Waymo's head of lidar explains how the advanced technology went from science fiction to being used in self-driving cars
When Simon Verghese moved east for a postdoctoral spot at MIT, the UC Berkeley-trained physicist figured on being back in California before too long. Two decades and three children later, Verghese was still at MIT's prestigious Lincoln Laboratory, working with NASA, the Department of Defense, and the US Navy. Few offers could have lured him away from his work on various sensor systems for aerospace applications.
"I was pretty happy in Boston," he recalled. But Waymo tempted him with an obvious enticement: "Why don't you just come out and take a ride in one of our cars?" "The intention is for this to be a core technology for Waymo," Verghese said. "The software problem is so difficult that we want to give our team the best hardware."
"I can walk from my bedroom to the bathroom," Verghese said, "and kind of feel my way around. But if I see a dark smudge, I'm not sure if it's my cat. If lidar is reaching out there, it knows that there's something that's four inches high and a foot long."Verghese has returned to Bay Area way of life. he's a longtime competitive Ultimate player.The longtime East Coaster didn't take too long to get back into a California lifestyle.
Verghese has been a science superstar from a young age. He attended a special state boarding school while growing up in North Carolina, where he focused on physics, and his career has taken him to such professional heights that he really has nothing to prove to anybody.
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