Sebastian Thrun

Director, Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

Sebastian Thrun is Associate Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL). He was Project Lead of Stanford Racing Team, the DARPA Grand Challenge $2 million winner. His research focus includes AI, robotics, machine learning, distributed systems, human robot interaction, and programming language design. He is 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, he has focused on mobile robot exploration, mapping, and multi-robot coordination. Robots by his group 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. He is the author of seven books, most recently Probabilistic Robotics, and nearly 300 papers.

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Singularity Summit at Stanford presentation

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Google Tech Talks, Winning the DARPA Grand Challenge

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Singularity Summit at Stanford presentation