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∂AIL The Robotics Institute↓Science Hall↓Carnegie-Mellon University
↓Pittsburgh, PA  l5213∞

To Whom It May Concern:

	Dr. Hans Moravec, who finished his Ph. D. dissertation in Spring
1980 under my direction, has outstanding qualifications as a researcher
in computer science, especially in its applied aspects.

	His dissertation concerned the control of a vehicle
using a television camera to transmit pictures to a computer
and a program in the computer to find obstacles to the motion
of the vehicle and determine a path to a goal and transmit
commands to the vehicle that automatically steered it to the
goal avoiding the obstacles.  While computer scientists have
set this as a goal for almost 20 years, Moravec's program is the
first  to accomplish it in an environment that includes ordinary
objects as obstacles.  This work involved carefully optimizing
programs to make them run as fast as possible and required patiently
overcoming many difficulties with equipment built on an
extremely low budget.

	Moravec's work on nonsynchronous  skyhooks showed the
ability to overcome mathematical difficulties and an imaginative
approach to space transportation systems.

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