Steven M. LaValle

"I was born in 1968 and grew up in and around St. Louis, USA. My loving parents were often overwhelmed because I asked them questions continuously to the point of exhaustion. As a child I was inspired by the space age, with Kubrick and Clarke's 2001 exciting me with dreams of a future full of space exploration and intelligent machines (HAL 9000). No one in my family had gone to college, and nearly everyone around me was skeptical about higher education (why would you let them "educate the brains out of you?" or "After that, he ain't got no more common sense."). This made it seem nearly impossible to get on track for helping build that envisioned future. Also, while I was growing up, the space age was slowly disintegrating."

"In the early 1980s, I spent much of my spare time in video arcades and on the Atari 2600 home console. It blew my mind when I heard that a kid up the street had a computer and it could be used to "program his own" video games. I quickly read a book and started programming regularly on a display TI 99/4A at Kmart. I couldn't believe that I could make this machine do whatever I wanted! Eventually, I scrounged up enough money to get the cheapest home computer (TS 1000 with 2k memory), and when I turned 16, I worked lousy food service jobs all summer to buy a Commodore 64. This allowed me write all kinds of programs, both in BASIC and machine language, with my favorite still being to make video games. At the same time, this activity, along with some inspiring teachers, gave me enough confidence to go from being a terrible student in high school to being the top student in every subject. This required a huge amount of work and determination. I think this made me not very popular among some people who came from more educated and wealthy families."

"Near the end of high school, I still believed that engineers mostly drive locomotives, but my guidance counselor pointed out that with my interests in math, science, and computers, I should probably be an electrical or computer engineer. He then showed me a college guide to convince me that some school in Missouri was one of the "top" (it wasn't listed there), and I looked over his shoulder and saw the top 3 schools listed as "MIT", "Stanford", and "Illinois". He didn't seem to know anything about "Illinois", but I made it my mission to learn about it. I figured that MIT and Stanford were only for rich people from another planet, but Illinois happened to be the name of that state on the other side of the Mississippi River from St. Louis. I soon realized that "Illinois" was UIUC, which was actually the home of the fictional HAL 9000 Computer from 2001! It was to be completed in 1992 (movie) or 1997 (book), which meant I had a chance to help realize at least part of the glorious future of that movie. It took me a couple of years of complicated scheming to borrow money in every way possible to cover the triple out-of-state tuition rate. When I finally figured it out, I had to personally petition to UIUC Engineering Dean to even be allowed to apply as an out-of-state transfer student, and they said I was the only one they let in over the past decade. Persistence! I then fought for two more years to get all prior credits transferred, and finally graduated as one of the top students from Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1989."

"The reason I included the bits above is to explain why I always have strong empathy for people who have struggled because they are not part of the usual group in power. In my case, it was mostly about coming from a poorer, working-class family. Doing something smart would often lead to bullying. I could feel people having contempt for me as I succeeded and maybe even outperformed them, when based on my way of speaking, clothing, or whatever else, I should have been easily beaten. I really didn't care for competition; I just wanted to ensure I could be in a place where I could work with very smart, open-minded people. I am certain that others who struggle with additional issues based on race, gender, sexuality, disabilities, foreign nationality, and so on, face these problems and more. I had to learn how to speak and act differently to fit into the higher levels of society, but to this day I continue to have feelings of impostor syndrome. If you know what I am talking about, then please be sympathetic and support each other (and not only the ones in your own group)!"

"Around 2012, I started to get the sense that robotics as a field was gradually becoming less interested in fundamental research, and many researchers were insisting that all work should be experimental and practical. Based on my background described above, I have tended to be respectful and supportive to all communities, which made this trend disheartening. On the other hand, I thought that if one was to do something very practical, then why not just build a product in industry? Otherwise, I could not see the point of being in academia. So, I gave it at try..."

"In September 2012, I got an email out of the blue from Jack McCauley, from a VR company that was founded two months earlier by a 19-year-old named Palmer Luckey. Oculus VR had just closed a successful Kickstarter campaign and needed to make head tracking work for the Oculus Rift in a hurry. Jack was googling for things like "quaternions" and "Euler angles" and found my Planning Algorithms book. I was just about to refer them to some industry-oriented colleagues, but contemplated my family financial worries, including paying for my eventual children's university tuition, retirement funds, and rising medical costs. I naively thought a successful startup could fix that. Before too long, I was their chief scientist, where I developed patented tracking technology for consumer virtual reality, and led a team of perceptual psychologists to provide principled approaches to virtual reality system calibration, health and safety, and the design of comfortable user experiences. By March 2014, Facebook agreed to buy the company for $3 billion. I guess I was lucky in my first industry experience! The overall story is nicely told in this book by Blake Harris."

"The unbelievable Oculus success also opened many doors, and I had the opportunity to get to know people I never would have met before, including CEOs, venture capitalists, serial entrepreneurs, billionaires, politicians, and Hollywood people. At the same time, I returned to UIUC to continue my tenured position. I was so excited about the consumer VR revolution that I started a new course and wrote a VR book based on it. The key insight was that understanding human perception and physiology is critical to engineering of VR systems and experiences. Thus, the course and book provide a unique integration of these subjects. A version of the course was recorded by NPTEL when I visited IIT Madras in 2015 and is available online."

"In 2016, I was approached by Huawei to be their Chief Scientist and Vice President for VR/AR/MR consumer products. I proposed building a big research center, in the UIUC Research Park, which would be a joint effort between the University of Illinois and Huawei. Both parties were excited, and after a year of preparation, I joined Huawei while retaining a part-time UIUC position. Like many US universities, UIUC had taken in many thousands of high-paying Chinese students in recent years (presumably to help with rising costs and the lack of tax funding). These students were absolutely shocked and thrilled that I was leading this effort, bridging the gaps between China and the US. Needless to say this was eventually doomed in 2017 amid rising nationalism, the eventual US-China trade war, and Huawei being put on the entity list. I nevertheless had a wonderful time working in Huawei and learned so much about consumer product development. I met many hard working, kind, and intellectually interesting people, and thoroughly enjoyed the culture in Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Hangzhou."

"After the industry experiences, I could see startling differences between the academic and business worlds. I was most comfortable in universities, where I was able to freely learn, grow, and openly share whatever I know with people around me. In industry, information is protected, which leads to complicated games and strategies for gaining power based on who knows what. It is a difficult place to be if you enjoy sharing your knowledge and understanding, and generally helping people with their projects. I also found the Dunning-Kruger effect to cause serious problems in industry, especially when people don't know what they don't know, but have massive power over others and company directions. Both worlds clearly play important roles, but I learned that a university research environment makes me the happiest. I feel very lucky to have been able to try both at fairly high levels."

"One "occupational hazard" of being a professor is exposure to various countries, cultures, and people from all over the world. I was very fortunate to visit a few dozen countries, often hosted by people who have the same professional interests. This made me wonder what my life would be like if I had grown up there. I became attracted to Poland, where I have family heritage, and then Nordic countries. I was especially attached to Finland after teaching a short course at the University of Vaasa in 2007; I was invited by Pekka Isto, a Finnish motion planning expert."

"In 2012-2013, I came with my family to Oulu for a sabbatical to write books and get to know Finland better. After living there for nine months, we came to deeply appreciate Finnish culture and lifestyle. It seemed that Finland naturally fit my personality. People are respectful of each other and generally cooperate in maintaining a safe, responsible, and fair society. Modesty and respect for cultural differences around the world are strongly emphasized. Education and educators are highly respected. I thought it would be perfect for raising my children, with safe, playful, and nurturing infrastructure, and where good health care and education are free rights of residents (private universities are even illegal). Relating to my profession, there is strong interest in developing advanced technology while also being respectful of nature, the environment, and wellbeing. These are the values that suit me well, and that I want my family to learn. In 2018, I was invited to become a professor at the University of Oulu, and I could not be happier. I am currently co-leading the Perception Engineering Group, which pursues problems in virtual reality, robotics, and telepresence. The university made a nice video about me, and a Finnish newspaper explains more about why I moved to Oulu. I am also involved in helping the industrial ecosystem in Finland, especially in virtual reality and its various flavors (VR, AR, MR, XR, ...)."