SAE Tomorrow Today

A driving school for self-driving vehicles? It’s here and proving to be a game-changer.

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Waabi World is the most scalable, highest fidelity, closed-loop simulator for autonomous vehicles. Powered by AI, it’s an immersive and reactive environment that can design tests, assess skills, and teach the self-driving “brain” to learn to drive on its own. This technology significantly reduces the need to test drive in the real world resulting in a safer, more affordable solution.

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When AI trailblazer & CEO Raquel Urtasun founded Waabi, she set out to scale one of the most important technologies of our generation. By taking an AI-first approach, Raquel and her team are unlocking the potential of self-driving technology and accelerating the commercial deployment of autonomous vehicles. And their work is changing the world for the better. 

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Move over GPS. There’s a new technology in town—and it’s subterranean.

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Tarik Bolat, CEO and Cofounder of GPR, shares how his company is shifting the autonomous paradigm with innovative technology that creates a 3-D map of the road's unique subsurface and removes common barriers faced by autonomous vehicles today.

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As the world’s most accurate and reliable vehicle positioning system, Ground Positioning Radar™ (GPR) allows vehicles to determine their precise location with centimeter-level accuracy, no matter how challenging road conditions become.

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Like many autonomous technologies, GPR originated as a critical military application and is now being used for much broader commercial purposes, to significantly enhance safety for drivers and introduce benefits for society at large.

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For many underrepresented students, the possibility of a career in STEM is either unknown or out of reach. But a dedicated team at one school in Phoenix, Arizona is determined to change that.

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At Sevilla Elementary – West Campus, Educator Mia DeLaRosa and Principal Jennifer Bunch are on a mission to support their students by eliminating barriers to high-quality education. Their goal? Providing an immersive STEM experience that sparks the belief that developing an engineering mindset is attainable for all students, no matter their background.

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Through a partnership with the SAE Foundation’s A World In Motion® (AWIM®) program, students learn how to design, build, test, and present a product. As STEM is brought to life, so too are essential life skills like problem-solving, communication, and collaboration which enable students to build the self-confidence they need for future success.

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Hear from these passionate educators and two of their students, Valeria A. and Jaylinn G., about how AWIM is unlocking a new world of opportunities and galvanizing the next generation of innovators. It’s a conversation that is sure to inspire you to get involved as a mentor, supporter, or what Mia calls “a believer.”

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May Mobility’s self-driving shuttles have provided more than 300,000 autonomous rides in nine cities in the US and Japan. And CEO Edwin Olson is just getting started. He has a recipe for transforming transportation – and quality of life – worldwide:

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·        A policy of listening to people to understand the unique transit challenges they face in their communities – inaccessible public transit, for example, or a long trudge from the bus stop to the dining district.

·        A strategy to work with cities, state agencies, and private enterprises to customize autonomous vehicle (AV) services that fill mobility gaps.

·        A powerhouse partnership with Toyota capable of providing vehicles, services, and resources on a global scale.

·        A game-changing approach to AV software development, known as multi-policy decision-making.

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The underlying technology is critical to ensure safety and build trust, of course, but Olson argues that success starts with a human touch and understanding each community’s unique needs.

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“Autonomous cars are hard, and every city brings new challenges for us to solve,” he says. “There is nothing quite so motivating . . . as a real-world point of contact with riders and cities to determine where to focus and what to fix.”

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Can the aviation industry meet its goal to decarbonize by 2050? Safran Landing Systems engineer and innovator R. Kyle Schmidt thinks so, and he’s playing a critical role in getting there.

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Safran, the world leader in aircraft landing and braking systems, equips the commercial, business, and military fleets for more than 20 aircraft manufacturers. The France-based company’s expertise spans design, manufacturing, maintenance, and repair. Today, Schmidt’s team is focused on developing lighter weight landing gear that can boost fuel efficiency and sustainable mobility.

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From his perspective as VP, New Product Development and Research & Technology Engineering, Schmidt explores the challenges and opportunities manufacturers face, flexing his natural story telling abilities as showcased in his book The Design of Aircraft Landing Gear, which was recently published by SAE International.

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Progress Rail is on a mission to zero emissions.

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The locomotive manufacturer put the first battery-electric locomotive into service for a Brazilian mining company in 2020, and next year they’ll be hauling iron ore in Australia. Meanwhile, Union Pacific is adding 10 of these battery-powered rail vehicles to its fleet as part of the largest investment in battery-electric technology by a U.S. Class I railroad.

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Beyond electric, Progress Rail, A Caterpillar Company, is working with Chevron to develop a locomotive powered by hydrogen fuel cells and collaborating with the Canadian National Railway to test renewable fuel blends, including biodiesel. It’s also developing “smart cruise control” that uses machine learning to optimize train performance and energy efficiency.

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Self-described rail geek Michael Cleveland, Director of Advanced Energy at Progress Rail, talks about the company’s quest to lead the transition from diesel to fuel systems that promise to make trains cleaner, quieter, and more reliable.

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Traffic. We’ve all been there, and nobody likes it, and sometimes it feels impossible to get around. Joby Aviation’s solution? Going vertical.

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Air Taxi Product Lead, Tom Prevot, says saving one billion people an hour a day is the mission of Joby’s aerial ridesharing service built around an electric aircraft designed to fly over the most congested highways in cities around the world.

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Joby’s electric aircraft will execute the flight service, and Prevot and his team are developing the platform that will utilize partnerships with players like Toyota and Uber to create a frictionless door-to-door customer experience from one app with one payment transaction – yep, one!

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With the promise of reducing travel frustrations and giving people more time for living, the aircraft’s interior design mirrors more of a passenger car experience vs boarding a plane, and once in flight, noise levels blend into the urban landscape to aid community adoption.

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Tom Rucker, President of Magna Powertrain, has big plans for the future.

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“We can bring sustainable mobility for everything and everyone,” says Rucker. These may seem like enormous goals—but so is the potential payoff.

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Canada-based Magna International is chasing those opportunities for equitable access to sustainable transportation hard, innovating at scale. As the world’s third-largest largest auto supplier, the largest independent supplier of transmissions, and a self-proclaimed “64-year-old startup,” Magna is poised to lead in an industry undergoing “the most radical transformation in its history.”

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Rucker’s enthusiasm is obvious when he talks about the innovative product roadmap that has positioned Magna to continue its market leadership as the world shifts from internal combustion engines to hybrid and electric autonomous vehicles. It’s a path designed with maximum flexibility to navigate market trends, consumer preferences, legislative demands, the uncertain pace of EV infrastructure development, and supply chains buffeted by commodity shortages, geopolitical pressures, war, and other forces.

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With its global scale, longstanding customer and supplier relationships, and entrepreneurial drive, Magna has not only adapted, but thrived in mobility’s fast-changing environment.

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“The auto industry is fun and exciting and future-oriented. The opportunities with electrification and automation are endless,” Rucker says. Game on.

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We’d love to hear from you. Share your comments, questions and ideas for future topics and guests to [email protected]. Don’t forget to take a moment to follow SAE Tomorrow Today (and give us a review) on your preferred podcasting platform.

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Every book lover has an origin story. 

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Sherry Nigam’s passion for knowledge took root as a child in rural Kentucky.

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Her dad printed the local newspaper and her mom drove the library’s bookmobile, often with Sherry on board chatting with people about the books they were borrowing. This inquisitive upbringing led her to a 30-year career in publishing culminating in her current role as Head of Books at SAE International.

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Today, Nigam anticipates trends critical to aerospace and ground vehicle mobility, searches out authors who are experts in their fields, develops a pipeline of titles that balance the technical and the topical, and curates a catalog of more than 500 books, some still in demand after decades, that engineering companies, universities, and individuals around the world refer to on a daily basis, including Generalized Vehicle Dynamics by Dan Williams, Race Car Vehicle Dynamics, and Fundamentals of Vehicle Dynamics.

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Her role may sound daunting, but Nigam is up to the challenge. With her love of nurturing new authors, she personally reviews every book proposal submitted to SAE Books and helps busy professionals develop the books they think they don’t have time to write.

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Are you Nigam’s next author? Follow her on LinkedIn or connect directly at [email protected].

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We’d love to hear from you. Share your comments, questions and ideas for future topics and guests to [email protected]. Don’t forget to take a moment to follow SAE Tomorrow Today (and give us a review) on your preferred podcasting platform.

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Robots will soon occupy private garages and public parking areas where they will easily, autonomously charge electric vehicles. That’s the vision from German auto supplier Continental and Austrian startup Volterio. Their partnership to design and build charging robots promises to shake up the fast-changing EV market.

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We talked with Christian Flechl, Founder and Managing Director of Volterio, and Alex Rupprecht, Director, Driveline & Electrification, Continental Engineering Services. They have combined Volterio’s creativity and flexibility with Continental’s experience and production capacity to quickly develop a revolutionary automatic connection device for EVs. A near-production system will be ready by mid-2022 and volume production is slated to start in 2024.

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We’d love to hear from you. Share your comments, questions and ideas for future topics and guests to [email protected]. Don’t forget to take a moment to follow SAE Tomorrow Today (and give us a review) on your preferred podcasting platform.

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