Time: 2:35 – 3:25
Location: Room 4
Speaker:
Dr. John Robb
Lockheed Martin (retired)
Abstract:
Self-driving cars and trucks aren’t some far-off dream anymore — they’re out there on real streets, learning, hesitating, and sometimes making mistakes that teach us what “autonomy” really means. From Waymo’s cautious robotaxis to the race for driverless freight, the technology is evolving fast, but so are the questions: Who’s actually ready for prime time? What happens when software meets the chaos of city life? And can the public trust a vehicle that drives itself?
This talk takes a lively look at where autonomous vehicles stand in 2025 — the wins, the wipeouts, and the weird in-between moments. We’ll unpack data from California’s test programs, peek into recent recalls and road incidents, and explore how machine intelligence is reshaping the way we think about driving. By the end, you’ll have a clear sense of how close we really are to letting go of the wheel — and what has to happen before that future feels safe, normal, and unstoppable. This will examine both autonomous cars and semi-trucks.
Speaker Bio:
Dr John H. Robb has 36 years of Safety Critical Software development experience at Lockheed Martin. He obtained his PhD in Software Engineering from SMU and became full-time faculty at the UTA Department of Computer Science and Engineering where he taught thousands of students in Software Engineering, Software Testing, and Advanced Software Testing. For the last 5 years he was a contract software engineer at Lockheed Martin working on safety critical coding and unit testing using the skills that he developed in his previous industry experience and taught in his classes.