sebastian_mike_me_stanley

[me, Sebastian Thrun, Mike Montemerlo, and Stanley (robot)]

 

 

 

 

 

David M. Stavens, Ph.D.

Alumnus, Stanford AI Lab

Computer Science Department

 

my_email

Stanford University

Stanford, CA  94305-9010

 

 

 

 

Welcome.

 

I am the founding CEO and current President/COO of Udacity.  We’re making great education available to everyone for free.

 

I was one of the principal co-creators of Stanley, the robot that won the 2005 Grand Challenge – to build a completely autonomous car that can navigate 130+ miles in the Mojave Desert.  Stanley is now part of the permanent collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.  We were named to the Scientific American 50.

 

I received a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford, advised by Sebastian Thrun.  I was the David Cheriton Stanford Graduate Fellow (2005-2008) and a Qualcomm Innovation Fellow (2010).  I am a recipient of the McCarthy Medal for Research Excellence.  My work has been published at CVPR, UAI, IJCAI, RSS, AAAI, ICRA, IROS, AAAI/SS, AAET, and in the Journal of Field Robotics.  My thesis committee was Daphne Koller, Andrew Ng, Fei-Fei Li, and Chris Gerdes.

 

I also have an MS in Computer Science from Stanford and a BSE in Computer Science, Magna Cum Laude, from Princeton.  My undergraduate thesis presented highly parallel algorithms for factoring gigantic polynomials and their application to encryption and watermarking in digital signals.

 

I was involved with stealth-mode startups PixBlitz Studios and IO Turbine.  IO Turbine was sold to Fusion IO in 2011.  In college, I was part of the firstRain startup.  Previously, I was part of the Mars rover team at NASA.  A long time ago, I ran a popular online BBS service and played the violin.  You can follow my latest professional information on LinkedIn.

 

Publications

 

D. Stavens“Learning to Drive: Perception for Autonomous Cars.”  Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University.  [Library Record.]

 

J. Levinson, J. Askeland, J. Becker, J. Dolson, D. Held, S. Kammel, J. Kolter, D. Langer, O. Pink, V. Pratt, M. Sokolsky, G. Stanek, D. Stavens, A. Teichman, M. Werling, and S. Thrun.  “Towards Fully Autonomous Driving: Systems and Algorithms.”  In Proceedings of the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium 2011 (IV11).  Baden-Baden, Germany.

 

J. Huang, D. Millman, M. Quigley, D. Stavens, S. Thrun, and A. Aggarwal.  “Efficient, Generalized Indoor WiFi GraphSLAM.”  In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2011 (IRCA11).  Shanghai, China.

 

M. Quigley, D. Stavens, A. Coates, and S. Thrun.  “Sub-Meter Indoor Localization in Unmodified Environments with Inexpensive Sensors.”  In Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 2010 (IROS10).  Taipei, Taiwan.  [Corresponding Video.]

 

D. Stavens and S. Thrun.  “Unsupervised Learning of Invariant Features Using Video.”  In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 2010 (CVPR10).  San Francisco, USA.

 

T. Sullivan, R. Frankel, O. Gudmundsson, B. Miller, J. Potter, S. Syed, D. Hoang, J.M. John, K.-S. Liao, P. Nahass, A. Schwab, J. Yuan, D. Stavens, C. Nass, and S. Thrun.  “Assisted Highway Lane Changing with RASCL.”  In Proceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium 2010 (AAAI/SS10).  Stanford, USA.

 

M. Montemerlo, J. Becker, S. Bhat, H. Dahlkamp, D. Dolgov, S. Ettinger, D. Haehnel, T. Hilden, G. Hoffmann, B. Hunke, D. Johnston, S. Klumpp, D. Langer, A. Levandowski, J. Levinson, J. Marcil, D. Orenstein, J. Paefgen, I. Penny, A. Petrovskaya, M. Pflueger, G. Stanek, D. Stavens, A. Vogt, and S. Thrun.  “Junior: The Stanford Entry in the Urban Challenge.”  Journal of Field Robotics, 2008.

 

M. Montemerlo, J. Becker, S. Bhat, H. Dahlkamp, D. Dolgov, S. Ettinger, D. Haehnel, T. Hilden, G. Hoffmann, B. Hunke, D. Johnston, S. Klumpp, D. Langer, A. Levandowski, J. Levinson, J. Marcil, D. Orenstein, J. Paefgen, I. Penny, A. Petrovskaya, M. Pflueger, G. Stanek, D. Stavens, A. Vogt, and S. Thrun.  “Junior: The Stanford Racing Team’s Robot in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge.”  In Proceedings of the Symposium on Automation, Assistence, and Embedded Real Time Platforms for Transportation 2008 (AAET08).  Braunschweig, Germany.

 

D. Stavens, G. Hoffmann, and S. Thrun.  “Online Speed Adaptation using Supervised Learning for High-Speed, Off-Road Autonomous Driving.”  In Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2007 (IJCAI07).  Hyderabad, India.

 

D. Stavens and S. Thrun.  “A Self-Supervised Terrain Roughness Estimator for Off-Road Autonomous Driving.”  In Proceedings of Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence 2006 (UAI06).  Boston, USA.

 

H. Dahlkamp, A. Kaehler, D. Stavens, S. Thrun, and G. Bradski.  “Self-Supervised Monocular Road Detection in Desert Terrain.”  In Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems 2006 (RSS06).  Philadelphia , USA.

 

M. Montemerlo, S. Thrun, H. Dahlkamp, D. Stavens, and S. Strohband.  “Winning the DARPA Grand Challenge with an AI Robot.”  In Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2006 (AAAI06).  Boston, USA.

 

S. Thrun, M. Montemerlo, H. Dahlkamp, D. Stavens, A. Aron, J. Diebel, P. Fong, J. Gale, M. Halpenny, G. Hoffmann, K. Lau, C. Oakley, M. Palatucci, V. Pratt, P. Stang, S. Strohband, C. Dupont, L.-E. Jendrossek, C. Koelen, C. Markey, C. Rummel, J. van Niekerk, E. Jensen, P. Alessandrini, G. Bradski, B. Davies, S. Ettinger, A. Kaehler, A. Nefian, and P. Mahoney.  “Stanley: The Robot that Won the DARPA Grand Challenge.”  Journal of Field Robotics, 2006.

 

A. Lookingbill, D. Lieb, D. Stavens, and S. Thrun.  “Learning Activity-Based Ground Models from a Moving Helicopter Platform.”  In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2005 (ICRA05).  Barcelona, Spain.  [Corresponding Video.]  

 

K. Primdahl, I. Katz, O. Feinstein, Y. Mok, H. Dahlkamp, D. Stavens, M. Montemerlo, and S. Thrun.  “Change Detection from Multiple Camera Images Extended to Non-Stationary Cameras.”  In Proceedings of Field and Service Robotics 2005 (FSR05).  Port Douglas, Australia.

 

Non-Refereed Publications

 

S. Thrun, M. Montemerlo, D. Stavens, H. Dahlkamp, et. al.  “Stanford Racing Team’s Entry in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge.”  Technical Report.  DARPA Grand Challenge 2005.

 

G. Bradski, A. Kaehler, D. Stavens, H. Dahlkamp, M. Montemerlo, and S. Thrun.  “Computer Vision for Robot Racing.”  Demonstrated during Neural Information Processing Systems 2005 (NIPS05).  Vancouver, Canada.

 

D. Stavens“Lecture Notes on Optical Flow and OpenCV.”  Guest Lecture, Computer Science 223b, Stanford University.

 

 

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