Larry Burns, Former R&D Boss At GM, Pens Book About Vehicle Autonomy
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Larry Burns, GM’s former GM Vice President of Research and Development, has written a new book about autonomous vehicle technology with author Christopher Shulgan. Those interested in the subject ought to pay heed as Burns, now 67, is an expert in vehicle autonomy, having been with General Motors pretty much since the birth of the automaker’s modern effort to crack the code and bring a fully-autonomous vehicle to market.
We say “modern effort” because, in fact, GM was thinking about vehicle autonomy way back in the 1950s.
At the 1956 Motorama, General Motors introduced the world to the “Firebird II” concept – a titanium-bodied, turbine-powered car that looked more like a terrestrially-bound fighter plane than a passenger vehicle that people would actually, you know, buy. The concept car was technically GM’s first real brush with vehicle autonomy, possessing an automated guidance system that could receive signals from the road in order to drive itself in certain conditions.
Needless to say, none of that actually coalesced into a saleable product, but it’s an interesting bit of history nonetheless.
Later, in the 1990s, General Motors participated in a series of tests revolving around creating an “intelligent vehicle highway system” – or IVHS – that used magnets embedded in roadways to guide self-driving cars. Those efforts, too, were abandoned.
Finally, the most recent push for self-driving cars sprang out of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 and the ensuing US military actions overseas. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched a competition to develop a self-driving car in order to mitigate the risk of roadside bombings resulting in a loss of life. The competition was a turning point in the evolution of the self-driving car concept, spawning an array of different private efforts to develop robotic driving systems, many of which are key players to this day.
You can read all about it – and how autonomous vehicle technology could help change society as we know it – in Burns’ new book, Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car and How It Will Reshape Our World.
(Source: Forbes)
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If we get autonomous big rigs one day, will they be programmed to camp out in the left lane, tailgate the vehicle in front of it, match the speed of the truck it’s passing, and blame the catastrophic accidents they cause on autonomous “4 wheelers”?
No, because there would be also be autonomous cars on the road. You can’t have an autonomous Freightliner without V2V.
Let it roll without.
I mean, how much worse could our big rig drivers possibly get? They are pretty horrible right now.
And you think a computer couldn’t do it better?
NAFTA IS DEAD! Told you so. Canadian auto production is going down…
President Trump said: “They used to call it NAFTA, we’re going to call it the ‘United States Mexico Trade Agreement.’ We’ll get rid of the name NAFTA.”
So much for that tough talk from the Canadian Prime Minister, eh? All talk, no facts. Little dog that is so low in approval polls and just keeps killing the Canadian economy why America’s is skyrocketing under Trump.
So where is the news on GMA? Just silence. Although I am sure we will get the weekly anti-Trump propaganda article posted soon. The Trump Derangement Syndrome never ends for some of these poor souls.
Congrats, maybe there’s no article here because, unlike yourself, Sean and the other staff here wish to gather and carefully examine all the facts before publishing BS.
Why you’re still here is beyond me. You constantly bitch, moan, and attack the staff when they write about actual news–news about the auto industry, GM, and the president of the United States, no less–yet you can’t point out one inaccuracy in their reporting. Not one. Ever.
Newsflash: this site was reporting on the auto industry and the president long before the current occupant took office. Where were your complaints then? Where were any of you that whine these days about “politics” here on GM Authority? Oh, that’s right, most of you were busy bashing those past presidents in the comments section.
Hypocrites.
Once again: if you see something in an article that’s factually inaccurate, please point it out for the benefit of us all. Want to leave a comment pertaining to the story? Great, simply keep it relevant. But quit bashing the staff here for no reason.
If you can’t contain yourself any longer, maybe you should move on and salvage what’s left of your sanity.
Larry Burns has written a very fascinating book “autonomous vehicle technology” that is very useful for students and learners who want to learn about this subject. I always visit paidpaper.net website to read reviews about edubirdie which is best source for writing help. History of vehicle anatomy has also been explained.