Lex Fridman Podcast: #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.

Support this podcast by signing up with these sponsors:

– Cash App – use code “LexPodcast” and download:

– Cash App (App Store): https://apple.co/2sPrUHe

– Cash App (Google Play): https://bit.ly/2MlvP5w

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 Apple Podcasts, 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