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Zeljko Popovic, one of the leaders of the Tesla Autopilot Team, is leaving for Embark, the new autonomous trucking company in San Francisco, according to a person familiar with the move. Embark confirmed the rental.
The departure comes at a critical moment, with Tesla promising that his electric vehicles will be able to function as a "robotaxie" by the end of next year – that is, they would be fully autonomous under conditions normal, without human assistance. intervention. Tesla also announced plans to start production of its long-awaited electric semi-trailers by the end of 2020.
Popovic, who has a background in robotics, created and led the Tesla Autopilot division's perception team.
According to people who were familiar with his achievements in this country, Popovic had managed the development of highly accurate maps of American roads for Tesla and created a "sensor fusion system" combining data from many cameras, radar and sensors. ultrasounds used by Tesla vehicles. The sensor fusion system allows the autopilot to "see" other cars on the road.
At Tesla's annual shareholders meeting this week, CEO Elon Musk acknowledged that some of Tesla's autonomous driving features still need to be improved. "Summon", which allows a pilot to automatically call his car from his parking place, was supposed to be widely available now. But at the meeting, Musk said that he was still being tweaked.
Founded in 2015, Embark integrates its autonomous driving systems into Peterbilt semi-trailers rather than building its own trucks from scratch, and trucks are typically used with human supervisors behind the wheel. It now has more than a dozen trucks and 60 employees. Amazon uses stand-alone trucks developed by Embark to transport cargo on I-10 in California, the two companies having previously been recognized.
Attrition has been a big problem for Tesla over the last two years as the company has not achieved some of its production targets and its stock price has fluctuated significantly. Among others, the autonomous vice president Jim Keller left for Intel, and chief engineer Doug Field joined Apple to work on the secret autonomous driving technology of this company.
Popovic and Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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