Hello everyone! @olivercameron, CEO of Voyage here.
Drew is currently busy at our Testing Grounds shipping a new release, but if there's any Voyage or self-driving car related questions I can answer, I'd love to hear em'!
My previous life was at Udacity, where I spent 4 years working on their self-driving car and machine learning curriculum. I learned a ton from working with Sebastian Thrun and the rest of the Udacity team.
1) What online resources do you recommend for someone that wants to go from beginner to skilled in the field of self-driving cars? Is there a sequence of courses that you could recommend?
2) What important concepts should this self-learner hone in on as they learn?
3) How can someone that does 1) (and has projects) break into the self-driving cars career?
1) If you already have a good grasp of Python, I always advise to start with the AI for Robotics MOOC at Udacity, which is my favorite class of all time. Once that's done, I'd take a look at their Deep Learning classes and the Self-Driving Car Nanodegree.
2) I think it's crucial to get to grips with how the whole stack works, so I always advise to get to grips with a middleware like ROS. Also, don't be afraid to dabble in algorithms (think problems in motion planning, computer vision, etc.)
3) The traditional programs (think PhD programs) create a lot of specialists focused on a single domain, but the industry is in dire need of more generalists. An engineer who is able to dive into any part of the stack is a huge value-add!
How do you see the market for self-driving cars? How far is Waymo ahead of the competition? Who are the top competitors? How do you see your own position as a smaller startup?
It seems like the best self-driving systems are currently struggling with what seem to be fairly fundamental deficiencies (cant react to stationary objects on highways, dont react well to children and cyclists)
Is this a valid observation? What do you see as the biggest limitations in the current generation of self-driving technology?
Drew is currently busy at our Testing Grounds shipping a new release, but if there's any Voyage or self-driving car related questions I can answer, I'd love to hear em'!
My previous life was at Udacity, where I spent 4 years working on their self-driving car and machine learning curriculum. I learned a ton from working with Sebastian Thrun and the rest of the Udacity team.