day actually in late October about 11
years ago out in the Mojave Desert on
the edge of the Mojave Desert butting up
against a spectacular mountain range but
nestled in an international speedway
that’s usually host to human powered
nascar-type races something unusual was
happening so that was my first robot car
experience that was Tommy and he went
completely berserk crashed into a wall
and this of course all occurring at one
of the most prestigious and historic
events for autonomous driving called the
darpa grand challenge there was a year’s
worth of work that went into this a lot
of sleepless nights and my attempts to
make one of the world’s first driverless
cars felt suddenly bleak everything just
came to an abrupt halt so I started to
ask myself why was I doing this how did
I how did I get here and I still ask
myself that and it really started with a
cat’s eyes robot and that’s an actual
cat that’s Cappy and that’s the robot
beaker outlived Cappy he just had that
in its DNA Cappy however lived a long
life died of natural causes at least
that’s what the robot claimed but the
the one idea was to create a really cool
piece of software that with minimal
effort would quickly enable anybody and
I’m including my six-year-old son in
this anybody to be able to create a
robot faster cheaper just a radically
fast a radically new way to create these
complex machines rich and intelligence
and rich and diverse capabilities and I
felt that this was important to me
because this would help this may be a
key ingredient to foster the widespread
growth of robotics and the widespread
growth of robotics I felt may actually
help accelerate human evolution itself
maybe that was a little heady but that’s
what I thought anyway and my journey
along the way experienced a lot of ups
and downs here are a few pictures from
my trip it’s like a home video this is a
shiny polished Tommy making his debut at
the darpa grand challenge that was an up
this is a down this is Tommy getting
stuck in hay bails spinning and smoking
his wheels and this isn’t up this is me
having an intimate moment with Tommy
kissing him after he crossed the finish
line during one of his trial races that
pretty much guaranteed his entry into
the DARPA Grand Challenge so we were
really excited about that and this was
of course that big down that you saw the
unexplained acceleration and Tommy
kissing a concrete barrier during the
race this is us having the repair Tommy
we had to replace the entire front end
of the vehicle and source a new engine
in the middle of the desert these uh
desert border towns it’s very difficult
to find such an engine this is us
rebuilding Tommy in less than 36 hours
working through the night on no sleep 40
degree weather was very cold there and
Windy desert were working in the middle
of nowhere in a parking lot but this was
the up this is us bringing Tommy back to
the challenge after we rebuilt him and
giving him a shot to take another run at
the darpa grand challenge to make it
into the final event so this was a down
this is us getting stuck on the Hoover
Dam that’s right the Hoover Dam in a 35
foot long RV with Tommy and a trailer in
tow after he was denied participation in
that event that was a dark moment but
this wasn’t up this is me making the
awareness rounds with Tommy to bring
awareness to driverless vehicles as
early as 2006 and Tommy winning some
awards and this is Tommy’s robotic
progeny Tommy jr. in the 2007 DARPA
urban challenge which was a race of
driverless cars through a city this is
Tommy jr. making the awareness rounds
like his father and meeting rocker Neil
Young’s producer Larry Johnson at a
conference that was a lot of fun and
this is me working with Neil to help
automate link fold link volt was Neils
1959 lincoln continental that we work to
convert into a clean energy hybrid and
we were automating it completely and
this was a down this is linked ville in
a freak fire inside of a warehouse that
actually took some of Neil’s memorabilia
with it but there’s an up and this is me
receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award
which is kind of weird don’t feel him
that old for the software inside of link
fo Neil and I had also patented some of
the link volts ideas and Link fold was
ultimately rebuilt and Neil drives link
bolt today so that’s an up so there’s a
lot of ups and downs 15 years of it
actually took 10 years just to get the
patent for the one idea software idea
that I mentioned a lot of ebbs and flows
of projects and economic conditions and
in the dark moments where you don’t have
enough money to keep everyone employed
which is always you know an
entrepreneurs worst nightmare
and then but always moving forward
trying to make the software smarter and
smarter and just one month ago receiving
that investment from one of the world’s
largest computer chip makers in the one
idea to power the world’s robots and
autonomous vehicles so we were excited
about that so we’re on an up phase so
driverless cars are on public roads now
they’re making their ways on the public
roads now and they’re also experiencing
some of their own ups and downs this is
the Tesla autopilot example which is on
public roads there’s actually some
autonomy involved in these and I forgot
to mention that one of the benefits is
apparently to be able to play a pan
flute while being autonomously driven
but the early adopters are certainly get
a taste of the freedom that this brings
and the but the technology is still
early and this is actually a super
serious warning because these cars are
not 100% autonomous yet there has been
an accident and there is this assumption
that there is full autonomy and there’s
sort of this loss of vigilance that
occurs as people assume these cars or
fully autonomous when they’re not yet
and this is all happening at a very fast
rate and some say happening too fast
however so too is the speed at which we
can respond to issues we can actually do
over-the-air updates from manufacturer
right to the consumers car we can boil
down functions of the car the bits and
bytes of software into things that can
be sent from manufacturer to your car
hopefully not while you’re driving but
but nevertheless dynamic updates and
this changes the way cars will be
serviced and maintained over the years
so it’s a dramatic shift in in the
technology that’s coming to our
automobiles and it’s going to able us to
accept this new technology and use it
faster despite the glitches and this is
not a history uncommon many of you may
recall some of the videos of early
flight worth of flapping wings and the
bicycle propelled bicycle powered
propellers and some of those early
attempts at human flight ended poorly
the Wright brothers themselves inventors
of the airplane experienced a tragedy
and a fatal crash in 1908 and really
since the first flight in 1903 for a
while there
took a certain amount of bravado to even
get on to an airplane but airplane
safety improved over time especially in
the 1960s as commercial flight and
public flight became more and more
popular there was a dramatic decrease in
the amount of accidents that would occur
with air travel it’s been improving ever
since so much so that flying is among
the safest form of travel especially as
compared to driving in a car and I’d
like to make the analogy if if you woke
up one day and you read in the newspaper
that the second 747 crashed that week
claiming the lives of all 350 people on
board and if there were two of these
crashes each week throughout the past
year no one would ever fly yet that’s
exactly how many deaths occur on us
roads in cars today every week every
year and driverless cars are designed to
shield us from that to basically avoid
collisions detect and avoid collisions
and dramatically reduce fatalities so
the question is where will we end up
with all this what does the future look
like an author joga row of the book
radical evolution put four three
propositions that futures talk about
when it comes to where technology will
take us and the first proposition is the
heaven scenario this is utopia this is
where there’s zero loss of life we
achieve immortality we’re free to pursue
our interests watched over with loving
grace by machines and in the case of
driverless cars they’ll make us
impervious to accidents in this scenario
we’ll be able to eat sleep drink play
including play the pan-flute go from
wherever we are to wherever we want to
go whenever we want to go safely and it
also brings empowerment those who are
unable who are currently unable to drive
the elderly or folks who are unable to
see will have empowerment and mobility
to be able to go to church visit their
grandchildren go to the grocery store
now the second proposition is the health
scenario this is dystopia this is where
technology is used against us right the
Terminator wars attacks initiated by
both man and machine human extinction
becoming
possible under this most pessimistic
scenario where we’re watched over with
steely cold disregard by machines and
for driverless cars this might mean a
rocky road ahead where there’s just too
many defects and too many accidents and
people say we have to put the brakes on
deploying driverless cars or worse that
these cars are used for malicious
purposes weaponize the militarized used
in terrorist attacks or even hacked and
redirected unbeknownst to us towards ill
intent but the third proposition and
perhaps the most realistic proposition
is the prevail scenario this is where
the rate of our response to fixing
issues exceeds the rate at which these
issues occur so the benefits for
driverless cars for enhanced safety
mobility and productivity exceed the
issues that arise and the accidents that
occur along the way because we’re able
to respond to those issues so an
interesting thing happens here the
question is what happens when our rate
of development on a rate of response
happens so fast that machines first
start to exceed human capabilities and
then far exceed human capabilities to
the point where the improvement is
infinite it’s basically runaway growth
and that’s where the trend proposition
comes in from some futurists this is the
singularity moment right where infinite
growth is occurs and that’s the
singularity the moment when that happens
and futures predict that this will
transform what it means to be human that
machines become part of us and we become
part machine and the boundaries begin to
blur and if people think this is kind of
weird which it kind of is but just think
of cochlear implants that replace the
function of human hearing right now that
exists or people who basically have
artificial limbs from the waist down
there essentially machined from the
waist down or in the future you’re going
to want to upgrade to the human heart
version 2.0 or the human long version
2.0 and get that upgrade right because
you want to live longer or maybe brain
on with augmentation to make you smarter
and this is where we transcend and we
become superhuman perhaps a new species
according to some of the future is so
there’s also a singularity for
driverless cars driverless cars are
autonomous vehicles and autonomous
vehicles are these pods that encapsulate
our body and whether or not these pods
are just driving on the ground or
eventually make the seamless transition
from the ground to the air to the
surface of the sea or to underwater or
even into space we’ll be able to go
wherever we want to go seamlessly in the
world and maybe the universe completely
impervious to hazards along the way and
that’s the singularity for personal
so in closing I just thought I’d use
this talk actually to give me the
opportunity reflect on how one idea can
propel one for better or worse for over
15 years and sort of where it leads you
I’ve been thinking about that and I
guess it’s really that the pursuit of an
idea can feel so perfectly resonant with
who we are that it drives us and gets us
addicted to the ups and gives us stamina
to whether the downs and along the way
if we persist and prevail we not only
confer benefits that outweigh the losses
but well you might even get a chance to transcend thank