Electric automaker Tesla has witnessed some significant changes to the leadership of its Autopilot team over the past few months. With regards to the same, the company has now parted ways with David Nistér, Vice President of its Autopilot division. He has decided to join gaming hardware major Nvidia to lead its software efforts, reports The Information.
Prior to joining Nvidia, Nistér had been working with Tesla on the ever-important Autopilot system — which gives the vehicles semi-autonomous capabilities — for more than two years. This means that he was closely involved in upgrading the existing Autopilot 1.0 system to the more robust, powerful and much-awaited Autopilot 2.0. The new software update, delivered over the air, makes use of the new hardware — cameras and sensors — being packed into Tesla vehicles (manufactured since September) to provide even more autonomy.
Nistér has been a prolific propagator of computer vision technology and has also been awarded for his research while being employed at the electric automaker. Prior to Tesla, he had worked on the computer vision projects with a handful of technology giants, with the most prominent being Microsoft. He headed the Augmented Reality group at the Redmond giant and worked on products such as the HoloLens, Bing Vision, and Bing Audio among others.
According to The Information, Nistér will be working on the following project at Nvidia:
At Nvidia, Mr. Nistér will be working on developing software to help customers make high-definition maps, which typically aim for centimeter-level accuracy for everything from lane markings to traffic signs, said a person familiar with the hiring. Such maps are a core part of self-driving systems.
This development comes on the heels of prominent management changes that’ve happened at Tesla, particularly from the Autopilot division — which is understandable due to the lucrative and growing autonomous vehicle market. But, there’s one particular one that has contributed to Nistér’s departure.
The company has recently courted Apple’s Swift language creator Chris Latter after an eleven-year long stint at the Cupertino giant. He has been appointed as the VP of Autopilot Software, which seems like a particularly fitting job for a man of his caliber. Lattner’s addition to the team helped relieve Jinnah Hosein, SpaceX’s VP of Software, who was also serving as Tesla’s interim VP of autopilot software. He is back to working full time at Elon Musk’s private space company yet again.
Lattner was handed over the development of Tesla’s image processing software of the Autopilot system, which was previously being developed by Nistér. Called Tesla Vision, the software relies on NVIDIA’s on-board supercomputer to process complex calculations that provide Model S, Model X, and the upcoming Model 3 with autonomous capabilities. Thus, Nistér was assigned to another role, which he decided didn’t match his vision, and decided to leave the company.
In a statement sent to Electrek, Tesla has confirmed Nistér departure saying:
With Chris Lattner’s arrival as the new leader of the Autopilot team, David was moved to a different role and didn’t see a path forward at Tesla. We appreciate his contributions and wish him well.
Tesla also witnessed the departure of Sterling Anderson, Director of Autopilot Programs, played an important role in the evolution of the first generation Autopilot platform and contributed to the second as well. But, Anderson left and collaborated with Chris Urmson, former Director of Google’s self-driving project to launch his own rival self-driving vehicle startup called Aurora Innovation.
But, this didn’t particularly sit well with Tesla and it has now sued their former Autopilot Director for breach of contract and setting up a competitive company by allegedly stealing “hundreds of gigabytes” of proprietary and confidential data. Further, the company claims that Sterling and Ulman started their company, working on it during company time, while the former was still employed at Tesla.
