Roboticist Chris Urmson said in a blog post that after leading the autonomous car team and helping make the leap from research to development, he is "ready for a fresh challenge. "It has been a privilege and honor to be part of a team that has been at the forefront of bringing this life-saving technology to the world. "I have every confidence that the mission is in capable hands," Urmson said. "He did not specify what that challenge might be. "Urmson joined what was then a secret project inside California-based Google a little more than seven years ago.Autonomous cars were among the big-vision ideas being pursued by an X Lab at Google at the time.Urmson had previously been a research scientist on a Carnegie Mellon University self-driving car team that fielded a contender in a competition by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an arm of the US military focused on new technology.US media reported that Urmson may have been unhappy with the project’s trajectory since a car industry executive was hired last year to turn it into its own company at Google parent Alphabet.

Source: The Nation Bangkok August 06, 2016 02:48 UTC