Events Calendar

Center of Autonomy and AI, Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of Things, and Ming Hsieh Institute Seminar Series

Speaker: Hayk Martiros, Skydio

Talk Title: Frontiers of Autonomous Flight and Real-Time 3D Reconstruction

Series: Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things

Abstract: At Skydio, we ship autonomous robots that are flown at scale in unknown environments every day by our customers to capture incredible video, automate dangerous inspections, build digital twins, and protect the lives of soldiers and first responders. These robots operate intelligently and make decisions at high speed using their onboard cameras and algorithms. We've invested a decade of R&D into handling complex visual scenarios and building a robust pipeline for visual navigation, obstacle avoidance, and rapid trajectory planning. On top of that, we're building a rich ecosystem of real-time 3D reconstruction technology to enable 360 global localization and map building on our drones.

During the talk, I will discuss the technology and impact of our core navigation stack and 3D Scan technology, and what research frontiers lie ahead. I plan to share visual examples of the algorithms in action, and connect to how these products solve pressing global challenges and enable next-generation operations across multiple industries. I will also introduce SymForce, our library for fast symbolic computation, code generation, and nonlinear optimization. This library powers many of our algorithms, and we have just published and open-sourced it as a contribution to the robotics community.

Biography: Hayk is a roboticist leading the autonomy group at Skydio, building robust visual autonomy to enable the positive impact of drones. Hayk has worked at Skydio since 2015 and was one of its first employees, where he contributed to all of Skydio's core autonomy systems. He now focuses on technical management of world-class engineers and researchers. Hayk's technical interests are in computer vision, deep learning, nonlinear optimization, systems architecture, and symbolic computation. His previous works include novel hexapedal robots, collaboration between robot arms, micro-robot factories, solar panel farms, and self-balancing motorcycles. Hayk was born in Yerevan, Armenia and grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska. He did his undergraduate study at Princeton University and graduate study at Stanford University.

Host: Somil Bansal, somilban@usc.edu

Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ySGInGwKRKKHX7NHJwTk3Q

Location: Online

WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ySGInGwKRKKHX7NHJwTk3Q

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Talyia Whtie