Winning the DARPA Grand Challenge

The DARPA Grand Challenge has been the most significant challenge to the robotics community in more than a decade. It required to build an autonomous robot capable of traversing 132 miles of punishing desert terrain in less than 10 hours. In 2004, the best robot only made 7.3 miles. In 2005, Stanford won the challenge and the $2M prize money by successfully traversing the course in less than 7 hours. This talk, delivered by the leader of the Stanford Racing Team, will provide insights in the software architecture of Stanford's winning robot. The robot massively relied on machine learning and probabilistic modeling for sensor interpretation and control. The speaker will explain some of the basic algorithms that made this victory possible, and share some of the excitement characterizing this historic event.

Prof. Dr. Sebastian Thrun is Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) at Stanford University. Prior to winning the Grand Challenge, Thrun published nine books, 300 refereed papers, won numerous best paper awards, and was elected as AAAI and ECCAI Fellow. Popular Science named Thrun one of the "Brilliant Ten" in their September 2005 issue. Thrun's research focuses on robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.