Delivering the benefits of self-driving technology: Aurora’s approach to development

EECS Colloquium

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

4:00 – 5:00 pm

Zoom webinar:  https://berkeley.zoom.us/s/99825370819

Chris Urmson

Founder and CEO
Aurora

Abstract

Founder and CEO Chris Urmson will explain how Aurora’s custom-designed FirstLight lidar will play a critical role in bringing the Aurora Driver to market safely, quickly, and broadly. More specifically, we’ll first discuss how self-driving technology will revolutionize the transportation of both people and goods. Then, we’ll highlight the critical role that lidar plays in self-driving perception and explain how FMCW lidar provides distinct advantages over traditional systems, especially for high-speed applications. We’ll finish with a discussion of how Aurora’s recently-acquired lidar-on-a-chip technology will make FirstLight the highest performance automotive-grade lidar available for the driverless market.

Biography

Chris Urmson is the co-founder and CEO of Aurora, the company delivering the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly. Chris has been instrumental in instigating and advancing the development of self-driving vehicles and the industry for the last 15 years. Before founding Aurora, Chris helped start Google’s self-driving car program and served as CTO. Prior, Chris was a faculty member of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University where he worked with house-sized trucks, drove robots in the desert, and was the technical director of the DARPA Urban and Grand Challenge teams. He earned his Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University and his BSc in computer engineering from the University of Manitoba in 1998.