Autonomous Stuff | Wolfgang Juchmann

 

About Wolfgang Juchmann

Wolfgang Juchmann is the Vice President of Sales and Business Development at Autonomous Stuff, a company to dedicated to providing hardware and platforms to companies wanting to program autonomous vehicles. He has more than 16 years’ experience working in the field of technical sales and business development. Wolfgang attended Heidelberg University where he received his Ph.D in Physics focusing on Laser Spectroscopy of CVD Diamond and Low Pressure Flames.

 

 

Interview Transcript:

Alan
Welcome back and visit here today with Wolfgang Juchmann, he is the vice president of autonomous stuff, and welcome to the show.

Wolfgang
Thank you very much for having me on.

Alan
So the the before you came to the company autonomous stepped foot, what’s your background education role is through bringing us up to date?

Wolfgang
Yeah, as you probably can imagine with a name like Wolfgang, I’m originally from Germany. And I grew up in the northwestern part of Germany close to Hanover, I studied physics, I actually have a PhD in physics. And during my studies, I spent several times in California as an exchange student, and also part of my graduate work. And I liked it so much that I wanted to come back here to California. And now I’m here.

Alan
You know, it was going between Germany and the US, it seems that as the world grows smaller, one of the secret sauce behind a lot of these companies here locally from little to big is, is the fact that they usually have German influence with the processes that are helping companies to scale.

Wolfgang
Yeah, but But I mean, I think really, the beauty about the Silicon Valley is that it has all kinds of cultures, and they all coming together to work on a project. I was in a meeting. And at some point, I guess it was boring. And I looked around the room, and I realized the only two people that were born in America in the room, the rest was from all kinds of other cultures, and they all contributing, they all want to do the next big thing.

Alan
I love that, you know, the, a lot of people tend to forget that half of the venture money in the world exists right here in Silicon Valley. And it really becomes that melting pot or collaboration of cultures coming together. So anyway, so moving on. So you were you started your career here in Silicon Valley, after how many years?

Wolfgang
Well, I had my first job in Germany and technical sales in a company called Scan lip. And we were producing galvanometer scanners, those devices that deflect laser beams for laser marking. So if you see like a writing on a product that might be written in there, I was with a laser. And then in 2001, I came over to the San Francisco Bay Area. And for 10 years, I worked in the laser industry, for business development. And then my last four years I spent at velodyne. Lidar, which is a lidar companies. That’s the thing that, you know, on the Google self driving car, the thing that spins on top, that’s velodyne LiDAR, and I did the sales and marketing there. And then since January, I’m with autonomous stuff.

Alan
When you were thinking about rolling over to autonomous stuff, what helped you influencing your decision to?

Wolfgang
Well, in velodyne, LiDAR, we sold one product that’s used for autonomous driving, but it’s, it’s really, this is really something new coming in. There’s there’s a big disruption in the transportation industry. That’s happening right now, right here in Silicon Valley. And I wanted to be part of that. And as I said, the LIDAR sensor is one part of it. But there’s much, much more, there’s lots of stuff that’s used to make self driving cars, and autonomous stuff has all of that stuff.

Alan
So autonomous stuff is a primarily their business model is to help convert the regular car over to self driving car is that

Wolfgang
Almost Yes. So our business model is to help other companies to get to autonomy faster. So this might be by providing sensors, automotive grade sensors that you can’t buy off the street. It might also be installing them on a vehicle, and everything together as we sell a platform as a car that can be made self driving. So we don’t make self driving cars ourselves. But we provide platforms so other people can get your autonomy faster. Yeah.

Alan
So at American Dreams, we had the opportunity to meet at TechCrunch. And you had one of your cars up there. And one of my staff was able to go in and drive with essentially a joystick from next box.

Wolfgang
Exactly. Yes. So in order to demonstrate that we can control the car by computer, we have programmed a game controller from the Xbox, and you can actually drive the car with it. I don’t really recommend to do that on the street, because it’s not made for real driving, but it’s quite fun to show it off that way.

Alan
So where are we at with respect to the self driving cars? There’s a lot of things pros and cons in the media right now. And and, you know, the usually the negative tends to dominate when something goes wrong, but are we still in a relatively early stage or is the market you know, coming up to speed and in accepting more that?

Wolfgang
I think we’re right in the middle there in that transition. I mean, I mean, I drive a car now that has adaptive cruise control and it also has features that keeps me in the lane. This is not by what we do. This is actually it’s a Lincoln MKZ and they come So as these features as standard features when you buy the car, so when I’m on the phone driving, I put the adaptive cruise control on it and automatically slows down and accelerates depending on what the car in front of me is doing. And in some form, that’s already half of the self driving, right? I mean, you have two controls, one is accelerating and braking. And the other one is steering. So in this case, I almost don’t have to accelerate and brake anymore, at least on the highway. And the car does it for me. And I mean, a lot of people think when they talk about self driving cars, it’s like, there’s no steering wheel anymore. I don’t have to do anything, I can fall asleep. I think that is still quite a ways away, because there’s so many corner cases that you that that you have to really think about in advance that are not all solved yet. But if you think about adept, Adas features, driver assistance features, they’re there and as more and more of them coming, and they really, really make driving easier. And also, I’m so focused.

Alan
What game we need to take, take a quick break. And we’ll be right back after these messages I’m visiting here today with with Kane Luqman, he is the vice president sales and business development at autonomous stuff will be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back I’m visiting here with Wolfgang Juchmann. And he’s vice president sales and business development at a time this stuff and you’ve made it a rookie. And as we were, as we were visiting in the first segment, we’re talking about the primary business model of autonomous stuff is that of self driving cars, right? So when we look at right now you’re one of the leaders in, in car autonomy. And what are the products and services as autonomous stuff offer?

Wolfgang
Right? So we actually started off with offering perception sensors, perception positioning sensors. So this is to enable cars to see what’s around them. And these are sensors like cameras, of course, LiDAR, sensors, radar sensors, but also to know where the car is GPS devices, and IMU. And then we place equipment into the car that can record all of this data storage solution, for example, from Quantum. And customers asked us can you actually help us to put them on the vehicle, so we started putting them we hired engineers to put them on the vehicle. And customer can come and say, I want to have a car that I can control by computer steering, acceleration, braking, and shifting through the gears. I want to have ABC sensors on it, LiDAR, radar, GPS, you name it, and I want to be able to read in the data. And so we can give, we can generate such kind of platform, that’s what we offering to our customers so that they can develop algorithms for self driving or use it for boy, however, they want us to be leaders and autonomy will become leaders and autonomy.

Alan
Seems like we were at the very early part of this autonomous car. And and what do you really see the vision of all this going in three to five years?

Wolfgang
Yeah, I mean, we’re really at the point where transportation is changing significantly. I mean, right now everybody owns a car, or maybe even two cars. And but the younger generation, they’re talking, especially the ones that are living in cities, they’re talking about not having a car anymore. It’s not as important the horsepower of the car. I mean, nowadays, what’s more important is that’s my iPhone, connect to the car. And can I have internet while I’m driving that those become features that people are more interested in than what we used to be interested in, which is, as I said, cubic centimeters and horsepower in the car. So it could well be that in well populated area ride sharing becomes more and more opportunistic. People take Ubers now Lyft. So the next generation would be just call a self driving taxi and drive me from A to B. Yeah.

Alan
Yeah. It’s interesting. In the end, even Uber is starting to get into the autonomous car.

Wolfgang
Yes, I mean, obviously one of the biggest cost factors, and this is my interpretation of it. I don’t know if that’s what Uber says, but one of the biggest cost factors is the driver of course, so they could eliminate the cost for the driver by having self driving taxis. They have to invest a little bit more into the car and the equipment, but the car can drive 24 hours, seven days a week. There’s doesn’t have to be a downtime and that’s one thing the other I think they say is, the more people take, take ride sharing, they will actually run out of drivers. If they extrapolate where they are now, in in a few years, there won’t be enough drivers driving people around. So that’s another reason they need to have self driving taxis.

Alan
Yes. And just saying, Hey, we we tend to accept the culture of everyone needs their own car, and in most cases is two to three, you know, per household. But, you know, when you when you look at the shopping centers, and the big factories and all the cars sitting idle, right, this this is, this is a huge disruption to the fact that you the ride sharing can be more efficient.

Wolfgang
I mean, that’s what people have talked about my car, I drive it to work, that’s when I need it, and then it sits around for eight hours. And during that time, it could drive other people around, if I will make my car available as a rideshare new kinds of vehicle that other people could use. So I could actually generate money while I’m making money instead of sitting on the parking lot, I have to pay for it sitting on the parking lot. The car could drive itself around and make money

Alan
I’m here today with Wolfgang Juchmann, he is the vice president of sales and business development and autonomous staff and with going to need to take another break. And we’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back and busy I’m here today with Wolfgang Juchmann he is the vice president sales and business development at autonomous stuff. And you know, the primary driver of business for autonomous stuff. Is EVs, the autonomous self driving cars, but where’s your company at? in the industry? Are you one of the leaders?

Wolfgang
Yeah, I would certainly say we are one of the leaders. And we also what I would call we are in the center of an ecosystem. Because we have a complete portfolio of different products and services and software. A lot of startup companies that want us play in this space that want to be part of this space come to us, and they buy a sensor or they want advice. So we get involved with a lot of different companies very, very early on, which really brings us in the middle of this ecosystem. And that’s on the one side, that’s very small companies, startup companies in Silicon Valley. But on the other side, it’s also very established companies, fortune 100 companies that develop products for the autonomy, and need our advice for that and products.

Alan
Yeah, I’ve heard rumors, and in the future, they’re looking at the driverless drone word carries passengers. And is that fiction or reality? What do you think

Wolfgang
That’s reality, there was a press release just yesterday by Airbus Group in San Jose, that that is developing, essentially, self driving taxis, but yet get an app on your phone. And you go on top of your building, and the vehicle picks you up and brings you to another building. And at least that’s what their plan is what they’re working on self driving, like an Uber but in the app.

Alan
The Jetsons in reality, I guess, the old cartoon?

Wolfgang
Well, the advantage in the areas you have less objects to actually collide with. So I think the problem might be, in some sense, simpler, because you’re in the air and you can’t hit another car, there’s not as many there’s much more space in the air, right? You have you have different layers on top of each other. And of course, if you do come down, it’s a little bit more significant than just a car accident.

Alan
So when we’re looking at the definition of an autonomous vehicle, what that yeah, how would you define that?

Wolfgang
Well, traditionally, there’s the big, there’s these different levels of level 1234, level 1235. But the big difference is, does the driver still need to pay attention or not? That’s really weird changes from one mode to the other mode. So in my world, you could actually say there’s only two levels. One is the driver needs to be able to take over and he needs to stay awake or alert. And the other level is you can really completely tune out and start falling asleep watching a movie or do something else. And one yeah, those are the two different levels. I think. Now Tesla has.

Alan
You know recently announced that even on the model three all of their their cars are going to be driverless right and, you know, they it seems that the media likes to pick up on the negativity but they they ignore all the positives with that. But when you look at the application the technology today, what is practical in the autonomous vehicle versus you know what, you know, what should the consumer be expecting?

Wolfgang
Yeah, I think you shouldn’t expect that you just get in your car, you press a button, and the car just drives you somewhere. I think at the moment, I mean, it’s a little bit like cruise control, if I drive out of my driveway, I drive myself. And then I get onto some kind of road where it starts becoming boring. And I put an adaptive cruise control, I can put in one of these advanced features of that helped me to drive like staying in between the lines, lanes, or something like that. The other one is, if I get into traffic jam, it’s very boring to sit in a traffic jam, especially if it’s a longer one. And there’s features now in regular cars that allow you to they call, they all have different names. But essentially, they follow the car in front of you, they make sure you stay in the lane, and you just flow with the traffic and I can start, I don’t have well, I can’t start doing anything on emails yet. Or on my phone, because that’s illegal. But I can start tuning out and I can at least be a little bit more relaxed about it. Yeah.

Alan
You see one day that you’ll be able to go from point A to point B using a map and the car and then tell the car. Just take me there.

Wolfgang
Yeah, I think that’s what I mean. Just my personal opinion, it’s probably more than five years away, but but it will come in, as I said, probably, it will be in a limited area for us. So where certain corner cases unknown. Maybe on a campus at a university, where you say I want to go from one part of the campus to another part of the campus, something where where it’s not completely open, but there is some kind of limitation. Where were you? Yeah, I guess.

Alan
So. So how to when when you got a client coming to you? And they say, Hey, Wolfgang help me do an autonomous vehicle? What’s your process? Where do you start with them?

Wolfgang
Well, first of all them, I asked them exactly the same question you asked me is, when you say autonomous vehicle, what does that mean for you? What do you really want to accomplish? And in how far do you want to go? And the question then results in I mean, for example, the kind of sensors or the kind of platform that we would offer a customer that wants to do highway driving is very different from the platform that might be used for city driving. And then on the highway. It’s mostly forward directional. You need cameras and sensors that can look forward to long distance, because you have to make decisions early on. While in the city, you have to look around the vehicle, you have to see a child that might be right behind the vehicle, you didn’t know approaching. So you have to have very different set of sensors for for city driving. So the first step is, what do you really want to do?

Alan
Would it be fair to say that your company helps it other companies develop prototypes before they want to go into mass production?

Wolfgang
Yes absolutely. We help other companies to get to autonomy faster. So if, if you thinking about getting there, if you want thinking about making autonomous vehicles, you have to start somewhere. And that’s, that’s where we can give you the platform.

Alan
Essentially, when you’re building out prototypes, your typical order will be for how many cars at a time.

Wolfgang
Typically, right now it’s handful of cars, most companies customers, the larger ones we have worked with, one of them is very well known as Nvidia. So if you see the videos from Nvidia people driving around, hence free and they’re promoting artificial intelligence. So those vehicles that you see those Lincoln MKZ is we built for Nvidia. And so obviously Nvidia has an interest in promoting the processes that DRIVE PX two and the artificial intelligence and runs on these processes. But what they look for us too is they don’t want to hire they wanted don’t build their own cars, they want to put that processing power into a vehicle, hook up as many senses as they can and then show off that they are DRIVE PX that computing platform and the algorithms can run on the DRIVE PX two. And and for that, they look to us to make that vehicle put the cameras and sensors on there. And then they can make these great videos that Jensen is showing off in his in his presentations.

Alan
So Wolfgang, how does an individual go about contacting you to learn more about autonomous stuff?

Wolfgang
Well, you can go to our website, it’s WW autonomous stuff.com. And autonomous stuff is one word was one is in the middle. And then you send us an inquiry or you can give me your call. Look me up on LinkedIn, Wolfgang Gearman. And we find out how we can help you

Alan
Wolfgang. Do you see the fully autonomous cars being a consumer product in the future at near future and how far away do you think that is? Yeah,

Wolfgang
I think they can be fully consumer products. I think right now it’s probably going to start with ride sharing that seems to be the model right now. Because the technology to make it autonomous They’re still it’s not at the consumer level, yet, it’s still a little bit expensive for the normal car. But if you have a ride sharing vehicle, it makes sense to invest into that. And I think that’s where it comes. And then eventually, so that’s on the one side, the ride sharing vehicles. And then in the other side, these Driver Assist features are going to get more and more refined, until eventually, it’s actually an autonomous vehicle, you just didn’t notice that, that they help you so much that you actually not driving anymore.

Alan
Yeah. So what’s the broad range of customers that you that you deal with on a day to day basis? Yeah,

Wolfgang
I mentioned the example of in video earlier, these are technology companies that want to show off their processing power we deal with, there’s a whole range of customers that want to produce electric vehicles, so they want to compete with Tesla, there’s quite a few here in the Silicon Valley. And they don’t have for autonomous vehicle ready, or electric vehicle ready. But they know that the autonomy level needs to be at least as good as the Tesla if not better if they want to compete with Tesla. So they want to not waste any time they want to start right now to develop autonomy. And that’s where we can give them a vehicle that they can use to develop that. And then later they transfer all of that knowledge to their own vehicle. Yes. I mean, some of them tell me, we used to, I used to work in a job where I have to save pennies. Now actually, I have to save seconds. That’s That’s how hard this race is to get your autonomy. Yeah,

Alan
It’s amazing how quickly these, these got back when tested announced their full automation for autonomous vehicles, and then they can’t keep up quick enough.

Wolfgang
Exactly. Yes. I mean, there’s also a lot of companies that want to develop the algorithms itself. Obviously, they’re not tied to a certain car company. So they need a platform to try these algorithms out. I mean, there’s a lot of talk about machine learning and artificial intelligence. And so we provide these customers with vehicles that they can try the algorithms out. Obviously, research groups, all of those, essentially everybody that wants to get insurance companies, I mean, they are very interested in autonomy, because the whole model of insurance might change. If it’s not my own car, and I’m not driving anymore, right.

Alan
You know, we talked about we’ve been primarily talking about cars. What about drones and these other types of vehicles? It?

Wolfgang
Yeah, I mean, we talked earlier about the passenger drones that were just announced that people want to fly people. But we also have the smaller drones that, while some of them are used for just pretty picture taking, but some of them are actually starting to be used in commercial applications flying on agricultural fields. And in those cases, it’s easy you I mean, you can program them to follow the certain GPS patterns on the field. And then you get a view of your cultural field or your mind, you can see how much digging you did in the mind. And you can do that every day, you don’t have to hire a pilot, you can just buy one of these drones, program it and every day, it gives you a status update where you are. If you have more complicated areas, drones getting to the second level where they not only use the sensors, for example, LIDAR sensors, to look down to measure volumes of how much dirt has been taken out of mind. But also to avoid objects so that you don’t fly into a bridge or that you don’t fly into a new construction crane that wasn’t there yesterday. So

Alan
Do you find the regulation of government regulation is a hindrance to development? And I, you know, direct this question that developing here in the US versus into another country.

Wolfgang
I mean, it has to be a happy medium. I mean, if you put too many regulations out there, then it will definitely stipple the development, it will slow it down. But on the other side, if there’s no regulation, everybody can put a self driving car on the road and there’s, there’s nobody that controls it that safe enough, then that’s not good either. So I think there needs to be some of that.

Alan
Wolfgang we’re out of time today, but it’s been an honor having you here on the show.

Wolfgang
Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to be here.

 

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

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