Welcome back to the Stack, a monthly newsletter from Argo AI and Ground Truth featuring the best content in the field we’re all so passionate about: self-driving cars! Buckle up and get ready to ride.
To honor Veterans Day in the United States and Remembrance Day abroad, Ground Truth profiled the experiences of two of the many veterans at Argo: John Seminatore, a Lead Technical Program Manager of Autonomy who previously served in the U.S. Air Force’s Space Command (now known as Space Force), as well as Bret Dorman, an Autonomous Vehicle Systems Operations Manager who served as a Captain in the Air Force and worked on fighter jets.
Read both Bret’s and John’s stories to learn how their experiences in the military help them now in their jobs at a cutting-edge tech company, and about the interesting similarities between the Air Force and Argo in safety and technology development.
Argo was founded five years ago with a simple yet ambitious purpose: to make getting around cities safe, easy, and enjoyable for all.
The “for all,” part of our purpose statement is important, because as history has shown time-and-time again, access to safe, easy and enjoyable transportation has unfortunately not always been available on an equal basis for all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups.
This month, the No Parking Podcast, co-hosted by Ground Truth’s Alex Roy, took an honest but optimistic look at these aspects of tech and transportation history, and how autonomous vehicles could help make mobility more accessible for all communities. In our episode featuring Tina Brown, CEO of the Overtown Youth Center in Miami, the discussion examines how future self-driving technology deployments might enable residents in the predominantly African-American, historically disadvantaged Overtown neighborhood to take advantage of new opportunities in schools and enrichment programs, among other things.
Attorney, transportation advisor, and NYU McSilver Institute Fellow-In-Residence, Henry Greenidge, also joins the podcast to discuss his exploration of the early history of automatic elevators and how they gained social acceptance and trust, while generating many new job opportunities in technology, design, and maintenance. Listen to other fascinating discussions by subscribing here.
Austin, Texas has gained a reputation in recent years as a leading city for attracting emerging technology.
It’s also one of the first places where Argo is bringing autonomous ride-hailing to the public through our partnership with Lyft, beginning in early 2022, and one of three cities in which Argo has partnered with Walmart to serve customers with autonomous goods delivery.
In order to meet the demands of these programs and further public deployment, Argo employees are hard at work testing our self-driving system (SDS) to safely navigate Austin’s public roads.
Learn why Austin’s road layout and traffic habits are well served by the advanced capabilities of autonomous vehicles. And find out how Austin’s massive supply of rentable, dockless e-scooters — over 11,000 according to municipal government statistics — creates a specific series of challenges for drivers that Argo’s SDS has been thoughtfully designed to safely handle.
The year is drawing to a quick close, but we’re still hiring for tons of openings across the U.S., in Germany, and remote. And our 2022 summer internships are posted, too. Here’s a sampling:
U.S.
Global Supply Manager
Logistics International Program Lead
Autonomous Vehicle System Test Specialist
Test & Integration Engineer, Autonomy
Enterprise Software Engineer
Multimedia Producer
Internship: Lidar Processing
Germany
Autonomous Vehicle Operator
Data Engineer
Machine Learning Engineer, Map Detection
C++ Software Engineer, Lidar & Grid Perception
Autonomous Vehicle Operations Lead
Executive Assistant
…and many, many more in all our locations. See the full list here.
If you’re not already, follow us on our official social media accounts:
Argo AI LinkedIn
@GTAutonomy
The Self-Driving Coalition, a trade group that includes Argo and various autonomous vehicle companies, launched its new campaign to educate the public on the difference between autonomous vehicles (AVs) and advanced driver- assistance systems (ADAS)
Norwegian fertilizer giant Yara debuted an electric, self-steering cargo ship
A company named Clockwork has created a nail painting robot that can apply nail colors and patterns in 10 minutes
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute) have developed an autonomous boat fittingly called Roboat that can navigate Amsterdam’s many canals. They plan to use it for commercial pilots in personal transportation, waste pickup and water quality monitoring.
Do you have interesting autonomy links you want to share? Send them to us at Stack@argo.ai. We may include your recommendations in a future edition of The Stack.
