‘Autonomy’ by Lawrence D. Burns and Christopher Shulgan
Autonomy follows the story of the autonomous vehicle from 2003, when robotics researchers at Carnegie Mellon University first met with the intention of winning a government competition centered on self-driving cars, to the present day, where industrial leaders like Google/Waymo, Uber, General Motors and Ford are vying for dominance in a space where the core technology is caught halfway between aspiration and implementation.
Unlike Driverless, which I wrote about previously in this series, Autonomy focuses on several personalities throughout the development of autonomous vehicles as a business venture and a technology. Not only do you get a sense of the people involved in this journey, you also get a sense of how this concept has evolved from dream to reality-in-progress.
The author and voice of this book is Lawrence D. Burns, a former vice president of research, development and planning at General Motors. During his tenure at GM, he saw several points at which the company could capitalize on the emergence of AVs. Having grown up in Michigan and going to GM’s college of automotive technology and management out of high school, Burns is steeped in car culture, to say the least. This level of exposure and focus helped him rise the ranks, through graduate school and ultimately to leadership within a large US auto manufacturer. After his time at GM, he served as an advisor to several groups, including the Program for Sustainable Mobility at Columbia University, and on Google/Waymo, where he serves currently.
If there is a protagonist in this book, it would be Chris Urmson. Urmson was a part of the research team at Carnegie Mellon that competed in and ultimately won the 2007 DARPA self-driving car challenge. He was on a team led by taskmaster and visionary Red Whittaker, who was a long time and well respected, no nonsense professor of robotics at CMU. Urmson was joined by computer scientist Sebastian Thrun, also at CMU.
After their successes in these government sponsored challenges, these gentlemen made their way to Silicon Valley, where they were courted by Google, among other companies. At this point, we come across Anthony Levandowski, a firebrand engineer who constantly got himself into trouble…with everyone. He was one of the first engineers at Google to be focused on self-driving car technology. While the challenge of AVs is a big problem, dealing with Levandowski proved to be an even bigger one for management. His teammates, other companies, even Larry Page, the CEO of Google, wound up having major issues with him. His name might be familiar to some as the Google engineer who defected to Uber, and took nearly 9.7 GB of confidential files from Google/Waymo and brought them over to the rival company.
Sounds like great company, right?
That should only go to show how much is at stake with this kind of tech, and the kind of people that are involved.
There is a lot more to this story, but I will let those who are interested in this read on. The world of AVs is a fascinating one. I believe the change, though maybe gradual, is inevitable. It will be a psychological transition for society as a whole, much like the car was during the end of the horse-drawn buggy era.
If you have any questions, comments or insights about AVs and the future of mobility, please send me a message! I would love to connect.
