Self-driving cars can open up our cities, executive says
‘I think a future [situation] where we have a lot more driverless vehicles in cities has the power of really transforming cities.’ LAURA MAJOR, chief technology officer, Motional
Driverless vehicles are no longer something you only see in science fiction.
They are the next step in bridging the gap between human capability and artificial intelligence, according to Laura Major, chief technology officer of Motional, a Boston-based self-driving car company.
“I think a future [situation] where we have a lot more driverless vehicles in cities has the power of really transforming cities,” Major said.
Major got her masters degree in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT and co-authored the book, “What To Expect When You’re Expecting Robots: The Future of Human-Robot Collaboration.” She is this week’s guest on “Say More,” a Globe Opinion podcast hosted by columnist Shirley Leung.
Working in the aerospace industry, Major saw the promise of using automation to increase human safety. When early versions of self-driving cars came out, Major reflected on what she learned working on aircraft, and sought to bring that technology to the automotive world.
But cars are much different than airplanes. For starters, drivers don’t go through the extensive training pilots do.
“With a self-driving car, you have to interact with the public, the passengers in the car, pedestrians, and other drivers around the car,” Major said. “So there are new design challenges that we have to tackle.”
New technologies like self-driving cars may raise eyebrows in terms of safety, but Major said safety is one of the most attractive features of a selfdriving car.
Motional, which tests its cars in Boston, uses AI to make on-the-dime decisions that a human would make while driving.
If something unpredictable hap
pens, like someone walking in front of the car, AI has to be able to identify what happened in real time, and stop. To do so, self-driving vehicles have sensors, cameras, and radars that help track everything that’s happening in and around it.
“We need to predict what other agents around us might do,” Major said. “We try to learn as early as possible ways that we can improve the behavior of our vehicle to be both safe and comfortable.”
Major said she is proud of Motional’s record in testing, adding that there have been no at-fault accidents in over two million miles.
Not only can self-driving cars be safer, but they give drivers their time back. Instead of sitting behind the wheel and focusing on the road, would-be drivers can relax, get work done, and spend time with friends and family.
“Being able to have that time back, to sit near my kids and talk with them rather than worry about how I’m going to navigate through traffic to get around a construction zone [is] hugely valuable,” she said.
As luxurious as it may sound to have robots driving us around and waiting our tables, a lot of the discussion around artificial intelligence has focused on the potential disruptions to jobs and the economy.
Major said she is convinced that there will remain plenty of work that humans are best-suited to do.
“Those are opportunities where we can bring robotics and autonomous systems to help with those types of tasks to let people do what we’re good at, which is creativity, judgment, problem solving,” Major said, “things that extend beyond the capabilities of AI and robotics.”
Self-driving cars, for example, open the door to more cleaning, maintenance, and software development opportunities.
And when self-driving cars are on the road, Motional, which is owned by Hyundai and Aptiv and partners with Lyft and Uber, will have a command center filled with experts who can respond if something goes wrong.
“I don’t imagine a future where we completely decouple autonomous systems from the people that are using them,” Major said. “You need human judgment.”