The face of the Google self-driving car effort has left the project at a crucial juncture as the company tries to transition its driverless-car technology into a commercial product.
Chris Urmson, the project’s chief technology officer and former director, said in a blog post Friday that he was leaving Google parent Alphabet Inc. and was “ready for a fresh challenge.” He gave no clear reason for his departure nor hint of his destination.
A company spokesman said in an email that when Google’s self-driving car project began seven years ago, “the idea that a car could drive itself wasn’t much more than an idea. Chris has been a vital force for the project, helping the team move from a research phase to a point where this life-saving technology will soon become a reality. He departs with our warmest wishes.”
Separately, the New York Times reported that two other top engineers, Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu, were leaving the project, which now resides in Alphabet’s research lab dubbed X, to start a new company. The spokesman declined to comment on the reported departure of Messrs. Ferguson and Zhu.
Another co-founder of Google’s self-driving car project, Anthony Levandowski, left earlier this year to develop self-driving tractor trailers.
Computers have driven dozens of Google cars more than 1.8 million miles on U.S. roads over the past several years. Data from California regulators show that Google cars are far more reliable than most other driverless-car prototypes on the road today, as test drivers have to take control of the Google vehicles far less often than driverless cars tested by other auto makers and tech firms. Mr. Urmson directed the Google project until last year, when auto-industry veteran John Krafcik took over as chief executive as part of an effort to commercialize the technology.
Mr. Krafcik said on Twitter: “Chris is an incredible colleague & leader. Thank you for your passion & humility. Good luck on your new adventures!”
Mr. Urmson’s departure now means there are few founding members left on the project as it enters its potentially thorniest period: navigating regulators and the auto industry to bring driverless-car technology to market.
Mr. Urmson has been a strong advocate of releasing only fully automated driverless-car technology versus the semiautomated systems that enable passengers to take control of the car, such as the technology currently available on many Tesla Motors Inc. vehicles. Such semiautonomous technology was steering a Tesla car when it crashed in Florida earlier this year, killing the driver.
Mr. Urmson and others at Alphabet say it is unsafe to enable people to take control of a vehicle after minutes of inaction. Indeed, Alphabet is testing a prototype that includes no steering wheel nor brake pedal. Mr. Urmson has said his goal is to remove people from driving altogether because human error contributes to 94% of car crashes.
However, that approach makes it far more difficult to bring the technology to market. Regulators and the public remain hesitant at taking humans out of the loop completely. Industry analysts expect self-driving technology to be introduced gradually instead, as with the Tesla system.
Mr. Krafcik, the Google project’s CEO, told Bloomberg in an interview published this week that the fatal Tesla crash “confirms our sense that the route to full autonomy, though much harder, is the right route.”
Mr. Urmson, a Canadian who got his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University, was the technical leader of the school’s three entries in the Defense Department’s 2005 “Grand Challenge” contest to have cars drive autonomously across the desert and then in a city environment. Carnegie Mellon’s team won the 2007 Urban Challenge and, two years later, Mr. Urmson joined Google, recruited by Sebastian Thrun, who had been Stanford University’s team leader and was earlier a professor at Carnegie Mellon.
Mr. Thrun, in an interview earlier this year, said Mr. Urmson was a “brilliant” programmer. Before starting work on the Grand Challenges, he had been working on slow-moving robots that could explore Mars on their own.
“I’ve decided the time is right to step down and find my next adventure,” Mr. Urmson said in the blog post. “It has been a tremendous 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.”
By: Jack Nicas and Mike Ramsey (The Wall Street Journal).
Photo: Inusa News.
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