AutonomouStuff Newsletter Celebrates Four Years of the Driverless Industry
Burney Simpson
You might want to check out the latest issue of the AutonomouStuff monthly e-letter.
If you’ve seen these you know the publication is a refreshing, straightforward monthly update on the autonomous industry from components supplier AutonomouStuff. This month marks the four-year anniversary of the publication.
Read the August 2015 issue and you’ll get a spotlight on laser products from Ibeo Scala, a look at Velodyne’s Puck VLP-16 3D LiDAR sensor, a link to AutonomouStuff’s prepackaged Perception Kits filled with a mix of autonomous vehicle products, an update on trade shows, and a preview of upcoming products.
Recognize this is a house organ so it is heavily promotional for AutonomouStuff, and its spin off Harbrick, the Idaho-based provider of the PolySync software platform for developing, testing, and deploying automated vehicles (See “Harbrick Betas PolySync, Backs Idaho Driverless Proposal,” March 5, 2015).
Look beyond that and you get a view of the changes and growth seen by the industry in a short period of time.
Check out that very first issue and get a sense of how far the industry has come. It is heavier on copy, the lead story is on the Hokuyo sensor, and there are no links to autonomous trade shows.
One story focuses on a BMW test on the Autobahn of a 5-series sedan loaded with autonomous technology. It opens with the line, “It will not be long before we will be able to press the “autopilot” button, kick back and relax while driving in traffic.”
The optimism in that sentence is one reason this industry has grown as fast as it has. OK, it may be overly optimistic, but four years is blink of the eye when considering the changes that driverless technology could bring to the world.
AutonomouStuff was started in 2010 by Robert Hambrick, a central Illinois native who decided to base his firm in Morton, near Peoria. Hambrick later teamed with Josh Hartung to create Harbrick, combining their last names for the company name. Hartung moved the robotics firm to northern Idaho.