Don Ward - Self-Driving Robotic Cars - Starting on a budget

A few years ago Waymo learned that soap bubbles cause their self-driving cars to hesitate on whether to brake or not. Today the promise of self-driving cars is still only a promise. The industry continues to move forward and advances are made every day. Soap bubbles no longer cause havoc. The good news - getting started and learning about the software and mechanics of self-driving cars is easier than ever.

Join this session to learn how you can build your own self-driving robotic car using the NVIDIA Nano Jetbot and JetRacer platforms. We will discuss how to put together the hardware, software, and ML algorithms to build your own robotic car that knows what to do when it encounters soap bubbles.

Bio
Don Ward is a Staff Software Engineer at Rocket Central. Rocket Central is the centralized hub for the Rocket Companies fintech platform. Don has served in both leadership and ‘do-er’ roles at the Rocket Companies over the past 10+ years. In his current role, he helps build the systems used to deploy Machine Learning models.

As an avid learner, he has earned many AWS certifications and is working to become certified in GCP. As a strong supporter of the local software community, he has led many user groups over the years. Currently he co-leads the Detroit and Windsor Google Developer Groups. In his free time, he also mentors Google Developer Groups leaders across Canada.

Connect with Don on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/donwardpeng/