This book grew organically over the years from inspiring and illuminating discussions we’ve had with numerous people. We owe special thanks to all those who helped shape this text one way or another.
We’d like to thank two long-standing luminaries of the field of autonomous vehicle research, Brad Templeton of Singularity University and Alain Kornhauser of Princeton University. It is difficult to find independent experts on the topic who are deeply knowledgeable about robotics and embedded in the automotive field, yet able (and willing) to freely share their insights and opinions. We have gained tremendously from conversing with Brad and Alain in person and from reading their blogs and regular email digests.
We would also like to thank Carnegie Mellon University’s NREC staff, and in particular Brian Zajac, who spent hours giving us a grand tour of their facilities and all things autonomous. We’d like to thank Dr. Amnon Shashua, founder of Mobileye, for sharing his insights on machine vision with us.
We owe an intellectual debt to the current and former students of the Creative Machines research lab at Cornell University and at Columbia University for their research on autonomous systems and AI. In particular, thanks to Jason Yosinski for being one of the first to recognize the value of deep learning. We are grateful for Jason’s insistence that we develop deep-learning software applications in the lab years before deep artificial neural networks gained the wide acceptance they enjoy today.
We appreciate the hard work and dedication of the team at MIT Press, particularly Marie Lufkin Lee, Michael Sims, and Kathleen Hensley, for their enthusiastic support of the book.
Finally, no book on driverless cars would be possible without the inspiration and genius of the creative and bold innovators out there, the engineers, developers, inventors, artists, and entrepreneurs, both past and present. Thanks to you, soon the streets, parking lots, and highways of the world will be a better and safer place.