Driven: The Race To Create The Autonomous Vehicle | A Conversation With The Author, Alex Davies
By: Itspmagazine Podcast
Tags: Autonomous Cars, Autonomous Vehicles, Technology, Cybersecurity, Business

A car is not just a car — it has never been that simple. The same applies to any other object that we humans envision, create, and use. But today, we are talking about cars — the autonomous kind — and the race to build them.

The concept was not new, and partial autonomous transportation solutions have been around for a long time. Still, something happened in 2004: the first DARPA Grand Challenge took place in the Mojave Desert region of the United States, along a 150-mile route that follows along the path of Interstate 15. A prize competition for American autonomous vehicles, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

If you look at it from the performance angle, it did not go well; the farthest distance traveled was 7.32 mi of the course before getting hung up on a rock. No winner was declared. But if we value it from the interest it created in the R&D for autonomous cars, it was a huge success. But, at what price does this success come?

In his book, Alex Davies talks about the key players from the DARPA days’ early enthusiasm and the growing interests and financial investments that followed. Davies explores this exciting quest by a growing and increasingly-competitive community to transform transportation and change our lives.

In this podcast, he tells us this story and some more.

Enjoy.

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About the book:

Alex Davies tells the dramatic, colorful story of the quest to develop driverless cars — and the fierce competition between Google, Uber, and other companies in a race to revolutionize our lives.

The self-driving car has been one of the most vaunted technological breakthroughs of recent years. But early promises that these autonomous vehicles would soon be on the roads have proven premature. Alex Davies follows the twists and turns of this story from its origins to today.

The story starts with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which was charged with developing a land-based equivalent to the drone, a vehicle that could operate in war zones without risking human lives. DARPA issued a series of three “Grand Challenges” that attracted visionaries, many of them students and amateurs, who took the technology from ‘Jetsons’-style fantasy to near-reality. The young stars of the Challenges soon connected with Silicon Valley giants Google and Uber, intent on delivering a new way of driving to the civilian world.

Soon the automakers joined the quest, some on their own, others in partnership with the tech titans. But as road testing progressed, it became clear that the challenges of driving a car without human assistance were more formidable than anticipated.

Davies profiles the industry’s key players from the early enthusiasm of the DARPA days to their growing awareness that while this spin on artificial intelligence isn’t yet ready for rush-hour traffic, driverless cars are poised to remake how the world moves. ‘Driven’ explores this exciting quest to transform transportation and change our lives.

Guest(s)

Alex Davies, Senior Editor, Transportation, Business Insider (@adavies47 on Twitter)

Resources

Driven, The Book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Driven/Alex-Davies/9781501199431

The DARPA Grand Challenge: https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/-grand-challenge-for-autonomous-vehicles

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