
Self-Driving Car Startup Voyage Brings on Ex-Tesla, Cruise and Uber Exec as CTO - sahin-boydas
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/19/self-driving-car-startup-voyage-brings-on-ex-tesla-cruise-and-uber-exec-as-cto/
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olivercameron
Hello everyone! @olivercameron, CEO of Voyage here.

Drew is currently busy at our Testing Grounds shipping a new release, but if
there's any Voyage or self-driving car related questions I can answer, I'd
love to hear em'!

My previous life was at Udacity, where I spent 4 years working on their self-
driving car and machine learning curriculum. I learned a ton from working with
Sebastian Thrun and the rest of the Udacity team.

~~~
distorted_torus
Hi Oliver,

Thanks for taking questions. Few questions:

1) What online resources do you recommend for someone that wants to go from
beginner to skilled in the field of self-driving cars? Is there a sequence of
courses that you could recommend?

2) What important concepts should this self-learner hone in on as they learn?

3) How can someone that does 1) (and has projects) break into the self-driving
cars career?

~~~
olivercameron
Hello! Great questions.

1) If you already have a good grasp of Python, I always advise to start with
the AI for Robotics MOOC at Udacity, which is my favorite class of all time.
Once that's done, I'd take a look at their Deep Learning classes and the Self-
Driving Car Nanodegree.

2) I think it's crucial to get to grips with how the whole stack works, so I
always advise to get to grips with a middleware like ROS. Also, don't be
afraid to dabble in algorithms (think problems in motion planning, computer
vision, etc.)

3) The traditional programs (think PhD programs) create a lot of specialists
focused on a single domain, but the industry is in dire need of more
generalists. An engineer who is able to dive into any part of the stack is a
huge value-add!

~~~
distorted_torus
Great answer, thank you! I will look into those courses and dig deep into the
algorithms/stack.

~~~
olivercameron
Ping me when you're ready to start a job search in the space :)
oliver@voyage.auto

~~~
pkaye
Where is your engineering team located? I have a friend who might be
interested.

~~~
olivercameron
We are based in Palo Alto, CA. We are also open to remote work for the right
person! Please refer to oliver@voyage.auto.

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Animats
That's a reasonable business model. But their self driving doesn't really work
reliably yet.[1] Their "deployment" in San Jose is three cars, max speed
25MPH, with a "safety driver" on board. Now they've hired people from the
"fake it 'til you make it" self driving projects. Not a good sign.

This is similar to what Local Motors and Navya, which make minibus-sized
driverless vehicles, are doing - the area and routes are very well known, but
there may be some intrusions into the driving lane. Nobody has this working
well enough for an airport parking lot shuttle yet.

It's too bad Waymo didn't continue with the Google mini-car. They could
probably make this work. It's not as hard at 25MPH, because stopping solves
most problems and sensor range is more than sufficient.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/technology/driverless-
car...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/technology/driverless-cars-
testing.html?smid=pl-share)

~~~
olivercameron
Come for a ride (oliver@voyage.auto)! I think you might be impressed with
where our technology is. It's really quite good. A lot has happened since
August 2017.

We're heavily focused on a retirement city in Florida (125,000 residents on
750 miles of road) and on our G2 vehicle[1]. We recently signed a deal with
Enterprise to commercially lease many, many more vehicles than our three
initial prototype G1 vehicles.

1\. [https://news.voyage.auto/introducing-the-
voyage-g2-autonomou...](https://news.voyage.auto/introducing-the-
voyage-g2-autonomous-vehicle-5e15cca399b5)

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ta1234567890
Not necessarily a bad thing, but it seems that guy is always looking for his
next job. Good luck keeping him on board for any significant amount of time.
Although maybe he already ran out of self-driving-vehicle startups to work at.

~~~
nilkn
I was just thinking this, but it seems his departure from Cruise coincided
with the GM acquisition, and the transition to Uber from Otto probably
happened because Uber acquired Otto. The primary job changes then are from
Tesla to Otto and now from Uber to Voyage.

~~~
bhouston
Why didn't he stay on at GM if he was good/critical? Do not acquiring
companies want to keep at the good people, not let them all leave immediately
after acquisition?

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Lots of good people want to leave after an acquisition. Working for a fast-
paced innovative startup is a very different proposition than working for GM.

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inverse_pi
Very impressed with some of Voyage's recent hires. A question for
@olivercameron,

What makes Voyage different? From what I understand, you pick canonical routes
inside private communities. Let's assume demand on these routes are high
enough, and there are enough private communities to make a significant market.
What prevents Google from coming in and mapping the area in a week and run you
out of business? Let's say, hypothetically, I'm a self driving car engineer,
why would I pick Voyage over other big players who have a lot more capital and
much bigger team with a lot more people like Drew Gray?

~~~
olivercameron
Hello!

 _> What makes Voyage different?_

We are going to market with autonomous vehicles in a very different way,
focusing on large private cities first and foremost. We intend The Villages,
Florida to be the first (retirement) city that's traversable end-to-end (all
750 miles of road) in an autonomous vehicle.

We'll eventually make the leap to public cities, and it will feel gradual when
it does happen.

We think about our technology quite differently, leaning on lots of partners
for the infrastructure (mapping, simulation, sensors, tele-operation,
middleware, and more) behind the scenes. This enforces a real focus on the un-
solved autonomous algorithms.

We'll also be sharing later this year a project we're in the middle of that's
dramatically different technologically to what we've seen elsewhere, utilizing
the community itself to make a leap in autonomous performance.

 _> From what I understand, you pick canonical routes inside private
communities._

We design our autonomous systems to traverse _any_ point-to-point route within
an entire private (retirement) city. We intentionally don't just focus on a
single, shuttle-like route. It turns out that pretty much any route in a place
like The Villages is far less complex than other city-like environments, but
that the business opportunity is just as large.

 _> What prevents Google from coming in and mapping the area in a week and run
you out of business?_

Voyage has exclusivity clauses in our agreements with our communities, where
we also grant the community a slice of Voyage in the form of equity. Contracts
are unfortunately meant to be broken, which means that we put a lot of effort
into making sure relationships with these locations are great. We frequently
host Town Halls and make sure the community is heard. This is crucial.

 _> I'm a self driving car engineer, why would I pick Voyage over other big
players who have a lot more capital and much bigger team with a lot more
people like Drew Gray?_

It's a lot of fun here. Contrary to the hype, there's relatively few full-
stack self-driving car startups at the Series A level. We believe our people,
our technology, and go-to-market to be the best of that group.

Most importantly, when searching for new Voyage team members, we don't
optimize for specific degrees or backgrounds. One of our greatest strengths is
the team we've built with that philosophy.

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ingenieroariel
Oliver, since the Udacity days I was really looking forward to a player in the
field that was serious about open source and open data.

For all the gripes I have with Comma AI, they have been the only ones
consistently sharing progress with the public.

For people in medium income countries like myself avoiding a monopoly from
Google is very important for the next 10-20 years.

Does Voyage plan to share some of it’s progress with the community on a
liberal license?

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dybskiy
Congrats! Here's an algorithm to predict next Voyage hires: 1\. Look at who
was in the videos for Self-Driving Car nanodegree 2\. They will eventually
hire them :) 3\. ... 4\. Profit

~~~
olivercameron
Exactly!

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syntaxing
@olivercameron

Hi Oliver,

Udacity SDC alum here. Are there plans in the pipeline to open a subdivision
on the East coast? I am super interested applying my education in new career
opportunities but self driving car related jobs are tough to find near NYC.

~~~
olivercameron
Unfortunately not just yet, but we are open to remote work for the right
folks. Ping me! oliver@voyage.auto

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uai-philip
Hi Oliver, you probably have huge amounts of raw data and annotated datasets
to train your algorithms. 2 questions:

1) How do you decide what you annotate and what not?

2) How do you manage your datasets infrastructure-wise (where and how is the
data hosted, what software do you use to access and filter it, ...)

