When your junior high school balsa wood bridge is the envy of MIT professors, it is probably a good bet you will have a distinguished engineering career. Argo AI’s VP of Firmware and Hardware Zach Little knew from a pretty early age that he wanted to work in technology. But not even he could have imagined the diverse set of companies he would work for.

Zach already had a fascinating career arc prior to joining Argo AI. And now he is working on advanced hardware and firmware to make fully autonomous driving a reality. In this entertaining interview with Moore’s Lobby’s Daniel Bogdanoff, Zach retraces his career path and talks about the current challenges and opportunities when building AVs in collaboration with Volkswagen and Ford. 

There are a lot of good tech discussions that you will not want to miss including single-photon lidar detection and the challenges of detecting black cars at long range. Other highlights include:

• How the west coast beckoned this midwestern young man with…free soda?
• The different challenges posed by developing AVs for both Miami and Munich
• The connection between USB keyboards and AVs
• Zach’s uncomfortable first ride in an autonomous vehicle