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Steven Waslander

Professor

Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, Institute for Aerospace Studies

Orcid identifier0000-0003-4217-4415
  • Professor
    Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, Institute for Aerospace Studies
  • University of Toronto, Institute for Aerospace Studies, 4925 Dufferin St., Toronto, Ontario, M3H 5T6, Canada

BIO

Prof. Steven Waslander is a leading authority on autonomous aerial and ground vehicles, including multirotor drones and autonomous driving vehicles. Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) and multi-vehicle systems. He received his B.Sc.E.in 1998 from Queen’s University, his M.S. in 2002 and his Ph.D. in 2007, both from Stanford University in Aeronautics and Astronautics, where as a graduate student he created the Stanford Testbed of Autonomous Rotorcraft for Multi-Agent Control (STARMAC), the world’s most capable outdoor multi-vehicle quadrotor platform at the time. He was a Control Systems Analyst for Pratt & Whitney Canada from 1998 to 2001. He was recruited to Waterloo from Stanford in 2008, where he founded and directs the Waterloo Autonomous Vehicle Laboratory (WAVELab), extending the state of the art in autonomous drones and autonomous driving through advances in localization and mapping, object detection and tracking, integrated planning and control methods and multi-robot coordination. In 2018, he joined the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS), and founded the Toronto Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (TRAILab). He is an active member of the University of Toronto Robotics Institute, for which he acts as Chair of the Partner Consortium Committee.

Prof. Waslander’s innovations were recognized by the Ontario Centres of Excellence Mind to Market award for the best Industry/Academia collaboration (2012, with Aeryon Labs), best paper and best poster awards at the Computer and Robot Vision Conference (2018), and through two Outstanding Performance Awards, and two Distinguished Performance Awards while at the University of Waterloo. His work on autonomous vehicles has resulted in the Autonomoose, the first autonomous vehicle created at a Canadian University to drive on public roads. His insights into autonomous driving have been featured in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, National Post, the Rick Mercer Report, and on national CBC Radio. He is Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, has served as the General Chair for the International Autonomous Robot Racing Competition (IARRC 2012-15), as the program chair for the 13th and 14th Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV 2016-17), and as the Competitions Chair for the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2017).

MEDIA

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ACADEMIC POSITIONS

  • Professor
    University of Toronto, Institute for Aerospace Studies, Toronto, Canada1 Jul 2022 - present
  • Associate Professor
    University of Toronto, Institute for Aerospace Studies, Toronto, Canada1 May 2018 - 30 Jul 2022
  • Associate Professor
    University of Waterloo, Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, Waterloo, Canada1 Jul 2015 - 1 Apr 2018
  • Assistant Professor
    University of Waterloo, Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, Waterloo, Canada1 Jul 2008 - 1 Jun 2015
  • Postdoctoral Scholar
    Stanford University, Stanford, United States1 Jun 2007 - 1 Jun 2008

NON-ACADEMIC POSITIONS

  • Director
    University of Toronto, Toronto Robotics and AI Laboratory, Toronto, Canada1 May 2018 - present

DEGREES

  • PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics
    Stanford University, Stanford, United States2007
  • Master's in Aeronautics and Astronautics
    Stanford University, Stanford, United States2002
  • Bachelor's in Applied Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering
    Queen's University, Kingston, Canada1998

INSTITUTIONAL STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

  • Robotics Institute
  • Data Sciences Institute (DSI)