Seeing Safe Driving and Self-Driving as Going Hand in Hand
Mercedes Benz Actros cabover fitted with Daimler AG’s Highway Pilot Connect autonomous-driving system. Photo: David Cullen
“>
Mercedes Benz Actros cabover fitted with Daimler AG’s Highway Pilot Connect autonomous-driving system. Photo: David Cullen
“>There is a mechanical engineer and professor of mechanical and electrical engineering— whose distinguished and globe-trotting career has already spanned over 40 years— who can simply and succinctly explain how autonomous driving technologies will actually make it onto a road near you… and sooner than you might think possible.
Bharat Balasubramanian, PhD. laid out his road map to the fairly near future in a colorful and engaging talk (complete with comical video clips) on May 1 at the National Private Truck Council’s annual meeting in the historic Netherlands Plaza hotel in downtown Cincinnati.
The arc of Balasubramanian’s global automotive career is the stuff of a Bollywood epic, or at least of a recruiting video for a top-notch engineering school.
Born and raised in India, he attained a degree in mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. He then followed his passion for automotive design to one its epicenters— Germany– where he went on to earn a master’s and then a doctorate in engineering and launched a 38-year career in research and development with Daimler AG.
Balasubramanian retired in 2012 as group vice president of research and advanced engineering for Daimler. Not content to rest on his corporate laurels, Balasubramanian’s next move was to accept an engineering professorship at the University of Alabama as well as the post of executive director of UA’s Center for Advanced Vehicle Technology.
The long and the short of his résumé is that he knows a thing or two about applying technology to make driving safer.
“Increasing safety and the [SAE] levels of autonomous driving are two facets of an identical technology set using advanced sensors, actuators and ECUs with slightly different software,” is how Balasubramanian said he sees technology converging …Read the rest of this story
