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.
Other Search Engine Index Terms: David Stavens