Seminar by

Missy Cummings

22 Sep 2025 | TU Delft Building 33 - Pulse - Hall 2

What Autonomous Vehicle Failures Can Tell Us About

Engineering Safety-Critical AI

Abstract

With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), the dream of self-driving cars has seemingly become reality with driverless commercial operations in a handful of cities around the world. However, multiple high-profile self-driving and driving assist crashes have highlighted gaps in AI design and testing both for self-driving cars and AI in safety-critical systems in general. This talk will address the AI-related issues that have emerged with pilot testing and operations of autonomous vehicles and what lessons can be learned for the testing and certification of all safety-critical systems with embedded AI.

Bio

Professor Mary (Missy) Cummings received her B.S. in Mathematics from the US Naval Academy in 1988, her M.S. in Space Systems Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in 1994, and her Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia in 2004. A naval officer and military pilot from 1988-1999, she was one of the U.S. Navy's first female fighter pilots. She is a Professor in the George Mason University College of Engineering and Computing and directs the Mason Responsible AI program as well as the Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center (MARC). She is an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a member of the Virginia Academy for Science, Engineering and Mathematics. Her research interests include the application of artificial intelligence in safety-critical systems, assured autonomy, human-systems engineering, and the ethical and social impact of technology.

This talk will be streamed online at https://nmclive.tudelft.nl/Mediasite/Channel/seminar-ai-robotics/watch/a525e686be53457e9dad690bfedf51721d. It will be recorded; the recording will be made publicly available after December 1, 2025.

NB: You can join the event online without registration; only those who would like to attend in person should register.