#97 – Sertac Karaman: Robots That Fly and Robots That Drive

Sertac Karaman is a professor at MIT, co-founder of the autonomous vehicle company Optimus Ride, and is one of top roboticists in the world, including robots that drive and robots that fly.

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EPISODE LINKS:
Sertac’s Website: http://sertac.scripts.mit.edu/web/
Sertac’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/sertackaraman
Optimus Ride: https://www.optimusride.com/

This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on ApplePodcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon.

Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

OUTLINE:
00:00– Introduction
01:44– Autonomous flying vs autonomous driving
06:37– Flying cars
10:27– Role of simulation in robotics
17:35– Game theory and robotics
24:30– Autonomous vehicle company strategies
29:46– Optimus Ride
47:08– Waymo, Tesla, Optimus Ride timelines
53:22– Achieving the impossible
53:50– Iterative learning
58:39– Is Lidar is a crutch?
1:03:21– Fast autonomous flight
1:18:06– Most beautiful idea in robotics