Rowan McAllister

Thrilled to announce I'll start in 2026 as faculty in Psych & CS @UAlberta + @AmiiThinks Fellow!! 🥳 Recruiting students to develop theories of cognition in natural and artificial systems 🤖💭🧠. Find me at #NeurIPS2025 workshops (talk at @CogInterp & organising @DataOnBrainMind)

Check out NeuralRemaster with Phase-Preserving Diffusion (ϕ-PD): a parameter-free, model-agnostic reformulation that makes structure-aligned generation simple and reliable. Huge thanks to @rowantmc @vitorguizilini @vishalm_patel and other coauthors

At TRI’s newest division: Automated Driving Advanced Development, we’re building a clean-slate, end-to-end autonomy stack. We're hiring, with open roles in learning, infra, and validation: #open-positions" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">tri.global/careers#open-p…

See the pedestrians? Easier with lidar + vision + radar!

So excited to be co-organizing a workshop on computational models of human road user behavior at #iavvc2025 this year! Join us! (link below) 📅 Key deadlines: 🔹 abstracts (including abstract-only & full papers): Feb 16, 2025 🔹 full papers: Mar 30, 2025

Super motivating seeing reduced bodily injury rates, and why AVs are such amazing robots to work on

Excited to share that I will be joining @Princeton as an Assistant Professor in ECE & Robotics next academic year! 🐯🤖 robo.princeton.edu I am recruiting PhD students for the upcoming admissions cycle. If you are interested in working with me, please consider applying.

Part of being a good driver is driving defensively while reasoning about things occluded from your view, and reacting quickly to any sudden changes in the scene. This is exactly what we’ve trained the @Waymo Driver’s AI to do and happy to see validation in real-life scenarios.

I’m happy to share that I’ve started a new position as Assistant Professor at The University of Toronto! I'll lead the Learning, Embodied Autonomy, and Forecasting (LEAF) Lab. Find us at leaf-lab-utoronto.github.io

Everyone can hail robotaxis in SF now, no more waitlists or invite codes, the Waymo One app lets you summon robot cars anytime, anywhere here: waymo.com/blog/2024/06/w…

@tdietterich See @wucathy's works e.g. ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/docum… and bayen.berkeley.edu/sites/default/… my understanding is human drivers are typically underdamped when following, which AVs can counter, dissipating human-created stop-and-go traffic waves

Is there any evidence, for example, that traffic flow that contains a substantial fraction of AVs would be smoother?

The typical autonomous vehicle paper claims that AVs will (a) reduce accidents, (b) relieve traffic congestion, and (c) provide mobility for those who cannot drive. I believe (a) and (c), but is there any evidence for (b)? Wouldn't adding vehicles for (c) increase congestion?

waymo dodges an occluded oncoming left turner

We’ve avoided a meaningful number of injuries over @Waymo’s 10M+ rider-only miles. Sometimes a specific instance can be more eye-opening than the stats. We’re not perfect, but our driver never gets distracted and can react faster than a human. From waymo.com/blog/2024/05/f…

Some fun videos on how Waymo's fleet response works: how human agents can inform or guide Waymo vehicles in ambiguous situations: waymo.com/blog/2024/05/f…

AV gesture recognition 👋🤖 (LA, source: reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingC…)

@bern_jaeger Autonomy L4, so no remote human unless an issue or you click "Support" but operations are geofenced, map: waymo.com/waymo-one-san-…

@rowantmc are they really fully autonomous or is there a human remote controller that monitors the driving?

Autonomous vehicles in San Francisco: what it's like 🤖🚗🌉

Waymo for pets! 🐱🐶 youtube.com/watch?v=ljbeFp…

A black swan event for AVs (Perth, Australia)

Leveraging AI for semantic understanding of complex driving scenes is a key capability of the #WaymoDriver. Check out this example of it autonomously interpreting and adhering to a police officer directing traffic in Los Angeles.