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Newsroom ➔ Monthly Newsletters

The Rides of March

Welcome back to The Stack, Argo AI’s monthly newsletter covering our latest autonomous vehicle news, explainers, and job opportunities. Want to receive future editions in your inbox? Subscribe here.

Shifting Into FIRST (Robotics)

Three high school students in red and white polka-dot capes peer over the wall of an arena in which robotic vehicles are seen collecting orange balls

Self-driving cars and robots go hand-in-hand — or is that hand-in-wheel?

Either way, Argo was proud to support the 20th annual FIRST Robotics Challenge Greater Pittsburgh Regional competition for high school students that took place March 16-19 at the Convocation Center at California University of Pennsylvania.

FIRST Robotics is near and dear to Argo employees — many volunteer and mentor FIRST teams around the country in their personal time. Now, Argo is leading the fundraising effort to move the Greater Pittsburgh Regional from its current location to Downtown Pittsburgh beginning in 2023.

By hosting the event in Pittsburgh, students and their mentors will be closer to the wide range of local restaurants, businesses, and hotels in the “Robotics Capital.” They will also gain more opportunities to connect with the diverse talent from the many robotics companies that call the city home.

Many other notable companies, institutions, and organizations have joined with Argo in pledging donations to help fund the move, including Arconic Foundation, BDO USA, Carnegie Mellon University, Eat’n Park, EY, The Heinz Endowments, Highmark Health, Howmet Aerospace Foundation, MSA Safety, PNC Bank, and Seegrid — and we welcome and encourage any others.

FIRST, which stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology,” is a non-profit organization founded in 1989 by inventor and Segway-founder Dean Kamen to inspire kids to pursue their interests in science, tech, engineering, and math. Since 1992, FIRST has organized competitions for students to team-up, build their own robots from scratch, and put them through challenges that test their technical prowess — this year’s challenge involved a kind of robot basketball and robots climbing and hanging from metal beams.

It was a thrilling test of technical skill, teamwork, and FIRST’s ethos of “gracious professionalism,” in which young people of all ages are taught to compete fiercely but fairly, offering help to rivals whose robots break down during competitions. We were delighted to watch the brilliant and motivated student teams compete at this year’s Pittsburgh Regional and look forward to seeing them again next year — in our own hometown!

Argoverse Expands

An illustration showing a stylized aerial view of a bustling city intersection with most of the buildings and vehicles colored in white, and select vehicles colored in orange, green and yellow, as well as arrows showing their forecasted paths

In a win for researchers, computer scientists, and academics the world over, we announced the second release of Argoverse, our collection of open source, freely usable data gathered from our autonomous vehicles in six cities.

Our new Argoverse release includes a map change dataset with 1,000 scenarios, 200 of which show how the driving environment in cities changed over time as roads were repainted and driving directions altered. Our sensor dataset now contains new object categories such as school buses, dogs, people in wheelchairs and more — totaling 30 labeled object classes. Plus: a lidar dataset with six million high-resolution lidar frames that can help researchers develop new machine learning techniques. And we are offering a new motion forecasting dataset with longer-duration scenarios selected to highlight unusual roadway behavior.

Altogether, it’s one of the largest collections of self-driving car data ever made publicly available. Argo invites anyone to use this data in their own work and to advance the entire field of autonomous driving research! Check it all out here and stay tuned for details on how to participate in our upcoming competitions using the data.

Self-Driven Women

A graphic illustration of a teal background with the words 'Self-Driven Women' written in white stylized text resembling a map, alongside three headshots of Summer Fowler, Lori Costew, and Isabel Hungar

How do women in the autonomous vehicle and automotive industries succeed while maintaining healthy boundaries? And how can their male and nonbinary colleagues support them?

These questions were among the many key ideas discussed at a “Self-Driven Women” panel discussion held by the Women@Argo employee resource group last week to close out Women’s History Month. Panelists included industry leaders (pictured above from left) Summer Fowler from Argo AI, Lori Costew of Ford Motor Company, and Isabel Hungar from Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles.

The takeaways: Women have lots of opportunities in automotive and tech, and should not feel bad about setting boundaries personally or professionally to achieve them — but colleagues can help by acting as professional sponsors and advocates who endorse their skills, not only as friends and mentors.

Laser-Focused

An illustration of Dr. Laura Leal Taixé, a woman with shoulder-length hair, wearing a floral print shirt, against a multicolored abstract background of shapes

Lidar is one of the most important tools in the toolbox for developing safe autonomous vehicles. Argo principal scientist Dr. Laura Leal-Taixé and her colleagues are working on making it even more useful.

The leader of the Dynamic Vision and Learning Group at the Technical University of Munich, Dr. Leal-Taixé shares more about her team’s efforts and her nontraditional journey into the field of computer vision and autonomous vehicle sensors in a new profile published on Ground Truth.

Level Up

A graphical representation of the inputs needed when a person drives a car, showing a finger pointing towards icons of a foot over a pedal, hands beside a steering wheel, eyes, and a brain

If you work on or follow autonomous vehicles, you may have already come across the SAE International’s six Levels of Driving Automation. This is a set of categories numbered zero through five, established by the global engineering trade group. Each category seeks to group vehicles and vehicle systems based on how much of the driving task can be performed by technology instead of a person.

Great idea, but in practice, understanding what each level means in a non-technical way can be challenging: enter Sam Abuelsamid, Principal Research Analyst at Guidehouse Insights, and writer Andrew Lewis, who each offer their takes on understanding and decoding the different levels.

Abuelsamid’s piece helpfully references how many of the human driving inputs you need to use — hands, feet, eyes, brain — and has already been praised as a valuable educational tool. Lewis, a self-disclosed cat owner and lover, humorously compares the levels to different animals.

Open Seats

Ready to work in the autonomous vehicle industry? Apply here now for opportunities in the U.S., Germany, and remote — including jobs that don’t require advanced or technical degrees.

On Our Radar (and Lidar)

  • Volkswagen unveiled the new retro-futuristic ID. Buzz, the all new, electric version of its iconic “microbus.” Working together, Argo, VW Commercial Vehicles, and MOIA are currently testing the autonomous driving version, the ID. Buzz AD, in Germany, in advance of launching a ride-pooling service in Hamburg in 2025.
  • Excited for Spring but not necessarily the yard work that comes with it? Read up on the long history and promising future of the autonomous lawn mower.
  • Your robot-made french fries are ready. Learn how the restaurant and food service industries are steadily embracing new automation technologies in the front and back of the house.

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