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Autonomy Across Air, Land, and Sea

2024/11/4
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Chapters

The panel discusses the current state of autonomy in air, land, and sea industries, highlighting the levels of automation and the challenges still to overcome.
  • Drones are now flown from distances of twenty, thirty, fifty miles away, performing automated inspection missions.
  • Mining trucks have been driverless since 2007-2008, but the technology is far behind automotive autonomy.
  • Maritime autonomy faces unique challenges like less environmental grounding and long-term planning.

Shownotes Transcript

2024 has been a milestone year for autonomous tech. 

Waymo’s fully autonomous driver has surpassed 20 million miles, while FAA approvals now allow commercial drones to fly without visual observers, advancing air autonomy in unprecedented ways.

In this special live recording from SF Tech Week, a16z partner Erin Price-Wright moderates a panel of experts from three key domains—air, land, and sea—to explore the latest real-world deployments of autonomous systems, the impact of new chips on cost and efficiency, building full-stack solutions, managing risk, and the evolving role of regulation in driving these technologies forward.

Joining the conversation is Macario Namie, CMO of Skydio, discussing the transition from consumer drones to enterprise and government use; Vijay Patnaik, Head of Product at Applied Intuition, who shares insights on developer tools and software for autonomous vehicles; and Peter Bowman-Davis, engineering fellow at a16z, diving into maritime autonomy based on his work at Saronic.

 

Resources: 

Find Macario on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/macario-namie-bb529/)

Find Vijay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vijaysaipatnaik/)

Find Peter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-bowman-davis/)

Find Erin on Twitter: https://x.com/espricewright)

 

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