Chris Urmson Reflects On Challenges, No-Win Scenarios And Timing Of Driverless Cars

When Chris Urmson talks about driverless cars, everyone should listen. This has been true throughout his career but it is especially true now. Few have had better vantage points on the state of the art and the practical business and engineering challenges of building driverless cars. Urmson has been at the forefront for more than a decade, first as a leading researcher at CMU, then as longtime director of Google's self-driving car (SDC) program, and now as CEO of a driverless car dream team at Aurora Innovation. Urmson's recent "Perspectives on Self-Driving Cars" lecture at CMU was particularly interesting because he has had time to absorb the lessons from his long tenure at Google and translate those into his next moves at Aurora. He was also in a thoughtful space at his alma mater, surrounded by mentors, colleagues and students.