Sebastian Thrun By: Joseph Garrett Witowski CSCE 221H – Spring 2014

A (Brief) Biography Born May 14, 1967 in Solingen, West Germany Graduated the University of Hildesheim, Germany in 1988 with a B.S. in CS, economics, medicine 1995, obtained Ph.D. in CS and Statistics from University of Bonn, Germany

Work History In Academia: – : Carnegie Mellon University – Assistant and (since 2001) Associate Professor of CS, Robotics, and Automated Learning and Discovery – : Stanford University – Associate Professor of CS and (since 2006) EE – : Stanford University – Professor of CS and EE – 2011-present: Stanford University – Research Professor of CS – 2011-present: Google Fellow In the corporate world: – 2007-present: Principal Engineer, Google Inc. – 2011-present: Google X Labs, Founder – 2012-present: Co-founder and CEO, Udacity

Research Areas and Notable Projects Probabilistic Robotics MINERVA FastSLAM 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, Stanford Racing Team Lead Google’s Self-Driving Car Google Street View Udacity

Robots and SLAM SLAM – Simultaneous Localization and Mapping – 2 Aspects: Environment Mapping and Pose Estimation – Method: Take initial measurements, identify landmarks, move, update odometry-based position, re-measure and re-identify landmarks, extrapolate updated position from landmark data

Thrun and FastSLAM The “old way” of doing SLAM had some shortcomings – Slow – O(n 2 ) in number of landmarks – Worked only for small environments – Had issues with Data Association FastSLAM – Runs in logarithmic time (O(M logn)) – Can scale to large environments – Can handle dynamic environments

Udacity In 2011, Thrun offered his first e-course, “Online Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” from his living room – Over 160,000 people enrolled in the class – Thrun offered this class free of charge In 2012, Thrun announced Udacity – originally offering “Massively Open Online Courses” (MOOC’s) In 2013, Thrun stated Udacity had “a lousy product” and that courses would no longer be offered for free

Awards and Recognitions 2007 – Member, National Academy of Engineering – Member, German Academy of Sciences 2008 – PC World list Best 100 Products of 2008 (Google Street View) 2010 – IEEE ITSS Distinguished Researcher Award 2011 – Max Planck Research Award – Huffington Post Best of TED 2011

Opinions – “Why You Care” Thrun’s research is revolutionary His research and work is improving the world around us (think about street view) The potential applications (and benefits) of his work go far beyond their apparent face-value – Robotic seeing-eye dogs? – Reduced traffic? The possibilities are essentially limitless

Work Cited "About Us." - Udacity. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan "DARPA Grand Challenge." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 01 June Web. 20 Jan Homepage Sebastian Thrun. Stanford, n.d. Web. 20 Jan N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan "Sebastian Thrun." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Jan Web. 20 Jan SLAM for Dummies: A Tutorial Approach to Simultaneous Localization and Mapping. Tech. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Jan Thrun, Sebastian, and Michael Montemerlo. FastSLAM: A Factored Solution to the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Problem. Tech. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan Thrun, Sebastian. Probabilistic Algorithms and the Interactive Museum Tour-Guide Robot Minerva. Tech. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan Thrun, Sebastian. "Sebastian Thrun's CV." N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan "Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course | Fast Company | Business Innovation." Fast Company. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Jan