With fully autonomous vehicles mired in the trough of disillusionment, the industry's focus is shifting towards shorter-term opportunities to use sensor and AI technology to improve human driving performance. To understand where this trend is going, we invited three companies working in this area to stop by our car-based recording studio on the CES floor: we spoke with Nick DiFiore from Seeing Machines, Rana el Kaliouby of Affectiva and Neil Boehm of Gentex. In this free-flowing conversation, we discuss everything from driver monitoring to emotional recognition to the future of rear-view mirrors, all with an eye toward Alex's paradigm of augmented driving.

Our PAVE doubleheader rolls on, as we are joined from the CES show floor by Kelly Nantel of the National Safety Council and returning guest Avery Ash of INRIX. Both members of the Partners for Automated Vehicle Education, Ash and Nantel explain what issues PAVE is trying to address, which audiences it is targeting, how it will try to reach these constituencies and why it will try to listen as much as speak. 

Recorded live from the show floor at CES 2019, The Autonocast is joined in our Ford Fusion by two distinguished doctors: Dr Mark Rosekind, Chief Safety Innovation Officer at Zoox and former NHTSA Administrator, and Dr Jeffrey Michael of Johns Hopkins University. The two good doctors joined us to discuss their participation in Partners for Automated Vehicle Education (PAVE) and the perceptions and realities of automated vehicle safety.

The Autonocast's CES coverage rolls on, with another conversation recorded from our Ford Fusion on the show floor courtesy of Avis Budget Group. This time we are joined by the sponsor of our CES party Ro Gupta of Carmera, as well as Chris Heiser and Jason Stinson of Renovo, who talk about the subdued tone around the autonomous car and mobility technology sector at this year's CES. We were all a little bit tired and drained from the amazing party that we threw the night before with Carmera, but that didn't stop us from coming to a provocative insight into the much-discussed autonomous drive "trough of disillusionment": behind the ups and downs of public perception, a lot of business and investment in the space continues as usual. Maybe we're actually overhyping the hype cycle? 

As another year winds to a close, we look back not just on the last year but on the changes that have swept the autonomous drive technology space from 2016 through 2018. Two years ago, self-driving cars were at the peak of their hype and as we examine the past we discuss what we've learned along the way. Plus, the one and only George Hotz joins in to discuss the return of Mr 2016 himself, Anthony Levandowski, who is back with another autonomous drive startup apparently built (at least in part) on Hotz's open-source technology. 

It's not often that the entire Autonocast crew gets fanboyish, but when it comes to Voyage we tend to lose our cool a little. That's because Voyage has built a business that takes into account both autonomy's greatest opportunities to help people and a realistic view of its limitations. By deploying autonomous vehicles in retirement communities, Voyage keeps its system operating in a limited domain while helping people who aren't well-served by cars be more mobile. On this week's show, we are joined by Voyage co-founder and CEO Oliver Cameron, who explains how Voyage grew out of the online university Udacity, how it identified retirement homes as an ideal domain for AVs and where the company is headed.

After catching up on their latest travels and briefly discussing the launch of Waymo One and the release of some intriguing new Waymo research, Ed and Kirsten are joined by Nathaniel Horadam of the Center for Transportation and the Environment to discuss his perspective on the upcoming Uber and Lyft IPOs. A lot is riding on these public offerings, which could be some of the biggest ever seen in the technology world (let alone mobility technology) but which also face some tough questions. Nathaniel walks us through some of his questions about their business model, in particular the issues related to a tightening labor market and rising interest rates, as we try to anticipate the issues that these highly-anticipated IPOs could raise. 

Buckle up, kids! We're about to go on an educational journey through an autonomous drive software stack, with a little help from Argo AI. We talk to members of each of Argo's major teams—Mapping, Perception, Prediction, Planning—and learn about how each of them contribute to the autonomous drive system. Along the way we'll learn a little bit about some of the people who are making self-driving cars happen, and what it's like working on this fascinating problem.