Recently published on the Alliance website is an abstract for Nathaniel Fairfield's planned afternoon keynote presentation at the May 29th Embedded Vision Summit, a technical educational forum for engineers interested in incorporating visual intelligence into electronic systems and software to be held in Santa Clara, California. Here's what abstract describes:
Self-driving cars have the potential to transform how we move: they promise to make us safer, give freedom to millions of people who can't drive, and give people back their time. The Google Self-Driving Car project was created to rapidly advance autonomous driving technology and build on previous research. For the past four years, Google has been working to make cars that drive reliably on many types of roads, using lasers, cameras, and radar, together with a detailed map of the world. Fairfield will describe how Google leverages maps to assist with challenging perception problems such as detecting traffic lights, and how the different sensors can be used to complement each other. Google's self-driving cars have now traveled more than a half a million miles autonomously. In this talk, Fairfield will discuss Google's overall approach to solving the driving problem, the capabilities of the car, the company's progress so far, and the remaining challenges to be resolved.
Lest you for some reason doubt Fairfield's credentials, let his bio reassure assure you (in spades, no less):
Nathaniel Fairfield is a technical lead on Google's self-driving car team. He works on special projects, and led the engineering effort behind the "Self Driving Car Test: Steve Mahan" video on YouTube. Dr. Fairfield received his PhD from the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute where he worked on robots that explore and map complex 3D environments, like flooded caves in Mexico. Before that, he worked at Bluefin Robotics, in Cambridge Massachusetts, building robots that map the ocean floor.
Here's the YouTube video mentioned, which Alliance Founder Jeff Bier also showcased at last October's Embedded Vision Summit East held in Westford, Massachusetts:
Remarkable, eh? Clearly, from the above description, keynote attendees will get plenty of information on Google's self-driving car activities. And while I can't promise that Fairfield will also discuss his pre-Google robot projects during the talk, I'm sure he won't mind fielding audience inquiries during the post-presentation Q&A session. Speaking of which, if you'd like to be in that audience, I encourage you to register for the Embedded Vision Summit West right away, before all of the attendance slots are filled. Note that last year's Summit sold out, so don't delay!
