Friday, March 29, 2024

The head of Tesla’s Autopilot feature now works for Google

Share

Tesla Shutterstock

There seems to be a trend with companies that are vying for the top spot in the race to build the first completely autonomous car – poaching other companies’ employees. Numerous reports claim that Tesla and Apple have been trading employees as of late, and many other companies do the same. Now, according to a new discovery made by 9to5Google, Google is getting in on the fun. Robert Rose, the man in charge of Tesla’s wonderful Autopilot feature, now works for Google.

According to Rose’s LinkedIn page, he left Tesla in October 2015 (right after the launch of Autopilot), and began working on Google’s Robotics team as of November. Prior to Rose working at Tesla for just six months, he worked as a software engineer and Director of Flight Software at SpaceX for more than five years.

It’s not entirely clear whether or not Rose is working on Google’s Self-Driving Car Project. His LinkedIn profile says he’s a software engineer at Google Robotics, though 9to5Google points out that Google has used similar language when referring to job listings for its autonomous car project. It’s possible Rose also could be working for another Google-owned project such as Boston Dynamics.

This news comes just months after Google hired John Krafcik, former CEO of Hyundai. Google has been working hard to ramp up its self-driving car initiative over the past few years. It’s been testing cars in both Texas and Virginia and plans to expand the testing process into 2016.

Read more

More News