Sebastian Thrun’s Prediction

At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that ended on February 19th 2007, Sebastian Thrun, the father of “Stanley” made a bold prediction that autonomous highway driving will be possible within a decade and cars will be smart enough to maneuver through city traffic in 25 years.

For autonomous driving, the artificial intelligence system has to be made sophisticated enough to recognize and understand objects before the vehicle should actuate. “Stanley”, the winner of the 2005 Grand Challenge Race, is equipped with laser range finders, radars, cameras and a monocular vision system. The robot sees a bi-colored 3D image and knows how its surrounding environment looks like.