Ryan M. Eustice

Ryan M. Eustice (born 1976) is an American roboticist, and the Senior Vice President of Human-centric AI and Technology Adoption at the Toyota Research Institute (TRI). He is also a Professor of Robotics and Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering at the University of Michigan.

Eustice received his Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University in 1998 and his Doctoral Degree in Ocean Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Ocean Engineering in 2005, and then served as Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Johns Hopkins University for a year.

Eustice is best known for his work in advancing large-scale simultaneous localization and mapping, including visual mapping of the RMS Titanic. He established the Perceptual Robotics Laboratory (PeRL) in the Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering Department at the University of Michigan. He was a founding and core faculty member in the creation and launch of the UM Robotics Institute and its associated PhD and MS programs in Robotics.

Eustice has published over 160 technical papers in the field of robotics with over 9300 citations. He won the ONR Young Investigator and NSF CAREER Awards, and best paper of the year award in 2006 in IEEE Transactions on Robotics. He also was a finalist in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge with team IVS.