Also, EE Times has just published a book that we’re rather proud of. Called “Sensors in Automotive,” it’s a handsome volume with up-to-the-minute information about the state-of-the-art in assisted driving and autonomous driving technology. It also covers where the automotive market has to take that technology next.

Advanced driver-assistance systems and autonomous vehicles are works-in-progress, and the technologies they rely on are constantly evolving.

So where is the automotive industry, and where is it going? EE Times has compiled an anthology of up-to-the-minute essays, market analyses, and technical content to answer those questions.

The book is called “Sensors in Automotive.” It examines whether advancements in sensing and decision-making technologies can help drivers, passengers and vulnerable road users; and if so, how soon might this help arrive?

Regular listeners all know my colleague Junko Yoshida. Junko has led EE Times’ coverage of automotive electronics, and she managed this book project. Normally she’s the one asking the questions, so she wasn’t entirely prepared when the tables were turned.

Okay, Junko, tell me: Why a book?

JUNKO YOSHIDA: Why a book? That’s a good question!

BRIAN SANTO: You knew it was coming though, right?

JUNKO YOSHIDA: Yes. And I thought about it myself. I thought, How dare would a publication like EE Times think about writing a book? I thought it was sort of above our calling. But at the same time, we realize this is the time to throw a marker down in the ADAS AV market because we’re dealing with a very complicated issue with autonomy and advanced driver assistance systems. This is something a complicated topic merits: a book. Rather than a mere series of online stories we’ve been writing about in the last couple of years.

BRIAN SANTO: That kind of points to what’s in the book. So not only is it a collection of some of our reporting over the years, but it’s also a lot of brand new contributions from some of the leading experts in the field talking about not only the technology but the intersection of the technology and human perception and human operation of the technology.

JUNKO YOSHIDA: And safety. Correct.

BRIAN SANTO: And safety. Yeah.

JUNKO YOSHIDA: The book consists of three parts. The first part is the market overview and also the technology review. The technology overview is something that we actually collected several leading thinkers of the AV and the technology industry. We asked those experts to share their unbiased views of what they see as the current challenges and what they would propose potential solutions, without any marketing “fluff.” That was the first part of the book.

The second part of the book is, as you said, we compiled various stories written in the last 18 months, across AspenCore Media publications. So it includes EE Times, EDN, Embedded and Electronic Products. Various publications that AspenCore Media has. So that’s the second part.

The third part is what we call the references section. This is where we collected the best tech bite papers we could get ahold of that relate to the current issues and the future issues of ADAS and AV platforms.

BRIAN SANTO: So this isn’t just one big story or a slice of life out of the last year and a half or two years. This is a reference work, right?

JUNKO YOSHIDA: Yeah. I don’t want to characterize it as this is a print. No, this is a book. The reason why a book is different from print publications we used to publish is that a book is something you go back and back to again and again to reference. “I think so and so wrote something that was interesting, and I want to go back there to see exactly how he framed the issue.”

I was just telling you, I received a galley of this book a couple of weeks ago, and I myself was using this galley to go back. When I’m writing something, I go back to this book and say, “Oh yes. So and so said this. And I wonder how it goes back.”

There’s a lot of use and longevity in books. And it’s well designed, well written, well copy edited. And it’s really easy to read. Rather than saying it’s certainly not a collection of press releases, certainly not just a collection of stories. This is a coherent book that asks hard questions.

BRIAN SANTO: How much time did you spend putting this book together?

JUNKO YOSHIDA: Several months. But I really owe it to a lot of people that we know, we consider kind of our brain trust. But I think what really got us going in a very beginning was that I kind of timidly asked the Secretary General of Euro NCAP (this is the European New Car Assessment Program), Michiel van Ratingen, and I asked him via LinkedIn, “Do you think you can write a forward for this book?” And he said he’d be glad to. He said, “I’m honored.” And I said, “Wow. Really?” And then I was expecting like 300 words. No. He wrote a full-length story for us. And one thing led to another. A whole bunch of people you probably know, including people like Egil Juliussen, who writes the Egil’s Eye column for us. And Phil Magney. He is the VSI Lab founder. And then of course our deal Colin Barden, who writes the Seriously Skeptical column for us. And there are guys like, certainly Phil Koopman is the CTO of Edge Case Research and a professor at Carnegie-Mellon. And Rob Stead, who runs the AutoSens conference. And Mike Demler. He’s the senior analyst at Lindy Group. I’m sure I’m missing somebody here.

BRIAN SANTO: It’s an impressive lineup. I’ve been reading your coverage of the ADAS and AV market. These folks aren’t just commentators, they’re participants.

JUNKO YOSHIDA: Right.

BRIAN SANTO: Right? That’s what’s really amazing about the people who’ve contributed. These are people who aren’t just saying, Oh, this is what I think of this. These are the people who are involved in standards development and thinking about where the market should go, what the technology should do, how safe a car can be, that sort of thing. Right?

JUNKO YOSHIDA: Right. Literally, they are involved in the industry in terms of leading industry standards group or working with clients who are developing new systems. These are really hands-on people. They’re not just in an ivory tower thinking about this. No. They actually see on the ground what’s going on.

BRIAN SANTO: So are you going to send me a signed copy?

JUNKO YOSHIDA: Yeah. If you’re nice to me.

BRIAN SANTO: Okay… We’ll have to think about that then. All right. Thank you so much, Junko.

JUNKO YOSHIDA: You’re welcome!

BRIAN SANTO: “Sensors in Automotive” is available now. There’s a link on this podcast episode’s web page. If you’re not already there, you can find it by going to our home page at www.eetimes.com, and click the button on the navbar that says “Store.”

Also, if you’d like to hear about some of the latest developments on assisted driving technology, I’d like to refer you to the October 9th episode of this podcast, when our guest was Jack Weast, vice president at Intel’s Mobileye operation. There’s a link to that on the podcast episode web page as well.