For 12 weeks this summer, our team at Argo welcomed just shy of 50 interns who represent the self-driving industry’s most promising new talent.

The ‘race’ narrative is often-used when defining the deployment approach of the autonomous vehicle industry. In truth, that depiction hurts the reality of how some of us are actually operating. Self-driving technology is not a winner-take-all sprint to the finish line —  and even if it was, that’s not how Argo is approaching its development and deployment.

When we formed Argo AI more than two years ago, our mission was clear: make transportation safer, more accessible, affordable and convenient by developing self-driving vehicles in partnership with leading automakers.

It’s an amazing time for those of us in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence. We’re starting to see consumer products and services powered by the capabilities that we and our predecessors spent decades developing and testing in labs across the country. And one of the flagship opportunities enabled by these capabilities — autonomous vehicles — is finally on the horizon with initial commercialization plans in place.

In today’s world of computer vision and machine learning research, it’s all about who has access to high-quality data — and how much of it. That’s because it takes a tremendous amount of data to train, validate, test and improve the perception algorithms and machine learning methods that enable self-driving vehicles to understand the world around them.

There are countless studies on the importance of a diverse and inclusive workforce, and most focus on the fact that diversity is good for business. We couldn’t agree more, but at Argo it’s more than that. Our technology is being developed to improve the lives of everyone, and our team should reflect that.

We are pleased to announce that Alex Roy — Editor-at-Large of The Drive, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports, record-setting endurance driver, and Founder of the Autonocast and the Human Driving Association — will join Argo AI effective January 15th, 2019. You may read his statement here.

We are seeing an explosion of connectivity in our lives, with everything from our phones and cameras to our washing machines being imbued with the power of the internet – even connected toasters are a thing now. This same movement is happening in the automotive world, where self-driving vehicles, especially, will rely heavily on connectivity to operate efficiently out in the world.

Every day Argo AI employees come to work, we all strive toward a higher purpose — transforming how the world moves. We don’t take this lightly, and that’s why it has always been important to me to make Argo AI the best place to work — a space where people want to be each day because they love what they do.

After a year spent testing self-driving vehicles in Pittsburgh and Southeast Michigan — not to mention enduring some cold winter weather — the Argo AI fleet is enjoying a dramatic change of scenery. Among palm trees and ocean views, we’ve expanded our testing with Ford Motor Company into Miami-Dade County, with our self-driving vehicles now mapping roads and accumulating valuable test miles on the streets of Miami and Miami Beach. As we further increase our areas of testing throughout the year, we will continue to add vehicles to our autonomous vehicle fleet.

Developing reliable self-driving cars requires pushing the envelope in computer science and artificial intelligence. While we’re applying the latest techniques in computer vision and machine learning to the work we’re doing every day, some of the most advanced research is being done at the university level. That’s why it’s critical to stay connected to the academic community, so we can cultivate the young minds that will help us bring cutting-edge work out of the lab and into the real world.

We can’t talk about a future of self-driving cars without mentioning LiDAR technology — and we won’t be able to build that future without it. These sensors are crucial to creating a three-dimensional view of the world that helps autonomous vehicles find where they are on the road and detect other vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists.

A decade ago in the California high desert, 11 finalists competed in an unprecedented 60-mile race. Robot cars needed to safely and swiftly complete the mission without any human intervention — while also interacting with human-driven vehicles — in under six hours.

Pittsburgh has been called many things — The Steel City, City of Champions, City of Bridges, The Capital of Work. A newer name, one we’ve become particularly fond of, is Roboburgh. Yet, no matter what you call it, Pittsburgh has always been an epicenter for innovation, with an incredible workforce possessing the talent, grit and determination to take an idea and turn it into reality.

We founded Argo AI to tackle one of the most challenging applications in computer science, robotics and artificial intelligence — self-driving vehicles. While technology exists today to augment the human driver and automate the driving task up to a certain level of capability, replacing the human driver remains an extremely complex challenge. Advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning and computer vision are required to solve it. These technologies will eventually lead us to a new generation of the automobile — a vehicle that is connected, intelligent, and able to safely operate itself alone or as part of a shared fleet. The potential of these shared fleets of self-driving vehicles will be one of the most transformative advancements in this century.