Hans Moravec biography
Hans Moravec is a Research Professor in the
Robotics Institute of
Carnegie Mellon University. He
has been thinking about machines thinking since he was a child in
the 1950s, building his first robot, a construct of tin cans,
batteries, lights and a motor, at age ten. In high school he won
two science fair prizes for a light-following electronic turtle and
a tape-controlled robot hand. As an undergraduate he designed a
computer to control fancier robots, and experimented with learning and
automatic programming on commercial machines. During his master's
work he built a small robot with whiskers and photoelectric eyes
controlled by a minicomputer, and wrote a thesis on a computer
language for artificial intelligence. He received a PhD from
Stanford University in
1980 for a TV-equipped robot, remote controlled by a large computer,
that negotiated cluttered obstacle courses, taking about five hours.
Since 1980 his
Mobile Robot Lab
at CMU has discovered more effective approaches for robot spatial
representation, notably 3D occupancy grids,
that, with newly available computer power,
promise commercial free-ranging mobile robots within a decade. In 2003
he co-founded SEEGRID Corporation
to undertake this commercialization. His books,
Mind Children: the future of robot and human intelligence, 1988, and
Robot: mere machine to transcendent mind, 1998, consider the
implications of evolving robot intelligence. He has also published
papers and articles in robotics, computer graphics, multiprocessors,
space travel and other speculative areas.
long curriculum vita
ROBUG:
switch-programmable to wake/seek/avoid on light/touch/wind;
feelers charged to 90 volts!