Brian Rockwell's Profile

This is very interesting. A common complaint in the US is that the legislative branch doesn’t accomplish anything. This would certainly shift responsibility to the citizens and could potentially lead to dramatically improved efficiency and quality.

I think the risk Joe points out is real and a great point, but I don’t think that our current political system is particularly robust to the influence of special interest groups and foreign governments.

In my previous job, we would often work with 3D printed plastic prototype parts specifically for the reasons mentioned – lower cost and shorter lead time. I hadn’t thought about the potential benefits for making low volumes of parts for servicing old vehicles. That is a really interesting application.

Another key benefit of 3D printing in the automotive industry is that you can create shapes that can’t be created by other means or that would require the assembly of sub-components. In these cases, 3D printing can reduce mass which is critical for improving fuel economy.

This is incredibly interesting. It seems that this is something that would have many potential applications, so it is surprising that they are having trouble monetizing it. I really like the author’s suggestion to turn to open innovation to discover new applications of the technology.

This is a really interesting post. I definitely agree that there is a risk to being able to make accusations against someone without negative repercussions for false accusations.I also worry that the shear volume of data you’d be putting into the funnel would be insurmountable. It seems that with these sorts of attacks we already often hear that a family member or someone close to the attacker had reported suspicious behavior or mental illness before the attack took place but there either wasn’t sufficient evidence or sufficient bandwidth to address the situation.

The idea of the “wisdom of the crowd” being better than that of trained experts is very interesting to me as well. It reminds me of ensemble methods in machine learning where you train multiple models to achieve the same task and then let the models “vote” to determine a final output.

I agree that in machine learning, the data is usually the moat, but in the case of autonomous vehicles, there are at least half a dozen organizations that are investing billions of dollars to create hardware and software and build a data set.

Also, at least some of the partnerships with Intel are not exclusive. FCA is working with many partners, one of which is Intel. https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-rctom/submission/the-road-to-autonomous-driving-at-fiat-chrysler-automobiles

Really great explanation of real and simulated miles and how they can be useful.

I posed a very similar question in my essay to the one you posed about how Intel can create a differentiated and defensible offering. It seems to me that is is fairly likely that in 10 years, Level 4 autonomous systems will be relatively commoditized. There are many groups working in this space and unless many of them fall short, there will be many options to choose from. It also seems that there are not many ways to create a differentiated product, especially if all providers get to a relatively similar safety record. The biggest differentiating factor may be in the cost of the sensors and other hardware in the system.

It’s a minor point, but Tesla is generally not considered a leader in the space despite the publicity they garner. This study by Navigant is several months old, but provides an interesting breakdown of where they think each company is: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-apple-trail-self-driving-pack-study/.

I think the ethical questions will likely fade away as we move from theoretical discussions to practical application. These vehicles will be designed such that they (almost) never get into accidents for which they are at fault and even if one becomes unavoidable, they will likely be designed chose a path all the way up to the very end that minimizes the chance of a collision. Another possible cause of an accident would some kind of system failure and in this case we may have relatively little control over how the vehicle responds.

You raise an interesting questions about a future in which only autonomous vehicles are allowed on the road. I personally don’t think this is likely for a few reasons. First, the current fleet of non-autonomous cars on the road will be around for a very long time, meaning that autonomous vehicles will be required to navigate around them and therefore a shared road should become a non-issue as AV manufacturers meet this requirement. Secondly, there is still a strong set of Americans who are passionate about there vehicles (including car dealers who make up a very powerful lobby). Because of this, I think taking away car enthusiasts manually operated cars will be similar to trying to take guns from gun owners.