Hans Moravec

Hans Peter Moravec (born November 30, 1948) is an Austrian born Canadian computer scientist known for his work in robotics and artificial intelligence. He developed the Moravec corner detector, an early feature detection algorithm for computer vision, formulated what is now called Moravec's paradox, the observation that high level reasoning requires relatively little computation while low level sensorimotor skills require enormous computational resources, and pioneered occupancy grid mapping techniques for robot navigation, building the Stanford Cart, a vision equipped robot capable of navigating around obstacles autonomously. He joined Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute in 1980 as a research scientist, was promoted to research professor in 1995, and has served as adjunct faculty since 2005, and in 2003 he cofounded the robotics company Seegrid Corporation, which develops autonomous navigation systems. As a futurist he is also known for transhumanist predictions about the future of artificial intelligence, set out in his books 'Mind Children' (1988) and 'Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind' (1999).