Sebastian Thrun

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Thrun at the IAA 2019

Sebastian Thrun (born May 14, 1967 in Solingen ) is a German computer scientist and robotics specialist. He was Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University and VP of Google .

Life

Thrun attended the Josephinum grammar school in Hildesheim and studied computer science, medicine and economics up to his intermediate diploma in 1988 at the University of Hildesheim . He received his diploma (1993) and his doctorate rerum naturalium with the distinction summa cum laude in 1995 at the University of Bonn in the fields of computer science and statistics.

In 1998 he was appointed assistant professor (from 2001 associate professor ) for computer science at Carnegie Mellon University , in 2003 he moved to Stanford University as an associate professor and became head of the Artificial Intelligence Lab in Stanford for the university's racing team; Google. In 2007 he took up a full professorship at Stanford.

Thrun, like Google founder Larry Page , was interested in self-driving cars. In 2005 Thrun took part with his model in the "Grand Challenge 2005", an important competition sponsored by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Together with the Stanford Racing Team, he developed the self-driving VW Touareg " Stanley ", which won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge , endowed with two million US dollars . For this success, Thrun received the Braunschweig Research Prize 2007, endowed with 30,000 euros . In 2007, the Stanford Racing Team took part under his leadership in the DARPA Urban Challenge with the likewise autonomous VW Passat " Junior " , which the vehicle successfully finished in second place.

In the 2011 summer semester, Thrun was released from his teaching duties in order to have more time for his research as a “Google Fellow ”. Page hired Thrun to set up the secret research department Google X , which also created Google Glass . At the same time, the " Street View cars" were designed under Thrun's leadership . Thrun is thus responsible for the success of a key technology in Google.

At the end of 2011, Thrun offered its "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" as a massive open online course . 160,000 students signed up, of which 23,000 took an online graduation exam - more than the total enrolled at Stanford's elite West Coast University. Thrun then gave up his professorship and founded the online academy Udacity together with other professors . 25 courses in mathematics, physics and computer science are offered there.

On April 25, 2012, Thrun presented a prototype of the Google Project Glass glasses on the American talk show Charlie Rose .

At the end of 2012, the US journal Foreign Policy ranked him among the “100 most influential thinkers in the world” - in fourth place. In April 2014, Credit Suisse appointed him to the Board of Directors. In 2018 he headed the development of the futuristic Cora aircraft at the Kitty Hawk company.

Awards and memberships

Publications

  • Sebastian Thrun, Wolfram Burgard , Dieter Fox : Probabilistic Robotics (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents), MIT Press, Cambridge / London 2005, ISBN 978-0-262-20162-9 .
  • Sebastian Thrun, Michael Montemerlo: FastSLAM: a scalable method for the simultaneous localization and mapping problem in robotics . Springer, 2007, ISBN 978-3-540-46399-3 .

Web links

Commons : Sebastian Thrun  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jonas Leppin: “The university uses methods like it did a thousand years ago” , interview with Sebastian Thrun, Spiegel Online , March 19, 2012
  2. ^ Curriculum Vitae of Sebastian Thrun, Ph.D. (PDF; 202 kB), accessed on June 15, 2012
  3. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from October 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.darpa.mil
  4. ↑ a b Press release on the award ceremony
  5. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated December 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. DARPA Urban Challenge @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.darpa.mil
  6. ↑ Does he change the world? in FAZ of August 16, 2012, p. 25.
  7. ↑ Sebastian Thrun at Charlie Rose: Interview ( memento of the original from April 27, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.charlierose.com
  8. ↑ The Google Professor at Credit Suisse , handelszeitung.ch, April 4, 2014.
  9. ↑ Kitty Hawk Cora: Google co-founder shows off his electric air taxis. In: heise online. March 13, 2018, accessed January 6, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Member entry of Sebastian Thrun (with picture) at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on July 20, 2016.
  11. ↑ Rahul Kanakia: National Academy of Engineering elects to its ranks four from Stanford. In: Stanford News Service. February 12, 2007, accessed March 21, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Press release of the Max Planck Society of March 14, 2011
  13. ↑ News from the University of Hildesheim from January 23, 2020 - Isa Lange
  14. ↑ Technology pioneer Sebastian Thrun is awarded the Aachen Engineering Prize - RWTH AACHEN UNIVERSITY - German. Retrieved July 20, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Thrun, Sebastian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1967
PLACE OF BIRTH Solingen , Germany