Organization founded Otto | ||
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Similar Lior Ron, Travis Kalanick, Sebastian Thrun | ||
Distinguished innovator lecture anthony levandowski project lead google driverless cars
Anthony Levandowski (born March 15, 1980) is an American self-driving car engineer. In 2016 he co-founded Otto, an autonomous trucking company, with Lior Ron, Claire Delaunay and Don Burnette. Prior to Otto, he built the Google self-driving car while working as a co-founder and technical lead on the project. He is known for his work in the advancement of self-driving technology.
Contents
- Distinguished innovator lecture anthony levandowski project lead google driverless cars
- Otto s anthony levandowski on autonomous benefits
- Early life and career
- Recent career
- Lawsuit
- References
Otto s anthony levandowski on autonomous benefits
Early life and career
In 1998 Levandowski entered The University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, California, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. As a freshman, he launched an intranet service from his basement. In 2004 he and fellow UC Berkeley engineers built an autonomous motorcycle, nicknamed Ghostrider, for the DARPA Grand Challenge. The Ghostrider motorcycle competed in the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004 and 2005 and was the only autonomous two-wheeled vehicle in the competition. The motorcycle now resides in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
Recent career
In 2007 Levandowski joined Google to work on Google Street View with Sebastian Thrun, whom he had met at the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. While still working at Google he founded 510 Systems, a mobile mapping start-up that experimented with Lidar technology. Then in 2008 he founded Anthony's Robots to build a self-driving Toyota Prius called the "Pribot." According to The Guardian, it was "a self-driving Toyota Prius with one of the first spinning Lidar laser ranging units, and the first ever to drive on public roads." Google acquired both 510 Systems and Anthony's Robots to advance the development of its self-driving car project. Levandowski worked on Google's self-driving car until January, 2016 when he left to found Otto, a company that makes self-driving kits to retrofit big rig trucks. Quoted in The New York Times, Levandowski said he left Google because he "was eager to commercialize a self-driving vehicle as quickly as possible". Otto launched in May, 2016 and was acquired by Uber in late July, 2016. As part of the acquisition Levandowski assumed leadership of Uber's driverless car operation in addition to his work at Otto.
Lawsuit
According to a February 2017 lawsuit filed by Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc, Levandowski allegedly "downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo’s highly confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and testing documentation" before resigning to found Otto.
