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Udacity spins out its self-driving car business as Voyage
- faitswulff 10y agoI'm sorry, Udacity the MOOC company has a self-driving car business? ...news to me.
- imrehg 10y agoSurprising indeed, but not entirely. Udacity co-founder Sebastian Thrun competed in the DARPA Grand Challenge, and led the development of Google's self-driving car.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y agoThrun is also a luminary in the field of AI and the head of Carnegie Mellon's CS dept
- shakna 10y agoThey offer a nanodegree [0], so I'm not really surprised they want to utilise that expertise (lecturers, engineers, anybody that helped build the coursework) in more than one way. [0] https://www.udacity.com/drive https://www.udacity.com/drive
- olivercameron 10y agoWe've been building an open source self-driving car alongside providing an amazing self-driving car curriculum. We've found that the two equate to one of the best educational experiences on the planet!
- kqr2 10y agoGoogle cache in case page is down: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:z7UZzBDGLqMJ:https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/05/udacity-spin-out-voyage-aims-to-build-a-full-self-driving-taxi-business/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:z7UZzB...
- wiradikusuma 10y agocompanies pay huge money to hire self-driving car engineers, or to train them to become one. that's old skool. Udacity provides nanodegree program to train you at your cost, $2,400 for the full program (9mo)! at least now you know you might get hired! /s EDIT: link https://www.udacity.com/drive/faq https://www.udacity.com/drive/faq
- noway421 10y agoShould we be expecting some autonomous efforts from Snap Inc. at last in the near future?
- Analemma_ 10y agoHeh, good timing: I hear Uber might need to start their self-driving car project from square one soon. They might be willing to do a fast deal.
- masters3d 10y agoUdacity's founder also helped google's self driving car project so I don't think Uber would make the same mistake.
- goodJobWalrus 10y agoJust for the record, Udacity founder has said that he won't have anything to do with this company (per BI article)
- olivercameron 10y agoHello all! CEO of Voyage and former YC founder here. Would love to answer any questions I can about autonomous taxis. I'm obviously very passionate about the area. It feels like dev time is only accelerating (vs. linear progression), so I believe we'll see self-driving cars much faster than the skeptics think. We're also hiring. I don't care about your credential, just that you love robotics or machine learning. Ping me! jobs@voyage.auto.
- gregpilling 10y agoHi there, I own a manufacturing company in Arizona, and we make (eseentially) brackets, and I would like to make brackets for your retrofit kits. I actually wrote a business plan out 3 years ago based on the likely idea that someone would build a self drive system but would need a partner to figure out how to make the bracketry to bolt the parts on. The way I see it, the 1 billion vehicle fleet on the road now could be upgraded with a standard suite of sensors and actuators, but they would need unique vehicle specific brackets to bolt the parts on. We can help with that part! Most of our vehicles we cover are current model year, back to about 2000, and we work with the steering and suspension on late model vehicles everyday. When will your product be available to test? My personal vehicle is a 09 Tahoe Hybrid, with electric steering and up to 28 mph electric only, purchased specifically to hack. greg@traxda.com if you want to discuss we make lift kits for pickup trucks, as well as LED lightbar brackets and air horn brackets, but it is really just making hundreds/thousands of parts to bolt into existing holes and make the truck do something a little different. We are in the SEMA Tech Transfer program, so we can get OEM CAD files, and we make everything in our robotically powered, vertically integrated operation in Tucson :)
- Denzel 10y agoWhat are you (or anyone in the space) doing to advance the public's perception of the viability of self-driving cars? Whenever I speak to laypeople about self-driving cars their mind immediately shoots to the 1 million+ ways that things can go terribly wrong, or even slightly wrong. Therefore, they have no interest in self-driving cars. It'd be helpful if we could see when self-driving cars get there. Like crash-safety tests soothe people's nerves, a battery of self-driving tests -- visual, visceral -- would silence objections. Something to point to... something tangible. A way to score the playing field. Because between Google, Tesla, Uber, Cruise, Voyage, and whoever else, it's insanely difficult to see through the fog.
- ingenieroariel 10y agoCongratulations to the team involved! In particular Oliver, Eric and Mac. As a CarND student who enrolled because of the Open Source aspect I'd love to know if Voyage is planning to contribute open source software like Comma.ai and Polysync.
- olivercameron 10y agoThanks Ariel! We will definitely be contributing open source. It may not be a total open source self-driving car, but we will be very active.
- ingenieroariel 10y agoAwesome!
- arthuretf 10y agoCongratulations with the company, Oliver! I wish an infinite success! (: Is Voyage willing to sponsor visas for future employees? Are there junior positions available for new grads? Thank you!
- olivercameron 10y agoYes! Definitely willing to sponsor. I wouldn't be in the US unless Udacity was willing to do so.
- arthuretf 10y agoCongratulations with the company, Oliver! I wish an infinite success! (: Is Voyage willing to sponsor visas for future employees? Are there junior positions available for new grads? Thank you!
- lquist 10y agoCan the billions being invested in this space earn an economic profit? It seems to me that multiple companies will be able to bring this technology to market in roughly the same timespan and that number will increase rapidly with time, driving commodification.
- khrm 10y agoDoes Udacity have any plan to expand outside USA and in other ventures? Like Bangalore maybe? I am an AIND student.
- mojoe 10y agoI'm currently enrolled in Udacity's self-driving car nanodegree, I can certainly say that the program thus far has been very fun and good at conveying knowledge. They've developed a curriculum that has a great cadence that keeps you moving forward, and the content is super interesting.
- elastic_church 10y agoReminds me of the time when failing mattress companies had a dail-up ISP vertical.
- uncle_stupid 10y agoI think this is really exciting news Oliver. Will there be an employment link up between Voyager and the self-driving car nanodegree? And do you think it's likely that other spin offs will occur from Udacity related to other courses? I work in higher education and I'm incredibly grateful for how Udacity are opening the eyes of my more traditional colleagues as to how learning can be different, relevant and exciting. Thanks and Good luck.