Sebastian Thrun, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Stanford Computer Science, Director, Stanford AI Lab
We've had a number of recent races – the circling of the globe in a balloon, for example, or going into deep space – that involved significant technology components. But in these races, it was always people who made the ultimate decisions. The DARPA Grand Challenge to me is entirely new. It's about the machine making every single decision. We have to build a machine that not just has the physical power to endure but also the brainpower to make all the decisions along the way. The machine becomes the actor itself. I think it's a fundamental step in the history of robotics, of humankind so to speak. I think this race will be heralded as an historical race.
Biography
Sebastian Thrun is Associate Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL). Thrun was Project Lead of Stanford Racing Team, the DARPA Grand Challenge $2 million winner. Thrun's research focus includes AI, robotics, machine learning, distributed systems, human robot interaction, and programming language design. He is widely acknowledged as a pioneer in the area of probabilistic robotics, which is concerned with applying statistical techniques to problems in real–world perception, planning, and control. Within this area, Thrun has focused on mobile robot exploration, mapping, and multi–robot coordination. Robots by Thrun and his students have been deployed in museums as tour–guides; in elderly care facilities as personal assistants and walking aids, and in abandoned mines as tools for acquiring mine maps. Other robotic systems include submersible and aerial vehicles, and environments instrumented with many sensors. On the basic research level, he has pursued research on robust statistical programming techniques that scale to complex environments and to large decentralized robot systems. Thrun is the author of seven books, most recently Probabilistic Robotics, and nearly 300 papers.