CS Colloquia: Autonomous Planetary Exploration using Irregular Triangular Mesh

Title: Autonomous Planetary Exploration using Irregular Triangular MeshSpeaker: Dr. Ioannis Rekleitis (CSA)ABSTRACT:
In this talk, I am going to present work done
at the Canadian Space Agency. In particular, our approach to planetary
exploration together with the challenges we face is going to be discussed.
Our objective is autonomous over-the-horizon navigation using a laser
based vision sensor. With the term over-the-horizon, we mean locations
beyond the sensor's reach. Central to our efforts is the task of
developing the autonomous capabilities of space robotic systems and in
particular of planetary rovers. In order for a rover to be fully
autonomous it has to be able to sense its environment, reason about the
terrain it faces, plan a path, and navigate safely along the planned
trajectory. In order to avoid the problems of harsh lighting conditions
and to produce scientific valuable topographical maps in medium scale, we
have selected the use of a laser based vision sensor. In this part of the
talk I am going to present our successful autonomous
experiments in over-the-horizon navigation in CSA's Mars-like terrain.BIO:
Ioannis Rekleitis is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Canadian Space Agency
and Adjunct Professor at the School of Computer Science, McGill University.
Between 2002
and 2003, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carnegie Mellon University
in the Sensor Based Planning Lab with Professor Howie Choset. He was
granted his Ph.D. from the School of Computer Science, McGill University,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 2002 under the supervision of Professors
Gregory Dudek and Evangelos Milios. Thesis title: "Cooperative
Localization and Multi-Robot Exploration". He finished his M.Sc. in McGill
University in the field of Computer Vision in 1995. He was granted his
B.Sc. in 1991 from the Department of Informatics, University of Athens,
Greece. His Research has focused on mobile robotics and in particular in
the area of cooperating intelligent agents with application to multi-robot
cooperative localization, mapping, exploration and coverage. His interests
extend to computer vision and sensor networks.

Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: CS Colloquia