SDC Meetup #9

1. Esteve Fernandez, Parkopedia
With hardware becoming cheaper and cheaper, electronics is now accessible to anyone. However, robotics also requires software to control and capture data. For a long time robotics laboratories and companies developed their own solutions, but with release of ROS and other opensource tools, roboticists can now focus on what matters to them instead of dealing with the infrastructure to run their robots. After 10 years, ROS embarks on a new redesign aptly named ROS 2, with the goal of covering new fields, such as self-driving cars and drones. In this meetup, Esteve, a former member of the ROS and ROS2 teams, will show us a brief history of ROS and the challenges it’s facing now and how they are being addressed in ROS2. We will see why a complete rewrite was needed, what the architecture of ROS2 looks like compared to ROS1, what benefits ROS2 brings and a few examples of the new ROS2 APIs.

2. Catherine Hutt, MERGE Greenwich
"Are driverless cars really going to change the world?
Why is there so much hype about driverless cars? Why is everyone in a frenzy about whether it'll be 2021, 2025 or 2030 by the time autonomous vehicles are widespread? And will they really make a difference to my daily life? Join us for an in-depth industry view of the emerging Connected & Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) market and a discussion of what this new technology could mean for our everyday lives. Catherine is a Mobility and CAV strategy consultant and has spent the last 12 years in the automotive industry, looking at how new technologies can come to market. Catherine will share insights from the MERGE Greenwich project (www.mergegreenwich.com) which carried out customer research and developed a business model for a ride-sharing service using CAVs. If you've ever wondered whether driverless cars will become reality, come and join us for an evening of fun facts, new ideas and lively discussion..."

Agenda:

6-6:30pm Networking, pizza, drinks

6:30-7:15pm Esteve Fernandez

7:15-8pm Catherine Hutt

8pm+ Q&A and networking

Topics we are looking to cover in future meetups (please volunteer!):

- Robotics: SLAM (filter and graph), localisation, mapping, PID/MPC control, dynamics

- Automotive tech: LiDAR, RADAR, Ultrasonic sensors

- Simulation, Hardware-in-the-loop

- More deep learning/computer vision topics