President Ed(right) and Brad Swanson(left) thank guest speaker Ross MacKenzie.
ROTARY LUNCHEON - Wednesday April 11
With 34 Rotary members in attendance President Ed shared the following announcements:
ROTARY GRANT - Cheque presentation has been made to Grand River Hospital Foundation for $7,800 for equipment.
ROTARY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE - in Toronto - more than 10 members attending social in Distillery District with tickets available on-line.
MAYORS DINNER - Rotarian Neil Aitchison reported that the $500 donation made by the club was used to provide an auction item (Dinner at Working Centre) that resulted in a winning bid of $3,100 - nice return on investment.
CAMP ENTERPRISE - Rotarian Everton Wlmot reported that Camp Enterprise (Rotary youth initiative) will be hosting a dinner on May 1 - tickets available at $100. Chaperones are needed on Tuesday May 1st (one male) and Wednesday May 2 (one male/one female) for overnight supervision at the Camp - Interested? - Contact Everton.
APPRECIATION, ATHLETE OF YEAR, STANLEY CUP POOL
Rotarian John Thompson:
(a) read a letter from Breslau Public School thanking club for grant for Strong Start Letters, Sounds and Words program - cheque presentation scheduled at school Thurs. Apr. 19 at 1:00 pm
(b) shared that Athlete of the Year Media Conference was held yesterday with Rotarians Todd, Jerome and John in attendance. On-line and silent auction will provide a share of proceeds to Rotary for the Polio Plus program. Visit the on-line auction underway atwww.32auctions.com/ter
(c) shared that Hockey Pool entry forms for Sports & Scholarships were on tables and would be emailed to members.
Hockey for Hospice - President Ed shared that his recreation league hockey team held a fundraiser for Hospice of Waterloo Region capital campaign resulting in a whopping $20,000 donation. He reminded members that Rotary Kitchener Westmount was one of the pace-setter donors with a $100,000 pledge, and that today it was announced that the campaign had received an impressive $1.5 million donation from the Gies family.
50/50 DRAW - $141.50 - Lucky Rotarians who had their numbers called were Jack Kinch, Chris Wilk and Leo Tobi, who were then unlucky in trying to find the black marble. Klara Serjani won a copy of Corporate Kharma and the Trivia Question (net proceeds of last year's VFL - $59,000) was claimed by Paul Puopolo who really needs another bottle of wine!:>)
GUEST SPEAKER -
Troy Stuebing introduced Ross MacKenzie, director of Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research (WATCAR)
Ross shared the following insights into the development of Autonomous Vehicles:
Apple, Magna and Google were all committed to developing an autonomous (self-driving) automobile
acknowledging that there are two components - developing Operating System as well as designing/building the automobile, the software developers are now concentrating / focusing their efforts on developing the Operating System
Tesla ramping up production on Model 3
testing has had two human fatalities when vehicle possibly malfunctioned (or human error?)
technology now exists to anticipate what might be happening ahead on the highways - i.e. traffic stopped
will automation improve safety - already does with Anti-lock braking, etc
major impediment is humans "resistance to change"
COMPARISONS
space shuttle required 2 million lines of software code
Mars shuttle required 5 million lines of software code
Today's passenger cars already have 100 million lines of code for technology involving air bags, anti-lock brakes, automatic transmission, alarm system, climate control, infotainment, parking assist, navigation, steering, tire pressure, etc.
FUTURE
to be fully autonomous, vehicle would require multiple cameras for mapping techniques
connections would be "vehicle to vehicle" (VTV) and "vehicle to infra-structure" (VTI) such as lane markers, curbs, sign posts, etc.
to be fully "self driving", vehicles would require a combination of devices - cameras, radar system, computer analytics etc.
time projection - probably take 15-20 years for vehicles to be able to travel around Region and 20+ years to have vehicles that can negotiate Highway 401 and travel to airport using on-off ramps etc.
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
has several auyomtive teams
a test vehicle, called the "Automoose" has 8 cameras to detect objects and analyse
two local test tracks - Waterloo test Track on Erb Street and Renesas Track in Stratford
collaboration among companies required to be successfull, and at same time companies are competitive and possibly not willing to share their progress
