Sertac Karaman: Robots That Fly and Robots That Drive | Lex Fridman Podcast #97

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

May 20, 2020

Duration

1h 22m

Channel

Lex Fridman Podcast

Watch on YouTube

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📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

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:

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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/ PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41 OUTLINE: 0:00 - Introduction 1:44 - Autonomous flying vs autonomous driving 6:37 - 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 CONNECT:

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🎤 SPEAKERS

• Lex Fridman

  host

• Sertac Karaman

  guest

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Lex Fridman Podcast, featuring Lex Fridman and Sertac Karaman, Sertac Karaman: Robots That Fly and Robots That Drive | Lex Fridman Podcast #97 explores sertac Karaman maps our robotic future: cars, drones, society, tradeoffs Lex Fridman and MIT professor/Optimus Ride co‑founder Sertac Karaman discuss the technical and societal challenges of deploying robots that both drive and fly. They contrast autonomous cars versus drones at scale, exploring perception, simulation, human behavior modeling, and the role of machine learning. Karaman explains Optimus Ride’s geo‑fenced, human‑in‑the‑loop autonomy strategy and contrasts it with Tesla’s and Waymo’s approaches, including safety, business models, and data. The conversation closes on high‑speed autonomous drone racing, hardware–software co‑design, and Bellman’s equation as a foundational yet computationally daunting idea in decision‑making.

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