Autonomy audiobook

Want to understand autonomous cars? Start hereNo, seriously. This book goes all the way back to concept cars like Sandstorm and Autonomy to today's developers like Tesla, Uber and Waymo. Complete with the office politics, the engineering and the political problems.I also recommend reading "The Upstarts" as a companion to this book. Helps when I read that one first. However, this book never really addresses the issue of what will happen to public transit. Food for thought left to your imagination, but understand this: Autonomous electric cars will make personal transportation much, much more cheaper.

Insider look at the self driving car industry for nerds who are into that.

This is a brilliant account of the past, present and future of Autonomous Vehicles and the transport system.The author makes the point that the auto industry has largely remained unchanged in its 130 year history. Current vehicles are still ape-driven, addicted to oil, unnecessarily bulky, sit idle 90% of the time and devilishly expensive to own and maintain. They are not ideal for city transportation factoring their size and dangerous speeds. Everything about them screams waste.The auto industry has reached an inflection point. We have to severe the relationship between transportation and vehicle ownership. The future of transportation will very likely be:1. Autonomous - AI driven vehicles. These has the potential to eliminate about 90% of the annual 1.3 million deaths on the road. Hardware and software is several orders of magnitude more reliable than apes.2. Electric - or fuel cells?. Will curtail the rate at which we are pumping carbon into the atmosphere and simplifies vehicle architecture(No engine, transmission, exhaust systems etc).3. Shared - It will be bad economics to own a personal car, given how cheap(on cost per mile basis) autonomous electric vehicles would be. E.g 70%-90% of an Uber trip goes to the driver. This cost is simply deleted for a completely autonomous vehicle.Highly recommended - It may prove though to be a difficult read if hardware and software is not your cup of tea.

If you're interested in autonomous vehicles and the future of automobiles then this is a great read. Found it engaging and enlightening.

Great read> This will change your view of the future. Highly recommend.

Larry Burns, an industry insider obsessed with reinventing the automotive industry, serves as a great narrator.The story shifts between his personal accounts and introductions to the major players in the AV field. Also provides a decent overview of the main technical and ethical considerations when designing autonomous vehicles.

Overall a good read on the history and major players in the AV space. My major complaint is that the author only acknowledges the positive AV scenario, but doesn’t consider things such as more vehicle miles traveled due to the fact that the car is driving for you, or potentially worse congestion depending on how ownership plays out. Google “heaven or hell autonomous vehicles” for a more balanced perspective.

One of the best books I’ve read about emerging technologies and the impact they will have. Highly recommended.

Autonomy : The Quest to Build the Driverless Car - And How It Will Reshape Our World (2018) by Lawrence D Burns and Christopher Shulgan is the first insider account of efforts by big companies to create self-driving vehicles. Burns worked for decades for General Motors and was a Vice President there and he has a PhD so he knows GM and Detroit intimately. He also points the billions of dollars that Detroit has poured into research for fuel cells and other technology. This book looks at the way the self-driving car was developed from the 2006 Darpa Challenge onwards. The earlier work at Carnegie Mellon and by Mercedes is not mentioned. Nor, unfortunately are the role that Neural Networks have played. The book concentrates on the people who entered the 2006 Darpa challenge, in particular Red Whittaker and Chris Urmson. There drive and the Stanford team lead by Sebastian Thrun are also profiled. It's a pretty enjoyable read. The challenges of getting equipment that works and writing the software is brought to life. The book then shifts to Google's Chauffeur project that would eventually become Waymo. Here the drive and targets and challenges of the effort are well portrayed and Burns also joins the team. The book concludes in the present (mid to late 2018) with Waymo on the cusp of launching their first autonomous taxi service. The fatalities caused by Tesla and Waymo are also gone into in some depth. For anyone who is interested in self-driving cars and the future of mobility the book is well worth a read. Burns is a smart insider who has a great deal of interesting material to work with. He also provides a really interesting perspective of the different cultures of Detroit and Silicon and how they are now interacting. The only downside of the book is that there is little real insight into how remarkable the technology is. No doubt other books will follow that examine the remarkable developments of Lidar, neural networks and big data that are enabling autonomous vehicles. 

Good infoBut why are electrics so rare? Why no self driving? Those are the obvious questions But also, he said electric cars will be cheaper....why is Tesla so damn pricy?And one of the things a fleet of taxis won’t handle: rush hour. This has to be solved by better mass transit. Here in houston—everywhere?—it sucks

Read this book just out of genuine curiosity on the developments of driverless cars, and found it to be a highly informative book on the engineering and technology that went into the cars, as well as the history and politics around the topic. Would recommend if engineering is something that interest

Cannot say enough good things about this book. Have recommended it to colleagues and family members. Bought copies for my sons since this book makes a compelling argument for alternative fuels, transportation on demand and autonomous vehicles.

Autonomy: The Quest to build the driverless car was an intriguing novel that depicted the development of self-driving cars over the last few decades. This book was given to me by my dad who thought I might enjoy reading about it since I like cars, so i decided to give it a read. The author, Lawrence D. Burns, was a former General Motors executive and current advisor to the Google self-driving car project which gave him valuable insight into the development of the driverless car revolution. The book itself was one big story of several engineers who work on developing driverless vehicles, and each section of the book has a different focus for the car. The first and what I thought was most interesting part of the book discussed the Carnegie Mellon team and how they designed their car to compete in the DARPA competition. This competition had teams design a car that could drive a race spanning a few hundred miles in the desert, all while avoiding obstacles. The motive behind such an event was to promote the development of driverless technology which would help soldiers avoid lethal obstacles such as landmines in Afghanistan. Throughout the rest of the novel, Burns tells stories of other various competitions such as the second DARPA event, his time at GM, and even other interesting stories such as the first fully-autonomous pizza delivery. Throughout the stories, one can observe the development of the technology used to make the semi-autonomous cars and the people who strive to make them a reality. Since this is a non-fiction book that recounts real-life events, the story has not ended - but just begun. Burns leaves the audience with what he believes the future of the auto industry will look like (obviously with driverless cars). Easily the best part of the book for myself was how he put in perspective the integration of self-driving cars into society by referencing the very beginning of the auto industry. He makes note that back when cars were first invented, people mostly rode horses, and very few people drove a car. Now, pretty much no one rides horses as their primary mode of transportation, and there are still people who ride horses, but there are designated spots for them. Burns believes that cars will see the same fate as horse riding - uncommon but not extinct. I personally liked the book, and it really went in-depth about the self-driving car. This is an idea that kids in the seventies or eighties saw in their cartoons but could never conceive the idea of this becoming a reality in their adult lives. As for the subject of the novel, I can’t see myself owning a self-driving car in the near future. There’s something about the thrill of driving a car that one will not get from self-driving cars. Don’t get me wrong, self-driving cars will be safer, more efficient, and easier to operate (no kidding) than a manual car, but I’m not completely on board with the idea quite yet. This is a future that seems inevitable, so I’ll either see myself sitting in a metal cage being driven around by a computer, or I’ll find myself with the other non-conformists over in the horse paddock.