Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Alumni
  • Login
  • Volunteer
  • Clubs
  • Reunions
  • Bulletin
  • Class Notes
  • Help
  • Give Now
  • Stories
  • Alumni Directory
  • Lifelong Learning
  • Careers
  • Programs & Events
  • Giving
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Alumni→
  • Stories→

Stories

Stories

19 Sep 2019


Predicting Human Behaviors

Boston-based Perceptive Automata has developed technology that enables autonomous vehicles to understand humans
Re: Sid Misra (MBA 2013); By: April White

Topics: Innovation-Technological InnovationCommunication-Communication TechnologyPsychology-PerceptionPhilanthropy-Giving ImpactInnovation and Invention-GeneralInnovation-Technological InnovationEngineering-RoboticsTechnology-SoftwareTransportation-Transportation Networks
19 Sep 2019


Predicting Human Behaviors

Boston-based Perceptive Automata has developed technology that enables autonomous vehicles to understand humans
Re: Sid Misra (MBA 2013); By: April White

Topics: Innovation-Technological InnovationCommunication-Communication TechnologyPsychology-PerceptionPhilanthropy-Giving ImpactInnovation and Invention-GeneralInnovation-Technological InnovationEngineering-RoboticsTechnology-SoftwareTransportation-Transportation Networks
19 Sep 2019

Predicting Human Behaviors

Boston-based Perceptive Automata has developed technology that enables autonomous vehicles to understand humans
Re: Sid Misra (MBA 2013); By: April White
Topics: Innovation-Technological InnovationCommunication-Communication TechnologyPsychology-PerceptionPhilanthropy-Giving ImpactInnovation and Invention-GeneralInnovation-Technological InnovationEngineering-RoboticsTechnology-SoftwareTransportation-Transportation Networks
ShareBar

Above: Sid Misra (MBA 2013) cofounder, Perceptive Automata (Len Rubenstein; courtesy of Perceptive Automata)

Amid the hubbub of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the world’s largest technology tradeshow, Sid Misra (MBA 2013) guided an onlooker to a leather driver’s seat positioned in front of a faux dashboard. A large monitor simulated the view through a windshield as a car drove on a quiet suburban street. On one side of the road, a woman walked casually down the bike lane. On the other, a young boy with a backpack ambled along the sidewalk—and then suddenly dashed in front of the car.

The human observer was not surprised by the child in the street. Subtle behavioral cues had told him the boy was planning to cross to his mother. What was surprising was that the self-driving car simulator recognized those cues, too. On the screen, the simulator tracked the motions of the pedestrians, correctly assigning an intention score (Do they want to cross the street?) and an awareness score (Do they know there is a car?) to each. Guided by technology developed by Perceptive Automata, the company cofounded by Misra, a self-driving car in this situation would hit the brakes.

“Self-driving cars today know what they are seeing and how fast the object is moving, but they aren’t good at predicting what a human will do next,” explains Misra. “We want to help machines understand humans.”

For Perceptive Automata, the road to CES (where the company exhibited in a prime spot with its partner, Honda) began in August 2014, when Misra started his year as a Blavatnik Fellow in Life Science Entrepreneurship, a program launched in 2013 at HBS. Among the numerous scientists Misra met with in his search for marketable life science ventures was an interdisciplinary group of computer vision, neuroscience, and behavioral science researchers. They had the tools to train computers to think more like humans, but did not yet have an application for the technology. Together the team—including David Cox, the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Natural Sciences and of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard; Harvard fellow Walter Scheirer; and PhD candidate Sam Anthony, all cofounders—narrowed their focus to autonomous cars.

By 2016, the startup had a bank of desks in the Harvard i-lab. The cofounders were grateful for the access to the Harvard and HBS networks. It was through its affiliation with the i-lab that Perceptive Automata attracted its cofounder, Avery Faller, a machine learning engineer who was completing his master’s studies in computational science and engineering at Harvard. “He was the final piece of the puzzle,” says Misra. “And he found us through a spreadsheet of startups that the i-lab created.”

Today, Boston-based Perceptive Automata is working with suppliers and automakers in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and the technology is in testing in autonomous vehicles and highly automated human-driven vehicles.

The number-one question Misra gets—at CES and elsewhere—is “‘When will this be real?’ I tell them, ‘It’s real today.’” There are autonomous vehicles on the road, he notes. They aren’t driving through traffic in New York or Boston yet, but they will be. And when they do, Misra says, “We want them to be able to predict the actions of pedestrians, cyclists, and other motorists just like a human driver would.”

ShareBar

Featured Alumni

Sid Misra
MBA 2013
Login to send a message

Post a Comment

Featured Alumni

Sid Misra
MBA 2013
Login to send a message

Related Stories

    • 14 Jun 2023
    • HBS Alumni News

    Dean Datar Meets with Alumni in East Asia

    Re: Saurabh Mittal (MBA 1999); Prashant Pundrik (PLDA 9); Jeff McNeill (MBA 1980); Wakana Tanaka (MBA 2003); Srikant M. Datar (George F. Baker Professor of Administration Dean of the Faculty)
    • 22 Mar 2023
    • HBS Alumni News

    Dean Datar Meets with Alumni in Los Angeles

    Re: Alex Popa (MBA 2007); Srikant M. Datar (George F. Baker Professor of Administration Dean of the Faculty)
    • 17 Mar 2023
    • HBS Alumni News

    Dean Datar Meets with Alumni in New York

    Re: AJ Jones (MBA 1987); Srikant M. Datar (George F. Baker Professor of Administration Dean of the Faculty)
    • 01 Mar 2023
    • HBS Alumni Bulletin

    Is AI OK?

    Re: Seke Ballard (MBA 2010); Frida Polli (MBA 2012); Shunyuan Zhang (Assistant Professor of Business Administration); By: Alexander Gelfand

More Related Stories

Stories Featuring Sid Misra

    • 13 Aug 2014
    • HBS Alumni News

    Blavatnik Fellows in Life Science Entrepreneurship Named

    Re: Alexandra Dickson (MBA 2013); Christoph Jaeker (MBA 2011); Louis Levy (MBA 2014); Sid Misra (MBA 2013); Meridith Cass (MBA 2010)
 
 
 
 
ǁ
Campus Map
External Relations
Harvard Business School
Teele Hall
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
Phone: 1.617.495.6890
Email: alumni+hbs.edu
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Accessibility
  • Digital Accessibility
  • Terms of Use
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College