Hans Peter Moravec (also known as Hans Moravec; born November 30, 1948, in Kautzen, Allied-occupied Austria) is an Austrian-born Canadian computer scientist and an adjunct faculty member at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, U.S., who has also been affiliated with Stanford University.^[13] He completed a BSc at Acadia University, an MSc at the University of Western Ontario, and a PhD at Stanford University in 1980 under advisor John McCarthy with the dissertation "Obstacle avoidance and navigation in the real world by a seeing robot rover" (https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/848476).

Known for his work in computer science, robotics, and artificial intelligence, as well as his writings on the impact of technology, Moravec is also a futurist whose publications and predictions frequently focus on transhumanism. He developed techniques in computer vision for determining the region of interest (ROI) in a scene. His notable concepts and contributions include Moravec's corner detector, Moravec's paradox, the Bush robot, occupancy grid mapping, quantum suicide and immortality, the rotating skyhook, the Rotovator, and the Stanford Cart.

Moravec attended Loyola College in Montreal for two years and transferred to Acadia University, where he received his BSc in mathematics in 1969. He received his MSc in computer science in 1971 from the University of Western Ontario. He then earned a PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 1980 for the Stanford Cart, a TV-equipped robot remotely controlled by a large computer that was able to negotiate cluttered obstacle courses.^[34]

In 1980, Moravec joined the newly established Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon as a research scientist, becoming a research professor in 1995 and serving as an adjunct professor at the institute since 2005.^[13,1] Another achievement in robotics was the discovery of new approaches for robot spatial representation, such as 3D occupancy grids, and he also developed the idea of bush robots.

In 2003, Moravec cofounded Seegrid Corporation of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a robotics company with one of its goals being to develop a fully autonomous robot capable of navigating its environment without human intervention.^[2] He is also somewhat known for his work on space tethers.^[3]

Hans Moravec has made concrete predictions regarding the future of intelligence by estimating the computational cost, measured in instructions per second, of various operations of human intelligence and comparing it with the future of computer computational power as predicted by Moore's law. In When will computer hardware match the human brain (1998), he estimated that human brains operate at about 10^{14} instructions per second, and that, if Moore's law continues, a computer with the same speed would cost only 1000 USD (1997 dollars) in the mid-2020s, concluding that "computers suitable for humanlike robots will appear in the 2020s".^[35]

In his 1988 book Mind Children, Moravec outlines Moore's law and predictions about the future of artificial life.^[6] In this regard, he outlines a timeline and scenario in which robots will evolve into a new series of artificial species starting around 2030–2040.^[9,7]

Moravec also outlined the "neural substitution argument" in Mind Children, published seven years before David Chalmers published a similar argument in his paper "Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia", which is sometimes cited as the source of the idea. The neural substitution argument states that if each neuron in a conscious brain can be replaced successively by an electronic substitute with the same behavior as the neuron it replaces, then a biological consciousness would be transferred seamlessly into an electronic computer, thus proving that consciousness does not depend on biology and can be treated as an abstract computable process.

In Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, published in 1999, Moravec further considers the implications of evolving robot intelligence, generalizing Moore's law to technologies predating the integrated circuit, and extrapolating it to predict a coming "mind fire" of rapidly expanding superintelligence. Arthur C. Clarke wrote about the book: "Robot is the most awesome work of controlled imagination I have ever encountered: Hans Moravec stretched my mind until it hit the stops."^[10] David Brin also praised the book, remarking: "Moravec blends hard scientific practicality with a prophet's far-seeing vision."^[10] On the other hand, the book was reviewed less favorably by Colin McGinn for The New York Times. McGinn wrote, "Moravec ... writes bizarre, confused, incomprehensible things about consciousness as an abstraction, like number, and as a mere "interpretation" of brain activity. He also loses his grip on the distinction between virtual and real reality as his speculations spiral majestically into incoherence."^[10]

In 1988, Hans Moravec published "Mind Children" through Harvard University Press. On June 15, 1988, Hans P. Moravec published "Sensor Fusion in Certainty Grids for Mobile Robots" in AI Magazine. In 1998, Hans Moravec published "When will computer hardware match the human brain" in the Journal of Evolution and Technology. In 1999, Hans P. Moravec published "Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind" with Oxford University Press. Also in 1999, Hans Moravec published "Rise of the Robots" in Scientific American.

External links related to Hans Moravec include his official website at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Center, his webpage at the Robotics Institute, and his official biography page. Available publications and reports include the Moravec Bush Robot Final Report, Mind Children, and the March 23, 2009 work Rise of the Robots--The Future of Artificial Intelligence. Interviews with Moravec feature a discussion on technical progress and artificial intelligence, as well as a NOVA online interview conducted in October 1997.