Luca Delgrossi holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. He started his career as OS kernel software developer at the Olivetti Unix™ Labs in Milan, Italy. Over the years, he has gained vast practical experience with real-time systems and networks and the delivery of high-quality software products. As an example, in 1993, he built a production communication system able to broadcast video over the Internet. For this effort, he was awarded the IBM Outstanding Technical Award.
Luca is an Internet pioneer. During his years at U.C. Berkeley, he was part of the Internet Engineering Task Force and authored IP version 5 (RFC 1819). He is a founding member of the Italian Chapter of the Internet Society. In 2005, pursuing the vision to extend Internet communications to the car, Luca joined Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America in the Silicon Valley.
At Mercedes-Benz, Luca’s team designed and fully developed the very first wireless radio to broadcast safety messages among vehicles moving at high speeds. This system soon evolved into an international standard (IEEE 802.11p), widely adopted today. In order to better describe wireless technology for car safety, Luca wrote the book “Vehicle Safety Communications”, published by Wiley in 2012. In 2008, at the Intelligent Transport Systems World Congress in New York, Luca’s team showcased a Mercedes-Benz S-550 that would autonomously break upon detection of a red light when about to cross a signalized intersection. This was the first event where a major OEM showed fully integrated automated maneuvers. For over a decade, Luca collaborated with the U.S. Department of Transportation. Mercedes-Benz contributed 9 fully equipped C-class 300 and 4 Freightliner Cascadia trucks to the V2V Model Deployment field trial in Ann Arbor, MI.
In addition to this, Luca has served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the VII Consortium for 7 years. The VIIC includes BMW, Chrysler, Daimler, Ford, GM, Honda, Nissan, Toyota, and VW-Audi. Luca started his work on autonomous driving in the very early stages. In 2012, Luca’s team built an autonomous car able to drive through 4-way stop intersections. This car was featured on the February 2012 issue of the WIRED magazine.
More recently, Luca focused on the development of high-quality maps for autonomous driving and developed advanced localization techniques to achieve cm-accurate positioning. Luca believes that autonomous vehicles will necessarily be connected.
In 2016, Luca joined Future Mobility Corporation, a startup aimed at the production of luxury and premium electric vehicles in China. As VP Autonomous Driving of the company, Luca is responsible for the delivery of the entire autonomous driving in-vehicle system as well for supporting back-end services. He also serves as CEO of Future Mobility USA, the US branch of Future Mobility that will develop autonomous driving solutions in the Silicon Valley.
Luca lectures at Stanford University, where he collaborates with the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS). He has published over 70 articles in scientific journals and international conferences. He was invited on numerous occasions as guest speaker to major events organized by the automotive industry, research, or academia. Luca is co-editor of the IEEE Communication Magazine Automotive Series.