Host: Cameron Wiese
Guest: Ro Gupta, CEO, Carmera
Category: Biz & Tech | ⚡ Innovation
Podcast’s Essential Bites:
[1:42] “The vision [of Carmera] is to be the road intelligence platform of the future […]. We specialize in mapping and in particular in something called high definition maps that are used for sort of next gen autonomy and mobility use cases. So, […] we’ve been focused primarily on building first for autonomous driving […], but more broadly […] both high definition maps as well as the maps that you would have on your phone today. The part that’s really hard and unsolved is how to maintain maps as things change in the real world.”
[4:03] “[Nowadays] maps need to be upgraded for machines not just humans. So in our case, […] we are building for arguably the hardest to satisfy use case, which are machines that are driving around on public roads and you don’t want them to crash into things. […] And [autonomous vehicles] really was one of the catalysts for the mapping road intelligence industry to start to really step things up in the past few years. […] There is a very low tolerance for any […] risk in terms of actual safety. […] To get to a really fresh accurate map, these update cycles have had to really be improved, whereas in the past it was kind of fine to update the map once a year at best.”
[7:44] “Where we see things are going is […] the next generation of maps are helping machines act more like humans […]. The driverless cars make better decisions [than] a really good attentive skilled driver would. But we also see that these next generation maps can allow humans to benefit from data that normally machines only get access to. […] We kind of see a convergence, where just better maps are good for both machines emulating humans and humans kind of emulating machines.”
[24:44] “I think real estate, construction, […] parking, charging infrastructure, […] city planning, use of lanes, curbs, even just full neighborhoods, […] insurance […], healthcare […], media and entertainment […], those are just a few [industries impacted by the automated vehicles revolution].”
[27:27] “When we talk about autonomy, there is two pretty distinct types. […] We’ve been mostly talking about what’s called level 4 autonomy, where it’s really more like that robot taxi model, where you don’t even own the car, there is no driver, there may not even be a steering wheel […]. But there is also a parallel path going on in what a lot of people refer to as level 2 autonomy or level 2+ and that is really more driver assist […]. [Level 2] is still a massive change for those traditional auto companies and […] there is a lot of gaps in terms of […] getting them to be able to behave more like […] the silicon valley, software centric computer on wheel style. […] That’s one area, where I think, if you are starting a company now, I would do a bunch of research, talk to these people.”
[30:59] “I think Tesla is a very complicated story in our industry. On one hand, the entire industry should be absolutely thankful of what they catalyse on both the EV (electric vehicles) side and on the AV (automated vehicles) side. You know, they woke things up across the board and it’s just absolutely undeniable that we wouldn’t be where we are if they hadn’t scared the heck out of the industry to catch up on those important things. On the other hand, […] they do have a very different approach that a lot of people aren’t comfortable with or pessimistic about and I’m in some way partially one of those. […] I think some of the things they are doing are actually very forward thinking and they need to be leading in a way that is not conformist to convention, particularly on the EV side. On the AV side, I share some of the discomfort, because I think one of the keys with autonomous mobility, particularly cars on public roads, is they […] are not a contained technology like a rocket. […] They are immersed in the public domain with many other stakeholders who care […] and there are a lot of externalities that matter from the government to society to insurance […]. In autonomy, I don’t think Tesla or […] anyone can run the table.”
Rating: 🍎🍎🍎
🎙️ Full Episode: Apple | Spotify
🕰️ 39 min | 🗓️ 03/09/2021
✅ Time saved: 37 min
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