Events Calendar

CS Colloquium: Giuseppe Loianno (U. of Pennsylvania) - Flying Robots: Fast Autonomous Navigation and Physical Interaction

Speaker: Giuseppe Loianno, U. of Pennsylvania

Talk Title: Flying Robots: Fast Autonomous Navigation and Physical Interaction

Series: CS Colloquium

Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium

Flying Robots are starting to play a major role in several tasks such as search and rescue, interaction with the environment, inspection and monitoring.
Unfortunately, their dynamics make them extremely difficult to control and this is particularly true in absence of external positioning systems, such as GPS and motion-capture systems. Additionally, autonomous maneuvers based on onboard sensors are still very slow compared to those attainable with motion capture systems.
It is essential to provide fast autonomous capabilities to Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) to fly in a reliable way in unstructured environments.
This is achieved giving the vehicle, the ability to identify its state, using either absolute and relative asynchronous measurements provided by different sensors. Those have to be fused, exploiting different rates and statistical sensors' properties.
Algorithms that rely on the combination of a camera and IMU, two lightweight and inexpensive sensors, represent a valid solution for autonomous navigation and environment interaction, especially in case of small scale vehicles.
In this talk, I will give an overview of my research activities toward fast autonomous navigation of MAVs, collaboration between multiple aerial vehicles and environment interaction using a camera and IMU as the main sensor modalities, showing how these problems can be even solved by the use of classic consumer electronic devices.

This lecture will be available to stream HERE. Please open in new tab for best results.

Biography: Giuseppe Loianno received B.Sc and M.Sc in Automation Engineering both with honours at University of Naples Federico II in December 2007 and February 2010, respectively. He has been, during the academic year 2008, an exchange student at KTH (Royal Insitute of Technology) in Stockholm.
He developed his master thesis at ETH Zurich at the ASL laboratory focusing on Micro Aerial Vehicles under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Davide Scaramuzza. He received his Ph.D in computer and automatic engineering focusing in Robotics in May 2014 in the PRISMA Lab group, led by Prof. Dr. Bruno Siciliano. From April 2013 he worked as vising Ph.D student for 14 months with the Grasp Lab at University of Pennsylvania, supervised by Prof. Dr. Vijay Kumar and working for 12 months a postdoctoral researcher. He is currently a research scientist. His research interests include visual navigation, sensor fusion and visual servoing for micro aerial vehicles.


Host: CS Department

Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Assistant to CS chair