Eric Krotkov

Dr. Eric Krotkov serves as the Chief Science Officer of the Toyota Research Institute, where he directs exploratory research, Accelerated Materials Discovery and Design, and the University AI Research program. Until May 2019, he led TRI’s robotics research activities.

Before joining Toyota, Dr. Krotkov founded Griffin Technologies, a consulting and software firm specializing in robotics and machine perception. From 2001 to 2015, Griffin consulted on robotics and for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and other Government agencies.

From 1999 to 2001, Dr. Krotkov served as Vice President for Software at Cytometrics, a medical imaging technology start-up. Responsible for image analysis research and for product software, he helped the company grow from 10 people to 125.

From 1997 to 1999, Dr. Krotkov served as a program manager at DARPA, where he created the Tactical Mobile Robotics (TMR) program. The TMR program developed man-packable robots used for defusing road-side bombs in areas of armed conflict including Iraq and Afghanistan, and made early investments in Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). Dr. Krotkov led other programs developing automation systems for surface ships and navigation systems for submarines.

From 1988 to 1997, as a faculty member of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. Krotkov taught and researched computer vision, machine perception, and mobile robotics, with a focus on planetary rovers.

Dr. Krotkov earned his Ph.D. degree in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania, for pioneering work in active computer vision. Dr. Krotkov earned his B.A. degree magna cum laude from Haverford College.