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Edwin Brock Olson
Born (1977-05-03) 3 May 1977 (age 48)
Hennepin County, Minnesota, US
EducationMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MEng,PhD)
Known for
Scientific career
FieldsRobotics
ThesisRobust and Efficient Robotic Mapping (2008)
Doctoral advisorJohn J. Leonard Seth Teller
Websiteapril.eecs.umich.edu/people/ebolson/

Edwin Olson (born 3 May 1977) is an American computer scientist and an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan. He is the director of the APRIL robotics lab (Autonomy, Perception, Robotics, Interfaces, and Learning). He is also CEO of May Mobility, which develops driverless shuttle vehicles.

Early life

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Olson was born Edwin Brock Olson on 3 May 1977, and his birth was registered in Hennepin County, Minnesota. Olson was born to Dorothy Elaine Brock and Ebert Duane Olson of Bloomington Minnesota. Olson grew up in nearby Bloomington.[citation needed]

Education

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Olson attended JF Kennedy High School in Bloomington where he was captain of the math team, a student attorney for the state finalist mock trial team, an editor of the school yearbook, captain of the quiz bowl team, and co-founder of a school newspaper.[1]

In 2000, he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The following year, Olson gained a Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his thesis was Otto: A Low-Cost Robotics Platform for Research and Education[2] and he was advised by Lynn Andrea Stein [3] (who was then Associate professor in the EECS Department and at the AI Laboratory and the Laboratory for Computer Science).

In 2008, Olson was awarded a PhD in Computer Science and Engineering at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). His thesis was Robust and Efficient Robotic Mapping.[4][5] Olson was advised by John J. Leonard (Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering) and Seth J. Teller (Professor of Computer Science and Engineering).

As of December 2024, his thesis has 90 citations.[6] His research focused on scalable Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithms and SLAM-aware exploration.

Honors and awards

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Olson received the Morris Wellman Faculty Development Assistant Professor in 2014 which is awarded to a junior faculty member in Computer Science and Engineering to recognize outstanding contributions to teaching and research at the University of Michigan. [7]

Olson received the DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2013 for Mutual Modeling for Human/Robot Teaming with Minimal Communications.[8] The award was established to identify and engage with rising research stars in junior faculty positions across US academic institutions. The award included access to the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center (MUTC) near Butlerville, Indiana, a 1,000-acre urban training facility used by DARPA for developmental and evaluation testing. Much of the foundational work at this facility was built on in later development of autonomous vehicles at Toyota and May Mobility.

Olson received the Frederick C. Hennie III [9] Teaching Award for Teaching Excellence whilst at the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.[10] Frederick C. Hennie III was Professor Emeritus in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) until his death on October 23, 2023. He served as a full professor in the department since 1968 and an Executive Officer for 25 years, from 1971. This award led to further promotion at CSAIL to Associate Professor.

Olson received the New Enterprise Forum Entrepreneur of the Year from The Michigan Venture Capital Association in their 17th awards year.[11] "[The award] is given to an individual who is not only changing the world in a good way through their entrepreneurial accomplishments but is also inspiring others with their vision, leadership and achievements."[citation needed] The award was established to recognize founders of Michigan-based, venture-backed companies that are a notable part of the State’s entrepreneurial community.[12] The award reflected Olson's establishment of [May Mobility] as an innovator and local employer who attracted capital investment to the region.

Professional career

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Throughout his academic and professional career, Olson has been undertaking key research into autonomous vehicle systems, in association with the University of Michigan and Toyota Research Institute [13] of Ann Arbor.

Olson first addressed the challenge of autonomous vehicles when a grad student, joining an MIT team for MIT’s 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge competition, finishing 4th of six finishers. The competition was a 96 km (60 mi) urban area course, which was to be completed autonomously in less than six hours. Competitors had to obey all traffic regulations whilst negotiating with other traffic and obstacles and merging into traffic as required. As part of Track A of the competition, MIT received US $1-million in funding.

In 2010, Olson led Team Michigan (a collaboration between the University of Michigan's APRIL Lab and Soar Technology, Inc of Ann Arbor MI) to first place in the MAGIC 2010 robotics competition.[14] [15] The Multi Autonomous Ground-robotic International Challenge (MAGIC 2010) was jointly sponsored by the Australian and US Department of Defence. It required teams of robots to act collaboratively in order to perform reconnaissance and dynamic mapping exercises within a 250,000m2 urban indoor/outdoor environment. The robots needed to recognize and log interesting objects with minimal human intervention. Michigan entered the largest team consisting of 14 robots, with Team Michigan winning the first prize of $750,000. Key challenges included penalties for inaccurate dead-reckoning information, access to limited communications methods, and identifying and moving lethal obstacles. Olson’s team was noted for their ability to maintain consistent coordinate frames and elicit critically useful information from the human operators while simultaneously minimizing the human workload.

In a 2016 interview with Brad Plumer of VOX,[16] Olson described four key tasks that fully self-driving cars would need to demonstrate:
1) Understanding the environment around them
2) Understanding why the people they encounter on the road are behaving the way they are
3) Deciding how to respond when the action protocol depends on factors like the order in which the vehicle arrives at a junction
4) Communicating with other people/vehicles

The Toyota Research Institute of North America (TRINA) [17] announced in early 2016 that they were establishing a new facility at Ann Arbor Michigan to join their existing facilities at Stanford and MIT. As part of a $1-billion venture investment intended to accelerate autonomous vehicle technology, they recruited Professors Ryan Eustice and Olson, who would retain part-time faculty positions at University of Michigan, and committed $22 million of initial funding to develop the Mcity test facility located on the North Campus of The University of Michigan.

Olson was also Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and director of the APRIL Robotics Lab.[18] Olson commented, "Sensor hardware and algorithms are improving at a tremendous pace. TRI researchers will push the frontier even further, resulting in safer vehicles and more helpful robots in the home."[citation needed] Initially there would be a staff of 15, with a target of 50.. [19] TRINA has filed around 1200 patents since 2008. [20]

In 2017, Olson delivered a keynote on Reliability and Robustness of Autonomous Systems at an EEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada.[21] He addressed the gap between demo and real-world deployment for autonomous vehicles, when he explained that reliability wasn’t a simple case of eliminating bugs and working boundary conditions but rather a gulf that drives a need for fundamentally different ways of building these systems.

In January 2017, Olson, along with Allsyn Malek and Steve Vozar founded May Mobility in Ann Arbor, Michigan to develop autonomous technologies that provide transportation solutions for cities, campuses and similar environments targeted towards municipal and corporate requirements. As a safety-first solution, it uses a proprietary Multi-Policy Decision Making (MPDM) system as the core of its product.[22]

By the end of 2024, May claimed it had completed more than 400,000 autonomy-enabled rides in public transit applications in the United States and Japan. NTT is a key investor[23] and May Mobility uses partner Toyota’s Sienna Autono-MaaS (Mobility as a service) vehicle,[24] including some customized with ADA-compliant wheelchair ramps and audio and visual cues within the vehicle to boost accessibility.[25]

In episode #196 of Brandon Bartnick’s Future of Mobility podcast, Olson noted the difference between May Mobility’s aims and the robotaxi approach that he claims has no sustainable business model, and that his goals are to end personal car ownership by making public transit a more attractive and efficient option.[26]

The key, Olson said, was using the right vehicle for the right population density in order to provide effective autonomous transportation. As a municipal transportation solution, May is aiming to sign long-term contracts with cities and corporations that would provide a guaranteed revenue stream and highly predictable demand, in comparison with the robotaxi approach of relying on speculative rider revenue.[citation needed]

Selected publications

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  • Olson, Edwin; Leonard, John; Teller, Seth Teller (2006). "Fast iterative alignment of pose graphs with poor initial estimates". Proceedings 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation: 2262–2269. doi:10.1109/ROBOT.2006.1642040. Retrieved 6 May 2025. - selected as a Google Scholar "classic paper" in the robotics field[27]

Patents

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Patents (USPTO [28] and Espacenet [29] Olson has been listed on some 25+ patents, the key patents are listed.

  • 11,269,332. [30]
  • 11,378,399. [31]
  • 11,472,436. [32]
  • 11,525,887. [33]
  • US Patent 11,087,200.[34]
  • US Patent 10,803,745. [35]
  • US Patent 10,969,470. [36]
  • US Patent 10,564,641;[37] 10,962,975;[38] 10,962,974.[39]
  • US Patent 10,614,709.[40]
  • US Patent 10,489,663.[41]
  • US Patent 10,460,053.[42]
  • US Patent 9,934,688.[43]

Personal life

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Olson first explored programming using an Apple IIGS personal computer, initially using BASIC and then in 65816 assembler language.[44] From 1992, he wrote and co-wrote a number of small applications and he credits that experience with building an enduring interest in computer architecture and algorithms.

Olson says has been playing the violin since the age of five, and although he admits to being inconsistently devoted to the instrument, he has previously played with the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies.[45] He then played with the MIT Symphony Orchestra, and was at one time concertmaster at the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra [46] in Massachusetts. He joined the Ypsilanti Symphony Orchestra [47] as a violinist in 2011 and has served as concertmaster there since 2013. In addition to his orchestral work, Olson performs informally and infrequently with various chamber ensembles. He plays a violin that was created by renowned Canadian violin maker Joseph Curtin, now of Ann Arbor Michigan, who is recognized as one of the great contemporary violin makers.[48]

Contributions to technical articles and journals

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Olson has contributed to a number of technical articles and journals. Most notable examples are listed below. Source:[49]

  • Ryan J. Marcotte, Xipeng Wang, Dhanvin Mehta and Edwin Olson. Optimizing Multi-Robot Communication under Bandwidth Constraints. Autonomous Robots 2019.
  • Enric Galceran, Alexander G. Cunningham, Ryan M. Eustice and Edwin Olson. Multipolicy decision-making for autonomous driving via changepoint-based behavior prediction: Theory and ex- periment. Autonomous Robots 2017.
  • Edwin Olson and Pratik Agarwal. Inference on networks of mixtures for robust robot mapping. International Journal of Robotics Research 2013.
  • Albert Huang, David Moore, Matthew Antone, Edwin Olson and Seth Teller. Finding multiple lanes in urban road networks with vision and lidar. Autonomous Robots 2009.
  • J. Leonard, J. How, S. Teller, M. Berger, S. Campbell, G. Fiore, L. Fletcher, E. Frazzoli, A. Huang, S. Karaman, O. Koch, Y. Kuwata, D. Moore, E. Olson, S. Peters, J. Teo, R. Truax, M. Walter, D. Barrett, A. Epstein, K. Maheloni, K. Moyer, T. Jones, R. Buckley, M. Antone, R. Galejs, S. Krishnamurthy and J. Williams. A Perception Driven Autonomous Urban Vehicle. Journal of Field Robotics 2008.

Refereed Conferences

  • Edwin Olson. AXLE: Computationally-efficient trajectory smoothing using factor graph chains. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2021.
  • Maximilian Krogius, Acshi Haggenmiller and Edwin Olson. Flexible Layouts for Fiducial Tags. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2019.
  • Acshi Haggenmiller, Maximilian Krogius and Edwin Olson. Non-parametric Error Modeling for Ultra-wideband Localization Networks. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2019.
  • Dhanvin Mehta, Gonzalo Ferrer and Edwin Olson. Autonomous Navigation in Dynamic Social Environments using Multi-Policy Decision Making. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Con- ference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2016.
  • Enric Galceran, Edwin Olson and Ryan M. Eustice. Augmented vehicle tracking under occlusions for decision-making in autonomous driving . Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2015 .
  • John Wang and Edwin Olson. High-Performance Inertial Measurements Using a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Gyroscopes (RAIG). Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Multisensor Fusion and Integration for Intelligent Systems (MFI) 2015.
  • Alexander G. Cunningham, Enric Galceran, Ryan M. Eustice and Edwin Olson. MPDM: Multi- policy Decision-Making in Dynamic, Uncertain Environments for Autonomous Driving. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2015.
  • Pradeep Ranganathan and Edwin Olson. Gaussian Process for Lens Distortion Modeling. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2012.
  • Edwin Olson. AprilTag: A robust and flexible visual fiducial system. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2011.
  • Yangming Li and Edwin Olson. Structure Tensors for General Purpose LIDAR Feature Extraction. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2011.
  • Maximilian Krogius, Acshi Haggenmiller and Edwin Olson. Decentralized Multi-Policy Decision Making for Communication Constrained Multi-Robot Coordination (Preprint). Preprint 2021.

References

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  1. ^ "Ed's Home Page". www.blisstonia.com.
  2. ^ "APRIL Laboratory APRIL Papers : Autonomy * Perception * Robotics * Interfaces * Learning".
  3. ^ "Lynn Andrea Stein | Olin College of Engineering". www.olin.edu.
  4. ^ "Robust and Efficient Robotic Mapping" (PDF).
  5. ^ Olson, Edwin B. (2008). Robust and efficient robotic mapping (Thesis). Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  6. ^ "Robust and efficient robotic mapping".
  7. ^ "Wellman Professrships | Computer Science and Engineering at Michigan". Computer Science and Engineering.
  8. ^ "DARPA Young Faculty Engage with Next Generation of Army Tech Users | DARPA". www.darpa.mil.
  9. ^ Frederick Hennie III, dedicated architect of MIT EECS, dies at 90. – MIT EECS
  10. ^ "Electrical engineering and computer science". 2 June 2004.
  11. ^ "Awards Celebration and Showcase Presentation | New Enterprise Forum". newenterpriseforum.org.
  12. ^ "Michigan Venture Capital Association Celebrates 17th Entrepreneurial and Investment Successes at 2024 Annual Awards Event". 11 October 2024.
  13. ^ "Homepage | Toyota Research Institute". www.tri.global.
  14. ^ "Winning the MAGIC 2010 Autonomous Robotics Competition".
  15. ^ "Winning the MAGIC 2010 Autonomous Robotics Competition". YouTube. 17 March 2011.
  16. ^ "5 big things still standing between us and a glorious self-driving car future". 21 April 2016.
  17. ^ "Toyota Research Institute of North America (TRINA)".
  18. ^ "APRIL Laboratory APRIL Laboratory : Autonomy * Perception * Robotics * Interfaces * Learning". april.eecs.umich.edu.
  19. ^ Gardner, Greg. "Toyota hires 2 U-M experts, raising self-driving ante". Detroit Free Press.
  20. ^ "Toyota USA | Toyota Operations Map | Design, Engineering & Marketing". www.toyota.com.
  21. ^ "IROS 2017, Vancouver, Canada - Plenaries and Keynotes". ewh.ieee.org.
  22. ^ "May Mobility's Technology". May Mobility.
  23. ^ "NTT".
  24. ^ "Toyota Now Offering the AV-Ready Sienna Autono-MaaS to Automated Driving Developers". Forbes.
  25. ^ Mobility, May. "MAY MOBILITY ADVANCES AV ACCESSIBILITY, LEADS INDUSTRY WITH DEVELOPMENT OF FIRST ADA-COMPLIANT TOYOTA SIENNA AUTONO-MAAS". www.prnewswire.com (Press release).
  26. ^ "#196 – Edwin Olson | May Mobility – The Capital-Efficient Path to Ending Personal Car Ownership".
  27. ^ "Robotics - Classic papers". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 6 May 2025.
  28. ^ "Patent Public Search".
  29. ^ "Espacenet – search results".
  30. ^ "Multi-perspective system and method for behavioral policy selection by an autonomous agent. Vozar, Olson, Voorheis. Mar 8, 2022".
  31. ^ "-performance inertial measurement using a redundant array of inexpensive inertial sensors. Wang, Olson. July 5, 2022".
  32. ^ "Method and system for operating an autonomous agent with incomplete environmental information. Patel, Johnson, Meyer, Olson. October 18, 2022".
  33. ^ "Systems and methods for intelligently calibrating infrastructure devices using onboard sensors of an autonomous agent. Voorheis, Goeddel, Vozar, Olson. December 2022".
  34. ^ "Method and apparatus for constructing informative outcomes to guide multi-policy decision making. E Olson, D Mehta, G Ferrer. 2021".
  35. ^ "Systems and methods for implementing multimodal safety operations with an autonomous agent. S Vozar, E Olson, S Messenger, C Johnson. 2020".
  36. ^ "Systems and methods for intelligently calibrating infrastructure devices using onboard sensors of an autonomous agent. T Voorheis, R Goeddel, S Vozar, E Olson. 2019".
  37. ^ "ulti-perspective system and method for behavioral policy selection by an autonomous agent. S Vozar, E Olson, T Voorheis. 2019".
  38. ^ "ulti-perspective system and method for behavioral policy selection by an autonomous agent. S Vozar, E Olson, T Voorheis. 2019".
  39. ^ "Multi-perspective system and method for behavioral policy selection by an autonomous agent. S Vozar, E Olson, T Voorheis. 2019".
  40. ^ "Systems and methods for implementing multimodal safety operations with an autonomous agent. S Vozar, E Olson, S Messenger, C Johnson. 2019".
  41. ^ "Systems and methods for identifying changes within a mapped environment. E Olson, M James, R Eustice, R Wolcott. 2017".
  42. ^ "Systems and methods for surface property identification using waveform classification. E Olson, M James, R Eustice. 2017".
  43. ^ Vehicle trajectory determination. E Olson, E Galceran, A Cunningham, R Eustice, J McBride. 2015.
  44. ^ "Ed's Nostalgia Collection". www.blisstonia.com.
  45. ^ "Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies". Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies.
  46. ^ "Cambridge Symphony Orchestra". Cambridge Symphony Orchestra.
  47. ^ "Ypsilanti Symphony Orchestra | Community Symphony Orchestra based in Ypsilanti, Michigan". Ypsilanti Symphony Orchestra.
  48. ^ "Top Violin Makers in 2022 | MyLuthier Blog". www.myluthier.co.
  49. ^ "Edwin Olson: Computer Science H-index & Awards - Academic Profile". Research.com.
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