 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge is supposed to be a 142 mile race through the desert, 15 teams get out of a qualifying round and make it to the final round. If you looked at the qualifying round, vehicles were smoking and shaking or they couldn't even start at all or they were just driving into every last thing. And then the race in the desert itself, wasn't all that much better. It got off to a great start, Carnegie Mellon's Humvee, Sand Storm, was first off the line, it shoots off into the desert. So, it's doing okay, the first couple of vehicles get off the line okay. And then you get through the bottom half of the field and it becomes a comedy of errors. You've got one little bathtub shaped thing that goes up onto the tiny ridge just on the side of the trail where it's raised and flips over and lands upside down.You've got one that drives 50 yards out, does an inexplicable U-turn and drives back to the starting line. We've got one, one just veers off-road into barbed wire and then can't find it's way back. You've got this thing from OshKosh that's a 14 ton military truck, a six wheeled thing, it's lime green and it's got a tumbleweed, like a bush thing in front of it. And its detection system says, this is an unmovable obstacle, but then another tumbleweed shows up behind it and so, it just starts going forward and backward and forward and backward like Austin Powers, trying to turn around. And then, even Carnegie Mellon's vehicle, which is doing well and is seven miles into the race, it's going around a hairpin turn, it goes off the edge of the road a little bit and it gets hung up on this rock. It gets, basically, stranded like a whale on a beach. It's raised up to the point where its wheels can't get any traction anymore. The robot brain doesn't know this and it's just spinning its wheels, spinning its wheels at full speed until the rubber is on fire and smoke pouring off this thing. And DARPA has to show up from a helicopter. They hop out of the helicopter with the fire extinguishers, and it's a complete disaster.And the thing that DARPA had really hyped up, they're like, “this is the new innovation, we're going to save the lives of all these troops.” And so then, reporters come after Tony Tether and he meets them, he meets the reporters who are waiting at the end line, at the finish line, which is roughly — it's 142 mile race — 130 miles away from the closest car. The Outcome.Carnegie Mellon did the best, it went 7.4 miles. Anthony Levandowski's motorcycle makes it into the final round, mostly as a stunt. It did horribly in qualifying, but the DARPA guys are like, “this thing is so crazy, it really embodies the spirit of what we're trying to do, so let's just bring it to the race anyway.” It's not like it can win, its gas tank doesn't hold enough gas for it to go all the way to the finish line.So, Anthony brings it up to the starting line, hands it off to a DARPA guy who kind of holds his hand on it until it goes, motorcycles starts going, he takes his hand off and motorcycle instantly falls to the ground. Anthony had forgotten to turn on the stabilizing software system before it started.That will get you.And so, one of his lessons for the next year was make a checklist.The cool thing about this is that it's an utter fiasco, it's how you always tell it. But then everybody who was there for this fiasco, they stuck around and they went, in many ways, to kind of form the current self-driving industry. Do you want to talk about that seed, what it has turned into since?Yeah. So, very quickly, what's great about the Grand Challenge is that it brings all these people together, and it pits them against this problem that everyone had kind of dismissed as impossible. So, what happens is DARPA does the 2005 Grand Challenge 18 months later, and the 18 months really prove to be the difference in that teams that weren't ready at all for the Grand Challenge, for the original one, are ready 18 months later. They've learned much more about how this works. And so, the 2005 race is a huge success. Stanford, led by Sebastian Thrun, comes in first place, Carnegie Mellon second, five teams finish this big race through the desert. Then DARPA follows it up with the 2007 Urban Challenge, which pits the vehicles against a little mock city, where they have people driving around and all of a sudden they have to deal with traffic and stop signs and parking lots and all of this stuff.What you really get from the Urban Challenge is the sense that this technology seems, suddenly, very possible. And by 2007, this is a big media event, it's hosted by the guys who did MythBusters and Larry Page is there, and he shows up in his private plane full of Google execs, and it's like, look at this future of technology. About a year later, Larry Page wants to build self-driving cars. This is actually something he'd looked at as an undergraduate or a graduate student and then his thesis advisor said, “well, how about you focus on internet search instead?” And it worked out pretty well.It worked out okay, I think, right?I think he did fine, that's what I thought. He decided I want to get back to self-driving cars. He'd been at the Urban Challenge and been like, “I can see how far this technology has come,” so what he did was he went to Sebastian Thrun, who had led Stanford's team through the challenges and he was already working at Google, he was a big part of making Street View happen. Along with Anthony Levandowski, who Thrun had met through the challenges and he's like, “oh, this guy's nuts but he's really talented and he's a real go-getter.” So, he brings him on to help them do Street View and then Larry Page says, “okay, now build me a self-driving car.” Sebastian Thrun says, "okay, well I happen to know the 12 best people on the world at this technology, I met basically all of them through the DARPA challenges."He has this meeting at his chalet in Lake Tahoe, at the end of 2008. And he brings together a dozen people and it's Anthony Levandowski and it's Chris Urmson and then people like Bryan Salesky — names that are now really the top tier in self-driving cars. And he says, “Google is going to build a self-driving car, we're going to have something that looks a whole lot like a blank check and I want this team to be the one to do it.” And that becomes Project Chauffeur. They become this really secretive project within Google, they go forth over the next couple of years, and they make this incredible progress in self-driving cars. And this is the story of the second half of the book: how this team it comes together and then how they ultimately come apart because as soon as they have to start thinking about how to make a product, how to commercialize this technology and the reality of money and power within the team become real wedge issues.Within them, you see rivalries, especially between Urmson and Levandowski, who are fighting for control and fighting for the direction of the team. Ultimately, things kind of break apart and what you see over time is as people leave and as this technology starts to look a lot more real, everyone splinters off to do their own thing, and this was what I call Google self-driving diaspora. Chris Urmson leaves to start Aurora. Bryan Salesky leaves to start Argo. Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu leave to start Nuro, Don Burnette leaves to start Kodiak, and Anthony Levandowski, of course, leaves to start Otto, which is acquired by Uber, which is the genesis of the Uber-Waymo huge self-driving lawsuit.Considerable amount of litigation that I believe is ongoing to this day, yes.So, the litigation did end, fortunately for everyone but the lawyers, I think. Uber and Waymo ultimately settled and then, weirdly, about a year after that, the Department of Justice charged Levandowski with criminal trade secret theft to which he ultimately pled guilty, and a few months ago he was sentenced to 18 months in prison, but he will not start his sentence until the pandemic is over.So, it definitely seems that this is still very much seen as the start of something, and you have covered a lot of this industry. What's kind of the state of the art now and where are things kind of moving forward?Well, fortunately for the industry, all of these personal rivalries, I think, have largely cooled off. And I think the book is really a history of how this got started and how these people pulled this technology forward, and then kind of came apart at the seams. But now what you've got is something that looks a little bit like a mature industry. You have Waymo with its program in the Arizona suburbs of Phoenix, and it's starting to really take the safety drivers out of its cars in earnest. Cruise, which is also a focus of the book, which is part of GM and also backed by Honda, is moving to take the safety drivers out of its cars in San Francisco, a much more dynamic environment, as it moves to start a self-driving system there. Self-driving trucks are looking much more serious than ever before. Argo AI, which has partnered with Ford and Volkswagen, is moving towards starting a taxi service, a robo-taxi service in Miami.I talk about the Gartner hype cycle where, I think, from 2014 to 2017 or so, we were really at peak hype, totally inflated expectations where everyone said, “your kids will never have to learn how to drive.” Chris Urmson is saying, "my 12 year old son will never have to learn to drive a car," and I'm pretty sure the kid's got his learner's permit by now. Those inflated expectations burst a little bit as people realize just how hard this technology is. But I think where we are now, on that Gartner hype cycle, is on what's called the slope of enlightenment, where people are getting more serious. Even if they haven't cracked the problem yet, I think they have a really good sense of what it takes to crack the problem, which, it turns out, is a lot of time, an incredible amount of money and at least 1,000 very talented engineers.Whole lot of lasers, a very sympathetic governmental oversight structure in a suburb of Phoenix. We have the ingredients for the solution, right?We could make it work. And so, I'm still optimistic about it, I still think the technology can do a lot of good. I think what people are figuring out is how to right-size this technology. People are figuring out how to actually apply self-driving cars in a realistic way, and I think the cooler projects out there are companies that are working on making self-driving shuttle cars for senior living communities, these big areas in Arizona and Florida, they cover 1,000 acres and people need to get around but can't necessarily drive anymore. And where the driving environment is pretty calm, that's a great use case. The trick right now is to figure out where you can make the technology work, and then the next question will be where can you actually make money off of this? That one I'm less bullish on because the economics of this, I think, are going to be pretty tough to crack.I mean, we're closing in on the end of this one, but DARPA seeded a little bit of the initial funds, it seems, for a lot of this research. Is that still an application that people are looking into or getting folks off the road in places that are dangerous?The army is still working on that, and I think those projects are still ongoing. But the initial push for DARPA was a line in a congressional funding bill from the end of 2000, it was one of the last things Clinton signed into law. And it mandated that by 2015, one-third of all ground vehicles, I think it was military, be unmanned, which was completely insane.How did we do? What's the number?I mean, maybe we've got three vehicles. That stuff hasn't panned out so much. But my favorite thing, one of the first people I managed to track down for this book was the guy, the congressional staffer who got that line into the bill. And I told him, I was like, "oh, I'm researching this and I would just want to ask you about why you put that in there and what your thinking was." And he goes, "Oh, did something come of that?"That's amazing.I was like, “yeah, I don't know, an industry that's predicted to be worth $7 trillion.”And what also came of it is Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car by Alex Davies. Alex, where can people find the book? You can find this book, basically, anywhere online, it's available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your regular booksellers. It's out in hardcover January 5. You can also get the audiobook, you can get it on Kindle. Get it however you like, I just hope you enjoy it.My Twitter handle is @adavies47. You can find some of my work on Business Insider, where I'm the senior editor for our transportation desk.Ah, excellent website, very, very good website. If you have anything you'd like to see in this Sunday special, shoot me an email. Comment below! Thanks for reading, and thanks so much for supporting Numlock.Thank you so much for becoming a paid subscriber! Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips, or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Get full access to Numlock News at www.numlock.com/subscribe

Sebastian Thrun is one of the greatest roboticists, computer scientists, and educators of our time. He led development of the autonomous vehicles at Stanford that won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and placed second in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. He then led the Google self-driving car program which launched the self-driving revolution. He taught the popular Stanford course on Artificial Intelligence in 2011 which was one of the first MOOCs. That experience led him to co-found Udacity, an online education platform. He is also the CEO of Kitty Hawk, a company working on building flying cars or more technically

My guest this week is Mark Micire, group lead for the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Previously Mark was a program manager at DARPA, an entrepreneur, and a volunteer firefighter. The topic of this conversation is how DARPA works and why it’s effective at generating game-changing technologies, the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA, and developing Robotics and technology in high-stakes scenarios. Links Intelligent Robotics Group DARPA Camp Fire DARPA Defense Sciences Office First DARPA Grand Challenge Footage - looks like a blooper reel FEMA Robotics   Transcript Ben: [00:00:00] [00:00:00] Mark, welcome to the show.  I actually want to start let's start by talking about the campfire. [00:00:04]Camp Fire [00:00:04] So we have a unprecedented campfire going on right now. It's basically being fought primarily with people. I know you have a lot of experience dealing with natural disasters and Robotics for emergency situations. So I guess the big question is why don't we have more robots fighting the campfire right now? [00:00:26] Mark: [00:00:26] Well, so the believe it or not. There are a lot of efforts happening right now to bring robotics to bear on those kinds of problems. Menlo Park fire especially has one of the nation's leading. Groups, it's a small called kind of like a squad of folks that are actually on Menlo Park fire trained in their absolute career firefighters who are now learning how to leverage in their case. [00:00:57] They're [00:01:00] using a lot of uavs to to do Arrow aerial reconnaissance. It's been used on multiple disasters the we had the damn breakage up in almost the same area as campfire. And they were using the the uavs to do reconnaissance for for those kind of things. So so the the ability for fire rescue to begin adopting these two new technologies is always slow the inroads that I have seen in the last say five years is that they like that it has cameras. [00:01:32] They like that it can get overhead and can give them a view they wouldn't have been able to see otherwise the fact that now you can get these uavs. That have thermal imaging cameras is frighteningly useful, especially for structure fires. So that's so that's the baby steps that we've taken where we haven't gone yet that I'm hopeful we'll eventually see is the idea that you actually have some of [00:02:00] these robots deploying suppressant. [00:02:01] So the idea that they are helping to, you know, provide water and to help put out the fire that that's a long leap from where we are right now, but I would absolutely see that being within the realm of the possible. Sybil about gosh now friend 2008. So about 10 years ago NASA was leveraging a predator be that it had with some with some. [00:02:27] Imagery technology that was up underneath it. Um to help with the fire that was down in Big Sur and I helped with with that a little bit while I was back then I was just an intern here at Nasa and that's I think a really really good example of us using of the fire service leveraging larger government facilities and capabilities to use Robotics and usually these and other things in a way that the fire service itself frankly doesn't have the budget or R&D [00:03:00] resources to really do on their own. [00:03:00]Ben: [00:03:00] [00:03:00]So you think it's primarily a resources thing [00:00:00] Mark: [00:00:00] t it's a couple factors there's resources. So, you know outside of I'll say really outside of DHS. So the problem that homeland security has a science and technology division that does some technology development outside of that. There's not a whole lot of organizations outside of commercial entities that are doing R&D a for fire rescue the it just doesn't exist. [00:00:28] So that's so that's that's your first problem. The second problem is culturally the fire service is just very slow to adopt new technology. And that's not it. It's one part. You know, well, my daddy didn't need it in my daddy's daddy didn't need it. So why the heck do I need it right at that? [00:00:49] That's it's easy to blame it on that. What I guess I've learned over [00:04:00] time and after working within the fire service is that everything is life-critical? There's very few things that you're doing when you're in the field providing that service in this case Wildfire response where lives don't. Kind of hang in the balance. [00:01:09] And so the technologies that you bring to bear have to be proven because what you don't want to do is bring half-baked ideas or half-baked Technologies and frankly have your normal operations have have that technology in a fail in a way that your normal operations would have provided the right kind of service to protect those lives God. [00:01:33] So the evaluation and also kind of the acceptance criteria. For technology is much much higher in especially the fire service. Then the many other domains that I've worked in. I can only think of a few other ones and you know, like aircraft safety and automobile safety tend to be the same where [00:05:00] they're just very slow to roll in Technologies and other things like that, but those two areas that I just described have government and other groups that are providing R&D budgets to help push that technology forward. [00:02:06] So when you get the. You get the the combination of we don't have a lot of budget for R&D and we're very slow to accept new technology because we have to be risk adverse that those two tend to just make that domain of very slow-moving Target for new technologies. [00:02:21]Enabling Innovations in Risk Averse Domains [00:02:21] [00:02:21]Ben: [00:02:21] that actually strikes me as very similar to to NASA. [00:00:03] Actually. We're , there's always the the saying that you know, you can't fly it until you've flown it and do you see any ways for. Making Innovations happen faster in these risk-averse domains you have any thoughts about that? [00:00:16]Mark: [00:00:16] It's it's tough. I mean so short short answer is I don't know. I've been trying for the last 15 years and [00:06:00] I'm still still swinging at it the. [00:00:29] The trick is just to keep going and ultimately I think it just comes down to exposure and the folks the the decision makers within the respective Fields just being comfortable with the technology. So as we now have automobiles that are sharing the highways with us that are controlling themselves and I'm not even talking like fully autonomous, you know, driverless Vehicles, you know, the fact that we have, you know, Tesla's and other high-end cars. [00:00:59] They have Auto Pilots that are Auto steering and Lane keeping and stuff like that the ability for folks within the fire rescue domain to start becoming comfortable with the idea that machines can make decisions that are in life. Critical scenarios and if they can make the right decision on a regular basis, it sounds weird to say that something completely removed from the fire service may help improve the ability for fire service to adopt those [00:07:00] Technologies. [00:01:27] It seems weird to think that that's the case. It's absolutely the case and I you know, like I've been doing this for longer than well. I guess 10 or 15 years now as much as I hate to admit that and I've seen a dramatic change in that now I can go into a room and I can talk about. Averaging and unmanned air vehicle and I'm not laughed out of the room. [00:01:48] There's a comfortableness now that I see these domains accepting that they wouldn't before so, you know, hopefully we're making inroads. It's not going to be a fast path by any stretch. Yeah culturation is something that I don't think people think about very much when it comes to technology, but that's a really good point. [00:02:09] I have geek we don't and that's that's unfortunate. And the one thing I've learned over time. That as Geeks we have to realize that sometimes the technology isn't first that there's a lot of other factors that play in. [00:02:20]Mark's Mission [00:02:20] [00:02:20] Ben: [00:02:20] Yeah, absolutely.  something that I want people to hear about is I feel like you're one of the most [00:08:00] mission-driven people that I know and not to put you on the spot too much but could you tell folks what you do? [00:00:07] Like why you do what you do? [00:00:11] Mark: [00:00:11] Um well and it really depends. I'll say in yeah, you can appreciate this a depends on what it is. I'm doing so, you know for my day job. I work at Nasa have always been a space geek and an advocate for humans finding ways of working in space and one of the best ways that I have found that at least for my talents that I can help enable that is to leverage machines to do a lot of the precursor. [00:00:42] Work that allows us to put humans in those places. It turns out strangely enough of it a lot of the talents that I use for my day job here also help with work that I do on the side related to my role as search and rescue Personnel in FEMA [00:09:00] that a lot of the life safety critical things that we have to do to keep humans alive in the vacuum of space also apply to. [00:01:11] Women's Safe and finding humans at and around and after disasters and so I've always had this strange kind of bent for trying to find a technology that not only ties to a mission but then you can very clearly kind of Point your finger at that and say well that's that's really going to help someone stay safer or do their job more effectively if they had that piece of equipment. [00:01:39] Those are fun, you know. An engineering standpoint. Those are the kind of Base requirements that you want and and it always helps with there's a lot of other technology areas that I could have played in and I like the fact that when I'm when I'm making a design decision or an engineering trade that I can look at it and really grounded out [00:10:00] into okay. [00:02:02] Is that going to make that person safer? Is that going to make them do their job better? And it's really motivating to be able to. To have those as kind of your level one requirements as you as you try to design things that make the world better. [00:02:14] Intro to IRG [00:02:14] [00:02:14]Ben: [00:02:14] and So currently you're the head of IRG. [00:00:05] Yeah group lead is the official title. So I'm the group leader of the intelligent robotics group. Yeah, and I bet that many people haven't actually heard of the intelligent robotics for group at Ames which is kind of sad, but could you tell us a publicly shareable story that really captures IRG as an organization? [00:00:22]Mark: [00:00:22] [00:00:22] Serve, yeah, well, I would say that it is it is a an interesting Motley Crew of capabilities that that allow robots to go do things and all kinds of different domains. We have folks within our group. That specialize in ground robotic. So we have [00:11:00] Rovers that have quite literally gone to the ends of the Earth and that we've had them up in the northern Arctic. [00:00:49] We've had them in desert in Chile. We they've roamed around just about every crater or interesting Landmark that we have in California here and long story short. We have folks that not only work with and make ground robotics smart, but then. Of them and one of the things I adore about the team is that they're all filled capable. [00:01:13] So we all subscribe to the philosophy that if we're not taking this equipment out in the field and breaking it. We're probably not learning the right things. And so none of our robots are garage queens and stay inside inside of the lab that we love like to take our stuff outside and take them out into these domains where they're really really tested. [00:01:34] We have a group here. Subgroup within RG that's working on Technologies for the International Space [00:12:00] Station. So we have a free flyer and have worked with many of the free Flyers that are up on the International Space Station. Now, there's a new one that we are building. That should fly very soon here called Astro B, which is all you can think of it as in astronauts assistant. [00:02:01] So it's able to not only do things on its own but hopefully will be helpful to astronauts and also allow ground controllers to to have a virtual presence on the International Space Station in the way that they the way they haven't been able to. Let's see. We're turns out that when you're working with robots like this having very good maps and representations of the world's that you are exploring becomes important. [00:02:27] And so we have a sub grouped here.  That works with planetary mapping. So in the best, I guess most digestible way of describing that is that if you've ever opened up [00:13:00] Google Google Earth and kicked it into Google moon or Google Mars mode. That most of the especially the base in Ministry imagery and other products that are in that in that Google Earth We're actually generated by my group. [00:03:00] And so it turns out that when you get these pictures and imagery from satellites, they're not always right and they need a lot of kind of carrying and coercing to make them actually look correct. And so my group has a suite of software. Where that's all publicly available the that can be used to make that imagery more correct and more digestible by things like Google Earth and other systems like that and then you know in general we at any given time have, you know, north of 30 to 40 researchers that are here. [00:03:38] Doing all kinds of work that is relevant to robotics relative [00:14:00] relevant to space and yeah, and it's an awesome group and every single one of them is motivated and exactly the right kind of ways. [00:03:52]Organizational Nitty-Gritties: IRG [00:03:52] [00:03:52] Ben: [00:03:52] Yeah. I mean having having worked there I completely agree with that statement from personal experience. [00:03:58] And actually related to to the motivations something that I really like doing is digging into the nitty gritties of organizations that really generate Innovations. So so look what tell me about the incentives that are  at play in IRG like what really what motivates people like, how are people sort of rewarded for success and failure and how do those pieces work? [00:00:12] Mark: [00:00:12] Well, I and. I'm going to say this and it's going to sound super simple. But the IRG is one of the few places and it's one of the reasons why I wanted to when I was given the opportunity to be the group lead that I took it is I still feel like I RG is like one of the last one of the few places. [00:15:00] I guess I'll say where the research can kind of be up front. [00:00:34] We're creativity can be king and we can kind of focus on doing the good work in a way that I'll just say that is a little bit more difficult when you're out. A commercial world because you know chasing the next product sometimes has a whole bunch of things that come along with it. You know, what is the market doing what you know our is this going to be supported by Senior Management other things like that that we that we don't have to deal with that as much it has to align with NASA's Mission. [00:01:06] It has to align with what the focus is our of the agency, but I will. That because we have such good researchers here our ability to create a proposal. So we end up just like everyone else writing proposals to to NASA itself and winning those proposals that they that they were kind of ization is actually in the [00:16:00] fact that these researchers get to do the research that they're wanting to do and all the research that's being handed down to them by, you know, a marketing team or some corporate exec. [00:01:40] The other thing that is huge here and I know. Probably experienced it during your tenure when I say the folks are here for the right reasons. We all know every single person within IRG and I'll say that within especially NASA Ames out here in Silicon Valley every single one of us could go a thousand yards outside of the fence and be making two to three times what we make working for the government. [00:02:08] And that's not it's not so much a point of Pride. But what it does is it just helps relieve the the idea that folks are are are here for the money you're here for the research and you here for the science. I use the best analogy I make quite often is I used to. [00:17:00] I used to teach as an Adjunct professor at a community college doing and this is more than this is about 15 years ago in the courses were on like PC repair and other things it was this certification called A Plus and the I used to confound the other professors because I used to always take they had one section that they would do and it was 8 a.m. [00:02:52] On Saturday morning. It was like a it was like an 8 a.m. To 1 p.m. And it was just one day a week and I used to always take that one and the other professors were like, why are you taking an 8 a.m. Saturday course and I would smile at them and say. Because every single student it's in there. I know they want to be there. [00:03:14] I know that they are motivated and want to be there because no one in their right mind is other than a motivated student is going to get up at 8 a.m. On a Saturday morning to go learn about PC repair and to add in to everyone's surprise, but not my surprise. I had a [00:18:00] 100 percent pass rate on that test because it was independently tested outside out of out of the classroom and I. [00:03:39] So just smile because it was like wow, you must be a great professor and I'm like, no, I've got great students because they all are motivated to be there. So that's effectively what I have here within NASA sitting inside of you know, this Silicon Valley bubble is I have a whole bunch of frightening Lee smart people that are motivated to do good science and have absolute have financial reasons to go elsewhere and decided for themselves. [00:04:07] This is where they'd rather work. Yeah and do so the in terms of the majority. Let's break that down a little bit the way that projects happen is that you do a proposal to like, who do you propose projects to I guess [00:19:00] is the the correct question. Well the the fun part and this is one of the the freedoms and NASA has. [00:04:36] Can really propose to anybody we have projects here that our commercial so we work with like for instance. We're doing work with Nissan on autonomous vehicles. And and if actually done some really really interesting work there, you know related to visualization and other things like that which which borrows a lot from work that we do with the Rovers so so we can work with companies. [00:05:03] We work with Within. First so NASA itself. One of the ways that NASA works is that because we have multiple centers, you know, NASA Ames for instance in our group will propose to NASA headquarters. So we just pitched a couple of months ago we pitch to a program that was doing satellite-based Technologies and I flew to NASA headquarters in DC and we [00:20:00] pitched it to a much like you would do to a VC or any. [00:05:35] No any funding source, if you were a company doing it in the valley and you pitch it and we and we want it. We also work with other government agencies. So we have done work for DARPA. We've done work with the Marine Corps. It turns out that the dod Department of Defense is interested in a lot of the ways that we have worked with autonomous vehicles as the Department of Defense tries to figure out how they want to work with autonomous vehicles. [00:06:05] So it's easy for us to open a conversation with Department of Defense and say hey, here's what we did for our Rovers our uavs or whatever and this may be something that you know, you may want to consider and a lot of times they'll come back and say well look we not only want to consider that but we'd also like to go ahead and kind of put you on proverbial payroll here and how do you either do the work for us or help us [00:21:00] understand? [00:06:30] You know, what are the important parts of this we can work with Academia? And so we will often have projects where we partner with a university and we will go in and do a joint proposal either to NASA or all of the different funding sources that that are out there. And so NASA. Has a lot of flexibility in a way that you know myself having previously worked in the Department of Defense. [00:06:58] NASA can do something unique and that NASA can be a consult or NASA can do work for a private company. We have a thing called a space act agreement and like the Nissan workout was talking about there. It seems odd that that a government organization would be able to receive a paycheck if you will. [00:07:18] Yeah from a private Corporation. And it turns out that NASA has a very unique way of doing that and we leverage that frankly as often as we can. [00:22:00] So I realized that's probably a really long answer to a simple question and that's to say we can take money from just about anybody as long as it is legal and it benefits NASA in some way. [00:07:41] Those are the only two real catches that we have. We You Know It ultimately has to benefit and NASA's Mission as. You know being Shepherds of taxpayer dollars, but as long as we can justify that we can work with a lot of different funding sources. [00:07:58]Aligning with NASA's Mission [00:07:58] [00:07:58] Ben: [00:07:58] And what is NASA's mission right now? Like how do you know whether something is within the purview of NASA's Mission or not? [00:08:08] Mark: [00:08:08] Well, I NASA takes its guidance from from a lot of different places. I mean, we you know, there's the two A's. NASA, you know with respect to you know Aeronautics. I'm sorry, the what we have Aeronautics and we have space right and those are the two kind of built into the name, you know missions that are in there. [00:08:29] We [00:23:00] also you know, the we take direction from NASA headquarters. And they are putting out, you know, we have the science side, especially for space which is really driven a lot by the Decay deal surveys and other kind of Direction with respect to where we want to see and it sounds kind of funny to say but it's like where we want to see mankind go in terms of, you know, space exploration and other things like that, but we also have Earth Sciences, you know, some of the kind of flipping back to to the the. [00:09:02] It's up in Northern California some of the some of the best especially satellite imagery that is coming through there's actually being processed through NASA's Earth Sciences missions. And so, you know, there's a worldview and a bunch of other tools that are out there that as as the Earth Sciences. [00:09:24] With all of the different things that are affecting especially, you know, the climate and everything else. It turns out that [00:24:00] NASA's mission is also to benefit that and to help with Earth observations in a way that ultimately helps us understand how we might be impacting other worlds when were able to achieve going there [00:09:42] [00:09:42]NASA-> DARPA [00:09:42] [00:09:42] Ben: [00:09:42] Got it. I'm going to transition a little bit  from your time at Nasa to then your time at DARPA. And what I wanted to know is like what were some of the biggest shocks transitioning from NASA to DARPA and then now back from DARPA to NASA because they're both government agencies, but they feel like they have very different fields at least from the outside. [00:00:20] Mark: [00:00:20] Yeah. Um, gosh, that's there's especially from NASA to DARPA.  It was I guess the biggest things that come to mind one as a program manager. It is frightening Lee empowering to go to an organization where you know [00:25:00] where you're at Nasa here. We you know with Ed My Level and with the group kind of scenario that I just described to you. [00:00:51] We're in the trenches right? We're trying to do the science. We're doing the research and we're we're trying to make a kind of an impact at a kind of a ground level right when you go in as a program manager at DARPA your your. Trying to change a field. So you have your basically being given the power to say within this field within this field of let's say autonomous vehicles. [00:01:19] I see the following Gap and in stating that and in creating kind of the the request for proposals and other things that you do that bring researchers to darpa's door you're saying. You're not saying I'm going to go do this technology technological thing you're saying I think everyone needs to focus on this part of the [00:26:00] technology landscape. [00:01:44] That's a that's a different conversation at a very different level and it was startling to be frankly one of those program managers where you say. Hey, I don't think the field is doing this right and then to have an entire field turn to you and say oh, okay. Well then let's. From the thing that you want that you're suggesting that that's that isn't interesting and kind of empowering position to be in. [00:02:11] but has a NASA does too but DARPA specifically especially with Department of Defense type technologies that eventually roll out into civilian use your ability to just speak at such a different level and at a level that is. Accepting of risk in a way that NASA does not do that for DARPA. You almost have to have if it's not ready [00:27:00] yet. [00:02:43] If it's not risky enough that you can have a program not basically make the cut DARPA because it didn't have enough custo. It didn't have they call it and dark within DARPA. They called The Laugh ability test and that if your if your idea isn't just crazy enough that it's almost laughable. Then then then it didn't it didn't it's going to have to work a lot harder to get there. [00:03:07] And so I'd say the probably I guess in conclusion the risk and just the empowerment to move an entire field than a different Vector that that would probably be the biggest difference as I had between between my NASA world and then going over and being able to Moonlight as a program manager [00:03:26]Fields Impacted by DARPA [00:03:26] [00:00:00] Mark: [00:00:00] and what are some fields that you. All like DARPA has really moved that concept is incredible and makes sense. And I it hasn't been expressed. So concisely before  I'd love some [00:28:00] examples of that. [00:00:02] Mark: [00:00:02] What are the best and I think the most recent example that we can now see the impact for is is autonomous vehicles. [00:00:12] I mean you have to remember the that that now is over a decade ago that the original that the first DARPA Grand Challenge happened and what you know, I was reflecting on this while I was being chased down by a Tesla on the way into work this morning that clearly was autonomously driving itself. And I remembered that in most people forget that the first arpa Grand Challenge. [00:00:38] First of all was millions and millions of dollars in investment and no one won. Yeah one got to the finish line. And in thinking about risk and thinking about risk acceptance what I think that's one of the best data or a really good data point of darpa's not only saying this is really hard. We're going to call it a Grand Challenge and we're going to have these [00:29:00] vehicles basically racing across the desert that if that wasn't gutsy enough from a risk standpoint, but they also then failed and then did it again and said, you know what week we literally had. [00:01:16] Humvee flipped over on fire on in the desert and that was on the evening news for everyone to enjoy to the embarrassment of DARPA and the dod and everybody else and then they said you know, what? No, we're going to double down. This is really worth it. And we need to make this happen and the the impact for that is huge because that then became, you know kind of the ground floor. [00:01:46] Of the vehicles that we now have running around especially out here and you know in the Bay Area you got fully autonomous vehicles now that are able to navigate their way through, you know through all of the different difficulties in the complex situations [00:30:00] that can be presented. The folks that were that Noble Sebastian threatened and his Stanford team that won the the the Grand Challenge that those people went on to to work for you know, what was the Google autonomous car which eventually became way Mo and all of the different companies and talented is sprung out of all of that. [00:02:25] That was all born over a decade ago by an organization that is using your taxpayer dollars to do. Risky things and to say for this it's for this autonomy thing. We really think that vehicles are where the money needs to be spent and spent in a real way that that takes guts and it's still in my mind one of the only organizations that really able to kind of make an impact like that until that entire field. [00:02:53] Hey, I don't think you're doing this right and here's what I want you to do and I'm going to put money behind those words and we're going to go change the world and a [00:31:00] decade later. We've got autonomous vehicles quite literally beside you on the highway. That's pretty awesome. [00:03:07]Levels of Risk DARPA Shoots For [00:03:07] [00:03:07] Ben: [00:03:07] That is incredibly awesome. [00:03:09] Do you have a sense of what the level of risk that you're shooting for is I'm thinking just sort of. Like what is the the acceptable or even desired failure rate or is there a sense of how many fields per decade you're shooting for? Right because you think about it and even if it's changing one field per decade. [00:03:42] The amount of change that comes out of something like autonomous cars or even  the human computer interaction that came out came from the 60s might even make the whole thing worth it. So do does anybody even  think about it in terms of numbers at all? [00:32:00] [00:00:03] Mark: [00:00:03] So I never heard it framed that way the thing that the Mantra that was always drilled into US was that that it was that the way that you kept score was by the number of Transitions and how how DARPA and I guess that's more of a general DOD term. [00:00:25] That's to say for something you create how many times did. Someone take that technology and go use it for something and so, you know, we would count a transition as you know, well, you know Army decided to take our autonomous vehicle and use it for this but we also got contacted by Bosh and they are interested in leveraging that thing that we built with this new sensor that they're commercially making available and we provided the missing link that now allows them to use that safely. [00:00:59] Vehicles and so you kind of keep score internally on [00:33:00] that basis. The other thing though that darpa's doing is you got multiple horses in the race. So DARPA is organized into multiple floors that have different specializations. So they have like and just a couple examples. I have like the biological technology office and the micro technology office and each one of those. [00:01:29] Floors has a specialization in so the idea that you're bringing in these program managers, you're empowering them to go change their respective fields. And then you're doing that across multiple broad domains like biology and micro technology and other things like that. That's pretty that's pretty and that's awesome in a way that it provides overlap because when I was for instance where I work, What's called DSL which is the defense Sciences office, which is to say it works on [00:34:00] kind of first principle science and physics and Mathematics and other things like that the fact that you can as somebody who's working that go talk to somebody who was fundamental in the development of mems technology, which is what MTO the micro technology office. [00:02:21] That's what they work. And then you want to see how let's say that new chip that is leveraging mems technology might. By law might be able to parallel or be inspired by biology and go get one of the experts from the biotechnology office to you know to scrimmage on some new idea that you're having or whatever that that's that's awesome. [00:02:44] And what that does is that just ends up being kind of this this this multiplier this Catalyst for innovations that are then, you know, you've got multiple domains that are all kind of being affected in the same kind of positive feedback loop. So I would say that's the biggest thing to directly to your question that I don't ever remember anybody saying, okay. [00:03:03] We're not [00:35:00] hitting quote. We need you know, we need another six domain changing ideas organize, you know not have satisfied or obligation of Congress. I don't ever remember any kind of conversations like that. [00:03:16]Organizational Nitty Gritties: DARPA [00:03:16] [00:03:16]Ben: [00:03:16] Yeah that description of the like cross-disciplinary interactions is shockingly similar to some descriptions that I've heard of bell labs and it's the parallels that are really interesting. [00:03:32] And I want to dig into sort of the organizational nitty-gritties of DARPA as well. So all of the the program managers who are the sort of the the drivers of DARPA, you're all  basically temporary employees. And so how did the incentives their work? what are your goals as. Program manager and what drives people, what incentivizes them to do their work? [00:00:04]Mark: [00:00:04] [00:36:00] Well, so you're right you're there. So as a DARPA program manager you therefore it's. Typically to two-year renewable contracts. So you you go in you have basically two years at which point you're evaluated as to how well your programs are doing and then you may be renewed for typically another two years. [00:00:26] Most program managers are there for about three years and that that's kind of the the center of the bell curve is three years the motivation simple and that you're you're being. Given one of the largest.  within certainly within DOD. If not within just the overall research community and DARPA has a bit of a Swagger. [00:00:51] It has a bit of a like a brand recognition that when DARPA says that we are going to now going to focus on this particular type of sensor this particular type of technology that you as [00:37:00] a program manager. You have the ability to go talk to the best of the best the the the folks that are. Either changing or moving or working in those those respective technology bases that you can drop somebody an email and the fact that it's you at DARPA dot mil that that will probably get you a response that you might not have been able to get otherwise. [00:01:28] And so so that's you know, that's I would say one of the biggest kind of motivators that are incoming program manager has as they're going in and then the the other big motivator there is you're not you're there for a limited amount of time. So for years may sound like a lot of time it's not it's really is not because you it takes about to go from like idea on the back of a napkin. [00:01:57] To you know to kick off of a program it takes about a year. [00:38:00] There's a for as much as it looks like it's loose and free and a little crazy in terms of the ideas and stuff like that. It turns out that there's a pretty regimented all jokingly call it a hazing ritual that's on the backside that involves multiple pitches. [00:02:21] There's a level of. Programmatic oversight called a tech Council that you have to go present to that is extremely critical of whatever it is. It is that you're you're presenting and I'll admit it some of the toughest pitches and certainly the toughest like presentations that I ever prepared for. My first tech Council was way more difficult than anything I ever did like for my PhD dissertation or anything. [00:02:52] Like that and so yeah, and so, you know once the so if if you're on a let's say a three year time scale and it takes you a year to get a [00:39:00] program up and running you have got enough time to maybe make two or three dents in the universe, which is what you're hoping to probably do when you go in the door. [00:03:16] And then the other thing that could happen is as program managers are cycling out. So, you know you everybody's on kind of disorder. Even in their out after three years the other program managers have to then inherit the programs that are run up and running that some previous program manager, you know may have pitched in awarded but is now headed off to you know, make you know, buku bucks and industry or whatever and so it's another disc I'll say distraction that you have because program managers sometimes naively myself included go in thinking. [00:03:47] Okay. Well, I'm just going to go in and. Ditch my own ideas, and I don't even know what this inheriting other programs thing is but I'm going to try to avoid that as much as possible and now you've got three or four or five different programs that you're running and hopefully what you've done is you've built a good [00:40:00] staff because you're able to assemble your own staff and you can kind of keep keep the ball running but that's kind of a that's the cycle if I can give you kind of a you know, the the the day in the life kind of you is that you're going to go in. [00:04:19] You're going to be pitching and coming up with new ideas and trying to get them through Tech Council. Once they get through Tech Council, then you've got a program up and running in as soon as that programs up and running then you've got to be looking toward the next program while your staff. You know the ball rolling on your other on your other programs, then you rinse and repeat at least three or four times [00:04:43]What does success or failure look like at DARPA [00:04:43] [00:00:00] Ben: [00:00:00] and what does the end of a program look like either success failure or question? [00:00:11] Mark: [00:00:11] Um, it depends on the program and it depends on the objectives of the program, I guess, you know, the grand challenges always end with [00:41:00] a huge Fanfare and robots presumably in a running through Finish Lines and other things like that. There's other programs that end much much more quietly. We're a technology may have been built that is just dramatic. [00:00:37] We enabling and and the final tests occur and a lot of times DARPA may or may not have an immediate use for the technology. Are that the reasons for the Technology Building being built.  Innocence the program started and so you may see the companies basically take that technology back and continuing improving on it or incorporating it into their products and you know, and that's a very kind of quiet. [00:01:07] Quiet closure to what was a really really good runner really really good program and then presumably you would see that technology pop up and you know in the consumer world or in the, you [00:42:00] know our kind of our real world, you know in the next four to five years or so, and so there's a it's the full spectrum as you would probably imagine that that some of the program's some of them fail loudly some of them fail quietly. [00:01:35] And the successes are the same some of the successes are with great Fanfare and then other times and I'll say some of the most enabling Technologies are out there sometimes close their their time and their tenure at DARPA very quietly. And then some years later go on to do great things for the public. [00:01:53]How DARPA Innovations get into the world [00:01:53] [00:01:53] Ben: [00:01:53] That's something that I hadn't thought about so the sort of expectation of the model of how the the technology then gets. Into the world is just that the people who are working on it as part of the program are then the ones to go and take the ball and run with it. Is that accurate? [00:02:18] Mark: [00:02:18] Absolutely, and [00:43:00] I'd say that that's a difference so strictly speaking. [00:02:22] No research happens Within darpa's Walls, and I guess that's one of the things that that both Hollywood and the description of DARPA. Sometimes get confused is be. That you know DARPA is this this, you know, presumably the warehouse full of mad scientists and you go inside and everybody's in lab coats and it looks like something out of X-Files and that's not it's not the case at all that DARPA is there to to first, you know catalyzed Technologies for DOD purposes, but. [00:02:59] But those those folks that are working for DOD are also companies that are producing products made many of them are producing products that are very much outside of DOD and so the spillover and the fact that the DARPA can and I'll say relatively quietly create technology that [00:44:00] is that is just it's a catalyst for the greater good or the the greater use of Technology more broadly that that is a it's a wonderful. [00:03:28] Ability that DARPA has that a lot of other labs don't have that ability to do so you take and I'll give you an example. So let's take like either Air Force research Labs or Army research lab or any of the research Labs that are with the particular branches of the military that does have actual researchers much like NASA Ames here. [00:03:49] We have actual researchers that are inside of our four walls that are doing work and we can do work that you know is it can be exclusive to the government? But but in darpa's case because there is no research being done within its four walls that most of the contractors most of the what they would call the performers the folks that are performing the technology development that depending on the mostly depending on the contract and the contracts are usually written such that those companies can take those Technologies and and use them for [00:45:00] whatever they'd like after the the terms of the contract is done [00:04:26]Improving the Process of Getting DARPA Innovations into the world [00:04:26] [00:04:26]Ben: [00:04:26] something that I've always wondered is you try so many things at DARPA and there's there's no good way of sort of knowing all the things that have been tried and what the results were. Is there any there ever any thought. having it better knowledge base of what's been tried who tried it and what the result was because it feels like for  every technology that was developed by a company who then picks it up and runs with it. [00:00:04] Sometimes there's a something that's developed by a lab that. Is full of folks who just wanted to do the research and sort of have no desire to then push it out into the world so is there is there any effort to make that better make that [00:46:00] process better? [00:00:06] Mark: [00:00:06] Yes, and no but this is a bit of a trick question and I'll answer that. [00:00:12] Well, I'll answer the tricky part. First of all, let me ask let me back up. The obvious answer is that DARPA especially within the last five years or so on his been working much harder to be more open with the public about the work that's being done. You can hit darpa's website and. To the 80th percentile of an understanding of the work that's being done within within DARPA did that the balance of the twenty percent is stuff. [00:00:44] That's either classified or is of a nature where you would just need to do a little more digging or talking with the program manager to really understand what's happening. Okay. So that's a straightforward answer the trick. The trick answer here is that it's better sometimes. Have folks go in that don't know their [00:47:00] history. [00:01:05] The don't know why that previous program failed because since that previous program ran technology may have changed. There may be something that's different today that didn't exist 10 years ago. When that was when that program was also tried the there was this interesting effect within DARPA that because your. [00:01:31] Managers out about every three to four years and because I'll say it like this because DARPA didn't in the past had not done a very good job of documenting all of the programs that it had been running that there was a tendency for a program manager to come to the same Epiphany that a equivalent program integer had come up with a decade earlier. [00:01:56] But that doesn't mean that that program shouldn't be funded. Now. There were folks within DARPA that had been there for a long [00:48:00] time. So interestingly enough the caught the support contractors, so we call him sita's which is systems engineering technical assistance, and there are some CDs support staff that has been there for multiple decades. [00:02:20] So they were back at DARPA during the you know, roaring 80s and 90s, which is kind of, you know, some of the the Heyday for some of the more crazy DARPA stuff that was happening that you would have a program manager go and Pitch some idea. Timers in the back start, you know lean one would lean over to the other one in elbow on the you know, and pointed a slide and they both Giggle and then you would ask them later is like hey, what was the what was the weird body language? [00:02:48] He's like, yeah, you know, we tried this back in the 90s and and he didn't work out because Laser Technology was insufficiently precise in terms of its timing or you know, some other technical aspect or whatever, but it's good to see you doing this because I think it [00:49:00] actually has got a fight. [00:03:06] Chance of making it through this time and hearing that and watching that happen multiple times was interesting because we tend to We tend to say oh well if somebody already tried it and I you know, I'm probably not going to try it again. Whereas with DARPA that's built into the model. The the the ignorance is an essay. [00:03:26] It is ignorance. It's not necessarily it's ignorance of the fact that the idea and the Epiphany you just came up with may have been done before. For that is all I want to believe it's by design that then they will allow a program to be funded that may have been very similar to one that was funded earlier. [00:03:48] But because it's under a new it's under a whole new set of capabilities in terms of technology that if you do that intelligently that that's actually a blessing for for folks that are trying to come up with new programs. [00:04:04]The Heilmeier Catechism [00:04:04] [00:04:04] Ben: [00:04:04] The [00:50:00] concept of forgetting things that has been tried feels almost Blasphemous in the the face bright. [00:04:12] It's right. Like that's why I do wonder if there's sort of a middle ground where you say we tried this it failed for these reasons and then whenever someone wants to pick it up again, they can they can know that it's been tried and they have to make the argument of this is why the world is different now. [00:04:31]Mark: [00:04:31] yes. So that is actually part of within DARPA and one of the framings that they use for pitch is this thing called a Heilmeier catechism and and it's basically a framework that one of the previous DARPA directors made that said if you're going to pitch an idea pitch it within this Framing and that kind of helped that will help you kind of codify your argument and make it succinct one of the Lines within the. [00:00:27] Ism is why is this why can this happen now and that addresses that [00:51:00] kind of ignorance that I was talking about before as a program manager when you pitch that thing and you realize that some program manager did it back in 87 and you're all bummed because you're like, oh man, you can't come up with an original idea and these four walls that somebody hasn't done it previously that. [00:00:52] Then then you just after you get over, you know, the being hurt that you know that your idea is already been done. Then you go talk to some of the original contractors you go talk to some of the sita's you talk to the folks that were there and figure out what is different and then and that is part of the catechism that is part of the what is different. [00:01:13] Now that will enable this to work in a way that it didn't work previously. [00:01:18]Best ways to Enable Robotics [00:01:18] [00:01:18] Ben: [00:01:18] Yeah. The catechism is I think a. Our full set of questions that people don't ask enough outside of DARPA and I'll definitely put a link to it in the show notes. So I do know we're coming up on time. So as a final question, I want to ask [00:52:00] you've been involved in robotics in one way or another for quite some time in Academia and in governments and start. [00:01:42] And it's a notoriously tricky fueled in terms of the amount of hype and excitement and possibility versus the reality of robots coming into especially the the unstructured real world that we live in and why do you think of there? There's a better way to do it from sort of all the different systems that you've been a part of like is there an entirely different system. [00:02:10] What would you change to make to make some like more of that happen?   [00:02:16] Mark: [00:02:16] I this and I hate to say like this. I don't know that there's I don't know that there's much I would change. I think that right now especially working in robotics. That is I look at the. The capabilities the [00:53:00] sensors the all of the enabling work that we have right now in terms of machine learning and autonomy and everything else like it. [00:02:41] This is a great day to be alive and working in the field of Robotics in a way that you know, and I'll feel like the old man is I say this but you know, I started this back in the late 90s early 2000s and frankly when I think of the tools and the platforms and sensors that we had to work with. Um that that you spent especially my experience was a grad school grad student experience. [00:03:08] But when I remember how much time we would spend just just screwing around with sensors that didn't work right in platforms that weren't precise in their movements and you know, just all the other aspects that make robotics robotics and I now look at today the fact that you know, we've got kind of. [00:03:30] Bischoff platforms that we can go find that [00:54:00] you can use that that for these lower low-cost platforms. You can really dig deep into research areas that are still just wide open. The fact that now, you know in the mid-2000s if you wanted to do a Thomas car research you needed to be especially or basically. [00:04:03] They don't know how to work high power crazy high power servos and other things like that. Now you go buy a Prius like or Tesla or something, you know what I mean and you're off and the platforms built for you. We you know, the the lidar the computing power and everything else we have today. I might answer your question right now. [00:04:23] I don't know that I would change a thing. I maybe naively believe that we have all of the tools that we need to really really. Make dramatic impacts [00:55:00] and I believe we are making dramatic impacts in the world that we're living by enabling Automation and autonomy to do really really incredible things. [00:04:43] The biggest thing is is for folks to to go back and to kind of along the line of the last line of questioning the you would have had as far as you know, forgetting and remembering the things that we've done in the past. I find that some of the best ideas that I'm seeing that are coming forward into Robotics and autonomy are. [00:05:01] Ideas that were really born back in the 90s.  We just didn't have the computing power or the sensors to pull it off and now we do and so it's almost a go look back and look at you know, kind of create a Renaissance of us going back and looking at some of the really really great ideas. That just didn't have their day. [00:05:23] Back when you know when things were a little more scarce in terms of computing and algorithmic complexity and other things like that that we can now address in a really kind of powerful way that [00:56:00] is quite a note of optimism.  I really appreciate it mark, thank you so much for doing this. I want to let you get on with your day. [00:00:06]  I've learned a ton and I hope other folks have as well. Absolutely. Well, thank you for having me on I appreciate it.  

In 2004, the U.S. government held a race unlike anything that had come before it. It was called the DARPA Grand Challenge, and it followed a 150-mile route through the rugged Mojave Desert.  The participants were cars, trucks, ATVs, and one motorcycle. The catch? Each vehicle was required to drive itself—no remote control, no human intervention. Dozens of engineers and robot enthusiasts worked relentlessly to make it happen. The Carnegie Mellon team was a favorite, but every team faced hurdles—from smashed sensors and exploding toilets to poorly placed tumbleweeds. Was the Grand Challenge too grand for its time?

You probably know her as rockbot, the username that captures her passion for robotics. In this episode, developer Raquel Velez shares that passion with us, telling us all about competing in the DARPA Grand Challenge, how she feels about self-driving cars, and gives us a beginner-friendly walkthrough of how a robot works. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) DARPA Grand Challenge Javascript the good parts Sensor Fusion Rubber Duck Problem Solving Version Control Mechanical Engineering Codeland Conf Codeland 2019

Mark and Richard talk about the Tesla P85D, car automation, and the Darpa Grand Challenge.

It's show 900! While at That Conference, Carl and Richard recorded the 900th episode in front of an audience. The topic - geeking out on Automated Driving. The conversation starts with the history of automated driving, including the DARPA Grand Challenge initiatives. From there, the boys dig into how the Google car works, using LiDAR. Automated driving is inevitable (Sergey Brin says five years!), to the show ends with a discussion of how these cars will come into the market - you'll probably never buy one, just rent it when you need it!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

It's show 900! While at That Conference, Carl and Richard recorded the 900th episode in front of an audience. The topic - geeking out on Automated Driving. The conversation starts with the history of automated driving, including the DARPA Grand Challenge initiatives. From there, the boys dig into how the Google car works, using LiDAR. Automated driving is inevitable (Sergey Brin says five years!), to the show ends with a discussion of how these cars will come into the market - you'll probably never buy one, just rent it when you need it!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Stephen Euin Cobb (your host) is today's speaker. Topic: Autonomous Cars (also known as driverless cars and self-driving vehicles). What they are; how they will change our lives; and especially the powerful forces which may accelerate their dominance of all roads and highways by mandating the elimination of human-driven cars. Google's work on autonomous cars, and their recent lobbying for laws making them legal in Nevada, Florida and California. It's beginning to look as though autonomous cars might become available and popular within this decade.  Source material mentioned in today's episode: A Wall Street Journal article dated Sept. 24, 2012, written by Dan Niel, which provides an excellent analysis of what autonomous cars are all about, effects they will have on our lives and on civilization, and forces which may propel them to dominate the road at a surprising rate. The NOVA documentary, The Great Robot Race (available in DVD and streaming format from Netflix) which details the 2004 and 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge to create an autonomous vehicle for the US military. And the 1976 novel A World Out of Time, by Larry Niven, which described autonomous cars in the deep future. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the January 2, 2013 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 33 minutes] News Item: While at LibertyCon in Chattanooga a few months ago, I had the privilege of interviewing the convention's Literary Guest of Honor: the bestselling author Brandon Sanderson. This interview was different from the almost 400 I've done over the last seven years. This one was videotaped (in HD) by a professional. The professional, Derek Pearson who has been producing music videos for some time, was looking for a project to help him showcase his skills in videography as well as post production with the intention of moving his career into TV show production. The resulting video interview is now available online for your viewing pleasure, and at the traditional Internet price: Free.

Tom Atwood (Editor-in-Chief of Robot Magazine) is our featured guest. Topics: the astounding progress being made in all areas of robotics such as: how vacuum cleaning robots are getting improved house-mapping abilities; what's happening in artificial intelligence for robots; trends in Japanese robots; the brilliant new way in which robots are being used in physical therapy for post-operative patients; and which needs to advance more to put robots to work in our homes as cooks, house cleaners, gardeners and laundry workers -- artificial intelligence or the basic mechanics of robotic bodies. Tom Atwood also talks about his conversation with Sebastian Thrun of Stanford University, winner of the Second DARPA Grand Challenge, about how Sabastian's team programmed their car to win the robotic auto race. (The DARPA Grand Challenge is a series of very long -- some might say 'grueling' -- road races sponsored by DARPA in which all the participants are computer controlled motor vehicles. Not toy cars; but full-sized cars and trucks with no human driver.  DARPA is the Defence Advanced Research Project Agency: the organization that created the Internet.) Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the June 17, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 33 minutes] Robot Magazine covers every aspect of the rapidly exploding field of robots. It has 'how-to' for robot hobbyists, 'what's going on' for robot enthusiasts and 'what's innovative' for tech and engineering professionals. Strong on education, it offers parents, teachers and kids guidance on using and playing with the latest consumer, toy and hobby robots that serve as educational tools and recreational fun. Every issue is full of hundreds of full color photos of robotic fun, gee whiz and hands on experience.  

DARPA Grand Challenge racing robots enter episode six. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

GPS basics, portable GPS systems, Profiles in IT (Vic Hayes, father of WiFi), doggie cell phone, DARPA Grand Challenge, more free Google services (code search, house search, trend search, alerts, book search, page creator, notebook, 3D sketch), click fraud, and Firefox ad blocker. This show originally aired on Saturday, October 27, 2007, at 9:00 AM EST on 3WT Radio (WWWT).

GPS basics, portable GPS systems, Profiles in IT (Vic Hayes, father of WiFi), doggie cell phone, DARPA Grand Challenge, more free Google services (code search, house search, trend search, alerts, book search, page creator, notebook, 3D sketch), click fraud, and Firefox ad blocker. This show originally aired on Saturday, October 27, 2007, at 9:00 AM EST on 3WT Radio (WWWT).

In this episode we interview Sebastian Thrun who is the director of the Stanford AI Lab (SAIL) in California. He tells us how he won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge along with the Stanford Racing Team and Stanley the robot car using his secret ingredient, probabilistic robotics. He prepares us for a future where autonomous cars zigzag through traffic, bringing children, the elderly and workers to their destination in a safe and efficient manner.

Stanley crosses the finish line in Primm, Nev., winning the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge.

In this special episode of Wheel Bearings, Sam sits down with Larry Burns, retired SVP of R&D and Strategic Planning at General Motors to talk about his new book, Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car—And How It Will Reshape Our World. Since retiring from GM in 2009, Burns has been an educator and consultant including working with the Google Self-driving car project and Waymo since 2011. The book is a great read for anyone interested in learning more the history of the DARPA Grand Challenge and development of automated vehicles in the past decade.Our Sponsors:* Check out Express VPN: https://expressvpn.com/WHEELBEARINGSAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy