What are the different levels & approaches of automated driving?
What have been the key breakthroughs along the way to where we are now?
 What are the most promising research opportunities for the industry?

Professor John Leonard, one of MIT’s most prominent researchers in the field, will give a panoramic perspective of some of the challenges and opportunities in self-driving vehicles and advanced automotive safety by reviewing the history of AV research & industry rollout and discussing potential timelines for future deployment.

He will discuss the history of self-driving, with a focus on the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, and some of the major challenges, recent progress and future research opportunities in self-driving, including building and maintaining high-resolution maps and developing advanced perception, prediction, and human interaction systems.

He will then review the different approaches to automated driving, including SAE Level 2 and SAE Level 4 systems, as well as the Toyota Guardian approach, which flips the conventional mindset from having the human guard the AI (as in SAE Level 2 systems) to instead using AI to guard the human driver.

Finally, he will discuss research opportunities in mapping, localization, perception, prediction, and planning and control to realize improved safety through advanced automation in the future.

Please join us at PARC to hear John’s fun and fascinating story of the pathway to fully automatic driving.