Seth Jared Teller (May 28, 1964 – July 1, 2014) was an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

and professor at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

, whose research interests included

computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...

, sensor networks, and

robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

. In his Argus and Rover projects of the late 1990s, Teller was an early pioneer in the use of mobile cameras and geolocation to build three-dimensional models of cities.

Early life

Teller's parents are Joan Teller and Samuel H. Teller of Bolton, Connecticut; Samuel Teller is a senior judge in the

Connecticut Superior Court The Connecticut Superior Court is the state trial court of general jurisdiction. It hears all matters other than those of original jurisdiction of the Probate Court, and hears appeals from the Probate Court. The Superior Court has 13 judicial distr ...

in Rockville. Teller received his undergraduate degree from the

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Epis ...

, and a Ph.D. from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1992. His dissertation, ''Visibility Computations in Densely Occluded Polyhedral Environments'', was supervised by

Carlo H. Séquin Carlo Heinrich Séquin (born October 30, 1941) is a professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley in the United States. Séquin is recognized as one of the pioneers in processor design. Séquin has worked with compute ...

Academic career

He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Computer Science Institute of the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...

and

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

's Computer Science Department. Teller was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship by the

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is an American philanthropic nonprofit organization. It was established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., then-president and chief executive officer of General Motors. The Sloan Foundation makes grants to support or ...

in 1997. Teller was heading the Robotics, Vision, and Sensor Networks group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, conducting robotics and artificial intelligence research on developing robots with situational awareness. His work involved, in particular, creating various

assistive technology Assistive technology (AT) is a term for assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for people with disabilities and the elderly. Disabled people often have difficulty performing activities of daily living (ADLs) independently, or even with ...

robots and devices for people with disabilities. Teller's robotics projects included "a robotic, voice-controlled wheelchair, a wearable device for visually-impaired people that provides them with information about their surroundings, a self-driving car and an unmanned forklift". He also worked on developing technology for reducing the danger of first responders being hit by the passing vehicles while stopped to deal with highway accidents. Teller was part of the MIT group developing software for a DoD robot, "Atlas", in the

DARPA Robotics Challenge The DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) was a prize competition funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Held from 2012 to 2015, it aimed to develop semi-autonomous ground robots that could do "complex tasks in dangerous, degraded, ...

competition. Earlier, Teller's robotic car competed in the 2007

DARPA Urban Challenge The third driverless car competition of the DARPA Grand Challenge was commonly known as the DARPA Urban Challenge. It took place on November 3, 2007 at the site of the now-closed George Air Force Base (currently used as Southern California Logist ...

competition. In 2015, the Robotics Science and Systems Foundation established a Best Systems Paper Award in honor of Teller.

Personal life and death

Seth Teller married Rachel Zimmerman, a journalist from New York, in September 2002. They had two daughters. Teller was involved in neighborhood activism in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

and helped create the Neighborhood Association of East Cambridge. Seth Teller died on July 1, 2014, at the age of 50. The official cause of death was ruled a suicide, with the cause of death listed as "

blunt trauma Blunt trauma, also known as blunt force trauma or non-penetrating trauma, is physical traumas, and particularly in the elderly who fall. It is contrasted with penetrating trauma which occurs when an object pierces the skin and enters a tissue ...

to head and torso."

References

External links

Home page
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Seth J. Teller
at the Mathematics Genealogy Project {{DEFAULTSORT:Teller, Seth J. 1964 births 2014 deaths American roboticists Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Sloan Research Fellows Suicides in Massachusetts 20th-century American scientists 21st-century American scientists American computer scientists University of California, Berkeley alumni 2014 suicides MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory people Suicides in the United States