Be a Self Driving Car Engineer In this Udacity self driving car nanodegree review, I will talk about how Udacity will help land a job, including it’s pros and cons. 40% Off on all Nanodegrees GET THE DEAL

Are you planning to make your career in the futuristic field of Self Driving Cars?

Do you want to be a self-driving car expert? Is working autonomous vehicles your passion?

Hold Your Breath.

Udacity in partnership with Mercedez-Benze, Nvidia and Uber have come up with a complete online course on self-driving cars viz. autonomous cars that will teach you all the concepts required to program a self-driving car.

In this article, I will present a complete Udacity Self Driving Car Nanodegree Review with all the pros and cons of the course.

Before that, you can join our group of Udacity Aspirants here

Is Udacity Self Driving Car Nanodegree Worth it?

Yes, it is. Always!

The reason is, this Nanodegree is the best online course among all courses on self-driving/autonomous cars globally.

In other words, no other course can teach you such in-depth knowledge about autonomous systems in a short period.

Let me take you through other added advantages this course has for you. Keep reading.

Also Read: 10 Reasons why Udacity is worth it

What are self-driving cars?

Self-driving cars popularly known as Autonomous cars or a robotic car is a vehicle that navigates with no human interruption by sensing it’s environment through sensors and other instruments like Lidar, Radar, GPS, etc.

A self-driving car engineer is the one who blends software and hardware systems in groundbreaking new ways.

You will be responsible to develop and implement software related to machine learning, motion planning, perception, cloud storage and all other related technologies related to autonomous cars.

To learn this, a college degree won’t be enough.

To master autonomous vehicles one needs to have a complete understanding of deep learning, a part of AI that guides the system to differentiate pedestrians from lamp posts.

It is predicted that the self-driving cars will become a $42 billion market creating more than 1 lakh jobs by 2025.

Before moving to this Udacity Self Driving Car Nanodegree review, let’s see how much an average engineer working in the field earns.

According to Paysa.com, The average Salary a Self Driving Car Engineers earns is $238,018 annually.

Isn’t that lucrative?

The lack of talent in autonomous systems is the justification for such high salaries.

Many large companies are focussed to bring self-driving cars in a few years and have already spent millions in developing the technologies.

The companies looking to hire self driving car engineers are

Google Apple Mercedez Benz Uber Tesla Ford

No doubt, becoming a self-driving car engineer is one of the lucrative professions right now.

Did I just interested you?

To increase your chances of getting hired by the above corporates, Udacity steeped in providing a complete Self Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree in collaboration with industry experts.

Also Read: Udacity Nanodegree Review-Will I get a job

About Udacity Self Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree

Complete review of Udacity’s Self Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree

This online course is aimed at providing a complete platform to learn and implement skills and techniques used by self-driving car teams at the most advanced technology companies in the world.

In this course you will learn to apply computer vision and deep learning to automotive problems, including detecting lane lines, predicting steering angles, etc.

Followed by sensor fusion to filter data obtained from multiple sensors.

The end project is very interesting as you get to program Carla, a self-driving car developed by Udacity.

This course is a brainchild of Sebastian Thrun, founder, and CEO of Udacity, an ex-Googler who led the self-driving car project at Google and later founded Udacity in 2014.

“All of these companies like Zoox and Aurora, Waymo, Cruise and Tesla are hiring like crazy.”– Sebastian Thrun

I strongly feel, If there is any institution qualified to deliver a complete package on self-driving cars, its Udacity.





Cost and Duration of Self Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree

Cost: $2400 (For discounts keep reading)

Just $2,400 to Make Anyone a Self-Driving Car Engineer. Hurray!

Duration: According to Udacity you can complete the Nanodegree program in 6 months and expects you to spend 10 hours per week on the course. But in actual you need to spend more time on the course material to get along with the course flow.

Many learners spend up to 15-20 hours per week to practice more.

It requires a lot of dedication and hard work along with patience to cope with a program for so long.

You are reading about Udacity Self Driving Car Nanodegree Review

Syllabus for Self-Driving Car Engineer Program

The complete syllabus is divided into 3 terms where Students move at their own pace covering the entire portion in three nine-week trimesters.

All three terms of the course are meticulously planned with a step-by-step understanding of the subject.

All terms contain Courses on respective topics followed by projects.

Term1

Introduction, Computer Vision and Deep Learning

Course 1: Introduction

In the introduction, you will learn about how autonomous cars work, and you’ll be given your first project of finding lane lines on the road.

You will be introduced to the program and a brief summary of the wonderful projects you’ll build

Welcome to the journey of becoming a self-drive car engineer!

Course 2:​​Computer Vision

This course consists of two lessons. The first lesson will take you through fundamental computer vision techniques to make you find lanes on the road and track other vehicles with the help of cameras, software systems, and machine learning.

You’ll learn to extract information from a video by applying vector mechanics and decision trees and also calibrating cameras and images.

The 2nd lesson will take you through advanced computer vision techniques to make improvements in the algorithm with the help of distortion correction and gradient thresholding!

Project 1

Finding Lane Lines on a Road

The tools you learned in the first lesson will help you in this project to detect lane lines first in an image followed by a video. Congratulations, you’ll be writing your first code on the way of becoming a self-driving car engineer.

Project 2:

In this project, you need to write complex software to detect lane lines with the help of a car’s front camera.

Course 3: ​Deep Learning

Deep learning is the most important part when it comes to machine learning or autonomous systems.

Using a Udacity Simulator, NVIDIA and Uber ATG experts will teach you how to develop a deep neural network with the help of the data from the real world.

You will learn to code and drive a vehicle in the simulator. The simulator makes you feel as if you are driving on your own.

Project 3:

Traffic Sign Classifier

After getting to know about deep learning in-depth, this project will let you code to identify different traffic signs.

Project 4:

Behavioral Cloning

Use your deep learning knowledge to simulate with this project! Make a deep neural network to drive a vehicle!

Term2

Sensor Fusion and Localization

Course 4: Sensor Fusion

Identifying obstacles and other objects is a serious challenge to understand the surroundings of a vehicle.

Mercedes-Benz engineers will teach you about Kalman filters, which is a mathematical tool used by Sensor fusion engineers.

Kalman filters are used to determine the approximate position of other cars and automobiles on the roads. These filters will even let you track an object which is difficult to follow.

Project 5:

Using C++ you’ll apply everything you have learned about Sensor Fusion and Kalman Filters.

Course 5: Localization

It’s very difficult to determine the exact location of the car using GPS as it’s accuracy is only up to a few meters. Hence we use Localisation to determine where our car is in the real world as we need to be precise when it comes to location. Markov Localization makes it possible. Here engineers from Mercedez Benz will guide you about the principles of Markov localization to determine the exact location of the vehicle.

Project 6:

A very interesting project to detect the precise location of the car by building a particle filter and merge it with a real map.

Term3

Path Planning, ​Control and System Integration

Course 6: Path Planning

Path planning helps the car to move from point A to point B while avoiding any casualties. There are 3 stages of path planning in which Engineers from the Mercedes-Benz Vehicle Intelligence team will take you through.

Initially, apply data-driven approaches to analyze the behavioral pattern of other vehicles on the road. Then you need to program the car to decide which maneuver the vehicle ha to take. At last, form a trajectory to take that decided path.

Project 7: Highway Driving

In this project, you will drive your car using the path planner

Course 7: ​Control

Actuators like steering and brakes are important components of any car. For any autonomous car, it’s necessary to send commands for steering and throttle to move the car. UBER ATG will take you through PID controllers and model predictive controllers. These control algorithms will teach you some prominent techniques required for actuating any vehicle.

Course 8: System Integration

It’ time to apply your learning on a real car. Introducing ‘Carla’, Udacity’s in-house build a self-driving car along with the Robot Operating System that is responsible for its control. It’s teamwork at the end. Along with other nanodegree students, you have to work on Carla to make it move on the test track.





What are the pre-requisites for the course?

Before jumping to the course it is necessary to brush up a certain skill set to have a better understanding of the concepts.

Solid programming knowledge is expected in any relevant coding language. Learning Python and C++ is mostly preferred.

Also Read: Best 5 Free Python Courses Online

So brush up your concepts on both the languages as they will be heavily used during the program.

In Addition to programming skills, one must know statistics, algebra, and calculus.

I also suggest to take up some open courses like Stanford’s CS231n, to understand Convolution Neural Nets.

A dedicated focus and commitment are all you need to absorb most out of the course.

Summing up, you should have prior knowledge on the following topics:

1.Python (Classes, Data structures)

2.Intermediate C++

3.Linear Algebra (Matrices, Vectors, Matrix multiplication)

4.Calculus (Derivatives, Integrals)

5.Basic Statistics (Mean, Standard deviation, Gaussian distribution)

6.Basic Physics (Forces)

For aspiring self-driving car engineers who currently have a limited background in programming, math, computer vision, or machine learning, Udacity has created the Introduction to Self-Driving Cars Nanodegree program to help them prepare.

Hope you are finding this Udacity Self Driving Car Nanodegree Review interesting!

5 Benefits of joining this Self Driving Car Engineer Program from Udacity

1. You get to teach by Industry experts

Apart from regular instructors, you get insights to form on-sight of real-world problems from engineers Mercedes, Nvidia, and Otto.

2. This course is highly valued by companies like Mercedes, Lyft, Uber, Otto.

Many organizations are striving hard to launch their in-house developed autonomous vehicles and are looking to hire talent to double their engineering staff. What better talent will they get than students who have completed this self-driving nanodegree?

3. You get to work on practical projects

At the end of the course, you get to work on Udacity’s in-house developed Autonomous car named Carla. Who else will provide you such an opportunity?

4. According to Udacity, earlier nanodegree program graduates have landed new jobs with Audi, BMW, Bosch, and Jaguar Land Rover.

5. Udacity has partnered with 14 companies around the world agreed to hire the sharpest graduates. Mercedes employs more than 40 nanodegree program graduates world-wide.

Udacity Partners for Self-Driving Car Engineer Program

How to Enroll and Get Discount

1. Visit ‘Self-driving Car Engineer Nanondegree‘ and click on Enroll Now.

2.Create an account on Udacity

You will then be re-directed to another page that asks you to create your account on Udacity.

Use the coupon code mentioned in the first section of this article and get $50 odd

Congratulations! You have saved huge

3. Make the payment

Udacity provides various payment options.Choose the one most suitable for you and make the payment.

And now the downside

Are you wondering about the cons of this self-driving engineer nanodegree program? It does have some.

This course could be tiresome at certain moments as you might need to spend more time working on the project.

Maybe 15-20 hours per week to complete the syllabus on time.

The laws associated with autonomous cars could be complicated. Hence you need to always stay updated with the laws as they get revised with technological advancements.

This may lead to stress and an increase in workload several times. You need to learn to handle stress encountered while working as a self-driving car engineer.

Stress is just part of the game.

Pros and Cons of Self Driving Car Nanodegree

Pros

1.Get to lean from Industry experts

2.High chance of getting a Job

3.Mentorship

4.Career services

5.Offers quality content

6.Community and discussion forums

Cons

1.Slightly Expensive

2.Requires extra efforts than stated

3.No Udacity App

4.Course could be tiresome at certain moments

Udacity Self Driving Car Nanodegree Reviews

Sardhenu Mishra

arturo.ai

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Glad to share that, I have finally completed a 6 months long intensive selfdriving car Engineer nanodegree program offered by Udacity.

I now find my driving skills questionable when considering all the variables that an autonomous vehicle accounts for when making a decision. Would highly recommend the program.

Thanks to Udacity and its self-driving-car team for designing such a wonderful and insightful course.

An overview of the projects can be found here

-via Linkedin

Fabian Klein

Researcher at Hochschule Esslingen

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Finally done with the Nanodegree from Udacity.

It covers the concepts which are needed for a robotics and deep learning approach for autonomous development.

I would like to take the chance to thank Sebastian Thrun, David Silver and Ryan Keenan for the excellent program content and their teaching skills.

I got extra foundations in topics like Sensor Fusion, Deep Learning, Machine Vision and Motion Planning for autonomous Systems.

-via LinkedIn

Conclusion:

In my view, if you are passionate about the self-driving car technology and would love to get your hand dirty, you should definitely enroll in this course.

Above all, taking this course will prove your dedication to an emerging field of automation and might land you a job in any of the companies mentioned above.

It will be an amazing experience.

I say Yes to this nanodegree.

Good Luck.

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I Recommend

Akshay Vikhe

1.Get your basics strong on Python

2.Dedicate as much time as you can. You should leave and breathe this program

3.After completing the course, apply all you have learned to build your own autonomous vehicle, at your college or your startup

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