In the fifth episode of our Ask the Expert podcast, we spoke with Phil Koopman, an internationally recognized expert on autonomous vehicle (AV) safety whose work spans over 25 years. Phil has been actively involved with AV policy and standards as well as more general embedded system design and software quality. He was the principal technical contributor to the UL 4600 standard for autonomous system safety issued in 2020.

 

Furthermore, his pioneering research work includes software robustness testing and run-time monitoring of autonomous systems to identify how they break and how to fix them. An Associate Professor at the Carnegie Mellon University ECE department, he teaches software skills for mission-critical systems.

 

Listen to this episode to learn about:

  • The main obstacles to deploying AV technology
  • Safety challenges for autonomous cars and how to overcome them
  • What prevents companies from collaborating in the AV sector
  • Why safety culture matters most for the industry
  • How to build transparency within AV companies and convince consumers to trust this technology