Friday Hacks #119, September 30
Posted on by Advay Pal
This week, we have Benjamin from DSO and James from nuTonomy, both talking about Autonomous Vehicles. See you there!
Facebook event here.
Date/Time: Friday, September 30 at 7:00pm
Venue: SR3, Town Plaza, University Town
Autonomous Vehicles: Advances and Algorithms
Talk Description:
Autonomous vehicles (also known as self-driving cars) have begun taxi service trials in one-north and Pittsburgh, and are set to dramatically change the way we commute. How did AVs come about and what are the algorithms and advances in technology that have enabled autonomy? This talk introduces the history of AVs, the AI and robotics challenges involved, and some techniques that we use to tackle difficult problems in autonomy (especially in localisation and perception).
Speaker Profile
Ben develops and implements algorithms for autonomy in unmanned ground vehicles at DSO National Laboratories. He studied Computer Science at CMU and there first became acquainted with the joys and frustrations of working with robots. Although his work is now robotics-focused, he remains interested in parallel algorithms, compilers, machine learning, and software engineering that can serve society. He also enjoys teaching and mentoring (especially if it has anything to do with programming).
Autonomous Vehicles for Mobility on Demand
Talk Description:
As the population of any city increases, so will the demand of basic infrastructure like transportation. In more affluent cities like Singapore, manpower shortage is major hindrance to maintaining the efficiency of the transportation system. We will explore how autonomous vehicles will address this, what some of the technical challenges are, and how autonomous vehicles will usher in the next generation of mobility.
Speaker Profile
James Fu is the Director of Singapore Operations at nuTonomy. He currently oversees the technological development at the Singapore office, which involves the technology and software required for autonomous vehicle driving and intelligent fleet management with the eventual goal of an autonomous mobility service. He was previously a Research Scientist at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, where he led the Autonomous Vehicles Group under the Future Urban Mobility IRG. At SMART, he was involved and oversaw Singapore’s first public trial of autonomous vehicles in Oct 2014, which involved two autonomous golf buggies at the Chinese and Japanese Gardens. He received his Ph.D and B.Eng degrees from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the National University of Singapore in 2005 and 2013 respectively. His main research interests include multi-agent task allocation, fleet management, and swarm behaviour.