vision-based-autonomy
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Ilsu Park
Ilsu Park is the co-founder and CEO of Mars Auto, a Seoul-based startup building camera-based, map-free self-driving software for heavy trucks. A KAIST computer science graduate and self-taught deep-learning engineer, he started with a hobby project that used a driving-game simulator to train a neural network, then turned that idea into a company that runs paid autonomous freight in Korea and the United States. Mars Auto takes a Tesla-style vision-first approach, skipping LiDAR and HD maps to cut the cost of automating a Class 8 truck to roughly $7,000 per unit. Park has raised about $12 million, graduated from Y Combinator, and made the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list. He is targeting fully driverless long-haul freight by 2028.
Brendan Dowdle
Brendan Dowdle is the Chief Business Officer of Bonsai Robotics, a Silicon Valley company building vision-based autonomy software for agriculture. He arrived there in 2025 when Bonsai acquired farm-ng, the modular farm-robot maker he ran as CEO. Dowdle grew up in an agricultural family across Southeast Asia, watched his agronomist father work the ground, and spent a decade building computer-vision and robotics companies before turning that toolkit on farming. He co-founded Arraiy (acquired by Matterport, where he later helped scale the services business through IPO), holds an MBA from Stanford, and now argues that the future of farming will be driven by intelligence, not iron.