Missy Cummings

Former fighter pilot and NHTSA consultant, Missy Cummings, discusses driver assistance and autonomous driving safety. Topics include limits of driver assistance tech, challenges of Level Three autonomy, humanoid robots, human factors in AV design, regulatory oversight in remote operations, funding disparities in transportation innovation.

In this conversation, Dr. Missy Cummings, one of the U.S. Navy’s first female fighter pilots and director at George Mason University's Autonomy and Robotics Center, delves into the truths about self-driving cars. She shares insights on how these vehicles actually function and their significant limitations, particularly in unpredictable environments. Cummings discusses the importance of integrating human oversight, the challenges of collecting quality training data, and the misconceptions surrounding full autonomy. Prepare for a fascinating look into the future of transportation!

From March 3, 2012: Missy Cummings, Director of the Humans and Automation Laboratory and a professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, sat down with Ritika Singh for the fifth episode of the Lawfare Podcast to talk about robots on our battlefields.Cummings is a bit of a force of nature. In addition to designing unmanned weapons systems, she was one of the Navy's first female fighter pilots—an experience she chronicles in her book “Hornet's Nest.” There are currently around 20,000 robots deployed in U.S. theaters of operation. These robots, which are getting cheaper and easier to make, are characterized by increasing capability and increasing miniaturization. Missy and Ritika discussed the many issues to which these developments give rise, as well as where the science and engineering in weapons systems is likely to go in the future.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.