Upgraded testing may be key to advancing self-driving evolution

BIO: Urtasun has 20 years of experience in AI, with the past decade spent building self-driving solutions. In addition to founding Waabi, she was a co-founder of the Vector Institute for AI. Urtasun is also a professor in the University of Toronto’s Department of Computer Science.

KEY QUOTES FROM URTASUN:

On the progress of self-driving: “When you look at customer satisfaction of this technology, we see almost nothing. Very simple operation domains as well as very, very small fleets. Progress — but definitely far from the promised land we all would like to see.”

On primitive simulation systems and creating a testing environment that is on par with the real world: “Waabi’s road map was to address this problem right away by building a virtual world that greatly reflects what the real world is. So that when we test our system for the brain of the self-driving vehicle, it looks the same in the simulator as the real world. Then suddenly, you can develop, you can test, you can validate … all in simulation, which is a game changer.”

On hurdles to self-driving commercialization: “The solution doesn’t exist, so we need to build it and we need to be able to make the safety case for what we are building.”

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