Autonomous Vehicles (new job ?)

[Kchrpm]

I've never heard of an AI system that can be put into any car on any track and figure out how to drive both to their limits completely on their own.

[Godson]

I can see Keith replied, but when I click the link, nothing shows up.

My comment was going to be along the lines of a blonde joke, but whatevs.

[Godson]

And now it shows up... I dunno

[JoshInKC]

And now it shows up... I dunno

Same thing was happening to me and I assumed it was just my computer. Weird.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Yeah, I saw Kchrpm made a new post, but it wouldn't show up once I clicked on the thread. I thought perhaps Kchrpm deleted the post or something.

Skynet is interfering with our discussions. Probably just want us all dead rather than having to learn to drive.

[samoht]

Tomorrow will make a year I've been at my current company, so I really owe you guys an update :-)

I'm on a team making the software that we use to annotate videos. Basically neural networks need large amounts of training data, which means where you give it both the raw input data and the 'right answers' for that data. It then adjusts the weights so that its outputs best match the right answers, and if you're lucky it'll then generalise to new situations. Think of it like making a line of best fit on a graph, but with lots more dimensions. So the more good training data you have, the better your NN will be - in fact adding more data is often more helpful than anything you can do to the network itself.

We take dashcam video and automatically recreate the 3d shape of the road, then human annotators use the 3d model to align virtual lanes on top of the real ones in our software. Then boxes around other vehicles. The system we have for doing this is quite sophisticated compared to others around, it can be quite productive in cases where it works well. We have applied for a couple of patents on this, and are about to apply for another for some extension stuff I did.

In May my team lead went off sick with stress and subsequently opted to return onto a different group, so I'm now team lead (albeit there are only three of us).

I also had four days' advanced driving course, including a day around Millbrook test track going on the high speed bowl and the skidpan, which was fun. This is so that when I'm driving one of our Mondeos with all the cameras and logos, I don't end up doing something silly and making the company look bad. Or alternatively if the worst happens, at least the company has a good story to tell in terms of training of their safety drivers!

I'm not directly working on the car software, which is in some ways a shame but in other ways we have a lot of leeway to make decisions and get on with things, without the pressure of being on the critical path for the car, so it's quite a good situation.

In March we realised the car stuff wasn't going that well, so we re-focused and cut out a lot of scope and complexity in order to get something working to demo to investors this year. The demos will be early next month, we're asking all sorts of big names to invest in us. If they bite, we'll be in a good place - should find out by next Jan/Feb I think. The demo car seems to be coming together and is showing encouraging signs of starting to work, and the 'investment climate' seems very favourable for big investments into what we're doing - I just hope that it works 'on the day' and that we're seen to have done 'enough' to be investible.

Even if things don't work out, I've definitely enjoyed my year in Cambridge and have no regrets. At the same time, the freedom and autonomy I'm enjoying and the excitement of being part of bringing something like this together means I'm really hoping we will get to continue

[speedpimp]

Congrats.

[Dicknose]

Sounds cool!

[Crazed_Insanity]

Good luck man!

Thanks for the update!

Gee, it’s been one year already?

[IMOA]

Awesome stuff. Over the next 5 years our concept of transport will fundamentally change and you’re going to be in the thick of making that happen. Savour every moment