[me, Sebastian, and Mike with Stanley after winning the 2005 Grand Challenge]

David M. Stavens PhD Candidate Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab Computer Science Department Room 253; Gates Hall Stanford University Stanford, CA  94305-9010

Welcome.

I am a PhD candidate in Computer Science and the David Cheriton Stanford Graduate Fellow.  My advisor is Sebastian Thrun.

I build artificially intelligent systems that solve real-world problems.  I was part of the core team that won the 2005 Grand Challenge: to build a completely autonomous car that can navigate 130+ miles in the Mojave Desert.  Our robot, Stanley, was on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.  We were named to the Scientific American 50.

I am author or co-author of several autonomous driving technologies: a laser perception system that learns as it drives (presented at UAI 2006), a computer vision system that learns as it drives (presented at RSS 2006), and an automated method for adapting speed to terrain conditions (presented at IJCAI 2007).

In my early grad school days, I wrote AI prototyping software for the 2009 Mars rover mission at NASA.  In college, I was part of the firstRain startup.  In high school, I ran a popular online BBS service.  Before that I played the violin.

I have a BSE in Computer Science, Magna Cum Laude, from Princeton.  My senior thesis presented highly parallel algorithms for factoring gigantic polynomials and their application to encryption and watermarking in digital signals.  I also have an MS in Computer Science from Stanford, which I received for passing the Doctoral Comprehensive and Qualifying Examinations.

Journal Articles

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.

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.

Conference Papers

Laser Perception and Model Building

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.  [Oral Presentation.]

Velocity Control

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.

Computer Vision

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.  [Oral Presentation.]

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

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.  [Oral Presentation.]

Robotic Systems

M. Montemerlo, S. Thrun, H. Dahlkamp, D. Stavens, and S. Strohband.  “Winning the DARPA Grand Challenge with an AI Robot.”  In Proceedings of American Association of Artificial Intelligence 2006 (AAAI06).  Boston, USA.  [Oral Presentation.]

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.

Other Publications and Demonstrations

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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