Sebastian Thrun By Joseph Garrett Witowski CSCE 221

Sebastian Thrun By: Joseph Garrett Witowski CSCE 221 H – 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: – 1998 -2003: Carnegie Mellon University – Assistant and (since 2001) Associate Professor of CS, Robotics, and Automated Learning and Discovery – 2003 -2007: Stanford University – Associate Professor of CS and (since 2006) EE – 2007 -2011: 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 Fast. SLAM 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 Fast. SLAM • 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 • Fast. SLAM – 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. 2014. <https: //www. udacity. com/us>. "DARPA Grand Challenge. " Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 01 June 2014. Web. 20 Jan. 2014. <http: //en. wikipedia. org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge>. Homepage Sebastian Thrun. Stanford, n. d. Web. 20 Jan. 2014. <http: //robots. stanford. edu/>. N. p. , n. d. Web. 20 Jan. 2014. <http: //robot. cc/images/Sebastian. Thrun 805. jpg>. N. p. , n. d. Web. 20 Jan. 2014. <http: //www. weblogsinc. com/common/images/306000048647. JPG? 0. 543491337411244>. "Sebastian Thrun. " Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Jan. 2014. Web. 20 Jan. 2014. <http: //en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Sebastian_Thrun>. SLAM for Dummies: A Tutorial Approach to Simultaneous Localization and Mapping. Tech. N. p. , n. d. Web. 27 Jan. 2014. <http: //ocw. mit. edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16 -412 j-cognitive-robotics-spring 2005/projects/1 aslam_blas_repo. pdf>. Thrun, Sebastian, and Michael Montemerlo. Fast. SLAM: A Factored Solution to the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Problem. Tech. N. p. : n. p. , n. d. Web. 20 Jan. 2014. <http: //robots. stanford. edu/papers/montemerlo. fastslam-tr. pdf>. Thrun, Sebastian. Probabilistic Algorithms and the Interactive Museum Tour-Guide Robot Minerva. Tech. N. p. , n. d. Web. 20 Jan. 2014. <http: //www. cs. cmu. edu/~thrun/papers/thrun. ijrr-minerva. pdf>. Thrun, Sebastian. "Sebastian Thrun's CV. " N. p. , n. d. Web. 20 Jan. 2014. <http: //robots. stanford. edu/cv. pdf >. "Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course | Fast Company | Business Innovation. " Fast Company. N. p. , n. d. Web. 27 Jan. 2014. <http: //www. fastcompany. com/3021473/udacitysebastian-thrun-uphill-climb>.