Our Mission

FUNCTIONAL SAFETY. NO COMPROMISES.

Retrospect’s mission is to promote the values, knowledge, services, and tools that deliver safety- without compromises. We do this through tools, such as RiskEngine™, which ensures safe AV operation, and our functional safety services, which empower teams to achieve safety quickly. Our company was founded on the need for not only a technical solution to the problem of autonomous vehicle safety, but also the need for a broader understanding of functional safety principles within the automotive and tech industry.

We want to address functional safety understanding among those who haven’t had functional safety experience. We also want to address functional safety to those who have a mature view of it within their area of application, but not in other areas (such ISO 26262 Part 3). By teaching others about our view on functional safety—reliant on a normative, ethical foundation of self-evident arguments—we hope others in autonomous vehicle technology will generate solutions similar to and better than ours.

Beyond autonomous technology, all automotive systems are growing in complexity and capability. Advanced combustion strategies, electrification, and by-wire control all need functional safety assurance. We want to help engineers and managers achieve functional safety without adding new, top-down processes. We want to shoulder the load by facilitating safety analyses, writing requirements, and raising awareness among our client’s stakeholders.

WHAT WE OFFER

Our team at Retrospect is a dedicated group committed to helping your organization achieve functional safety. Our Functional Safety Services page outlines the services we provide, ranging from consulting to workshops to STPA training and more. Our Autonomous Vehicle Safety Project outlines how you can collaborate with Retrospect and become a part of our mission.

Who We Are

THE BEGINNING

Retrospect was founded in 2018 by automotive engineers in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who saw the need not only for a technical solution to the problem of autonomous vehicle safety, but also the need for a broader understanding of functional safety principles within the automotive and tech industry. Self-driving cars come with potential benefits in transportation availability, but their introduction of vast amounts of artificial intelligence, continuous software updates, and high-performance computing hardware requires rigorous adherence to safety software principals and functional safety methods.

Michael Woon, CEO

Prior to Retrospect, our CEO, Michael Woon, worked as a senior automotive safety consultant at kVA and as an advanced powertrain controls engineer in GM's hybrid and electric vehicles group. He has an engineering and entrepreneurial passion for bringing clarity to organizations, helping them identify their own risks, and allowing them the freedom to appropriately create their own solutions. He holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from Michigan Technological University and a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Michael has spoken at several industry conferences regarding Retrospect’s work, including AutoSens Detroit (2022), IEEE ICCVE 2022, AutoSens Brussels (2020), IQPC ISO 26262 (2019), SAE WCX (2019), and IQPC SOTIF and Testing ADAS & Self Driving Cars (2019).

Michael has also been invited to present at ITU-T FG-AI4AD (2020), EDCC DREAMS Workshop (2020), has moderated roundtables at IQPC ISO 26262 (2019), and lead workshops at IQPC Testing ADAS & Self Driving Cars (2019).

Mike Diaz, Head of Software

Our Head of Software and Consultant Mike Diaz has 15 years of experience in the automotive industry, with over half spent in the area of autonomous driving. He has extensive experience designing and implementing complex computational software in safety-critical real-time embedded control systems put into production and driving on roads worldwide.

Mike has led technical teams in both Product Management and Project Management roles at OEMs, Tier-1s, and startup companies. He holds dual degrees from Virginia Tech in both computer engineering and mechanical engineering. He has a master’s degree from the University of Michigan in mechanical engineering with a focus on control systems.

There is no one person or group that will develop the complete autonomous safety solution. On the contrary, it only takes one person or group to make an autonomous vehicle unsafe in our society. The realization of the true potential of self-driving cars requires a commitment to safety from all of us, working together. Our mission is to simply provide our customers with the values, knowledge, and technology that allow them to deliver functional safety, without compromises.

Our Name

ret·ro·spect /ˈretrəˌspekt/ (noun)

1. a survey or review of a past course of events or period of time

2. A retrospective law is one that is to take effect, in point of time, before it was passed

3. An agile retrospective is held at the end of a software iteration so the team can reflect on what happened in the iteration and identify actions for improvement going forward

The name, Retrospect, largely comes from the autonomous Risk Monitoring method which looks at the past five to ten seconds of planned trajectories and continuously analyzes them to detect underestimates in risk.

Retrospect also has a legal meaning, which is generally controversial and only used in serious situations. However, we believe any first-to-launch developer could be liable if they did not advance the state-of-the-art in safety before the state-of-the-art in quality in their technology.

Finally, Retrospect’s name also applies to agile software development. As automotive engineers in software and controls, we understand the importance of measuring the functional behavior of systems, rapidly and consistently.

Let’s Connect

Let us know what you were hoping for. We look forward to hearing from you!