Google Glass and Robotics Innovator Sebastian Thrun (STEM Trailblazer Bios) Paperback – January 1, 2014

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It was an unfortunate accident that prompted Sebastian Thrun to think about developing a self-driving car. His best friend died in an accident and “he wanted to help others from the same fate.” As a young boy in Solingen, Germany, Sebastian’s idea of fun was playing around on his calculator and writing “programs for games he could play and for solving math problems.” He’d often head to a computer store to write code on a display computer, but once that computer was turned off at night, everything he’d worked on disappeared. Not to be deterred, the highly innovative Sebastian developed a shorter code, one that made it easier to work with.And then there was that arcade. There was a game Sebastian was especially enamored with. It was a racing game and he drove that virtual car hard. His father had given him a computer and he drove himself equally hard to recreate and “copy the car game from the arcade.” Success was his after a lot of work! Life wasn’t all fun and games and Sebastian eventually went to college and did surprisingly well. One subject he later studied was “robots and artificial intelligence (AI).” It was at the University of Bonn in Germany that Rhino, “a robot that could learn” came to life. It was only the beginning for Sebastian and he moved to the United States to further his work.At Carnegie Mellon, he became interested in the creation of more effective service robots. One robot Sebastian helped create was Minerva, a robot that had a face that “changed to show [her] moods.” Of course she was a hit, but because he had studied medicine in college, he wanted to “make a robot that could help older people.” The Nursebot Project was born, but then there was Groundhog, “a robot that can travel into unsafe mines.” What next? In this book you’ll also learn about his quest to develop a car that could drive itself, his work with Google Street View, his insistence that people should continue their educations, and last, but not least, Google Glass.This is the amazing story of Sebastian Thrun, the visionary behind Google Glass. Many students are way into exploring not only the inventions, but enjoy looking at the people behind them. Sebastian Thrun is one of those highly innovative individuals young people yearn to learn about. The book has a simple layout with full-color photographs and numerous informative sidebars. For example, the one entitled “Moody Minerva” discusses Minerva, a highly unusual and moody robot. In the back of the book is an index, a glossary, a timeline (1967 to 2013), source notes, and additional recommended book and website resources to explore.STEM TRAILBLAZER BIOS: Alternate Reality Game Designer: Jane McGonigal Astrophysicist and Space Advocate: Neil deGrasse Tyson Flickr Cofounder and Web Community Creator: Caterina Fake Google Glass and Robotics Innovator: Sebastian Thrun iPod and Electronics Visionary: Tony Fadell YouTube Founders: Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim This book courtesy of the publisher.