Event Location: NSH 1305
Bio: Matthew Johnson-Roberson is Assistant Professor of Engineering in the Department of Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. He received a PhD from the University of Sydney in 2010. There he worked on Autonomous Underwater Vehicles for long-term environment monitoring. Upon joining the University of Michigan faculty in 2013, he created the DROP (Deep Robot Optical Perception) Lab, which researches a wide variety of perception problems in robotics including SLAM, 3D reconstruction, scene understanding, data mining, and visualization. He has held prior postdoctoral appointments with the Centre for Autonomous Systems – CAS at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and the Australian Centre for Field Robotics at the University of Sydney. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award (2015).

Abstract: Robust, scalable Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithms support the successful deployment of robots in many real-world applications. Robotic platforms now deliver vast amounts of sensor data from large unstructured environments. In attempting to process and interpret this data, the underwater domain poses many unique challenges. This talk will present recent advances in perception techniques for the generation of 3D reconstructions over tens of thousands of square meters. Topics will include the generation of self-consistent poses, long-term localization, consistency of lighting through an attenuating medium, the visualization of gigapixel textured models using a novel state-of-the-art rendering system, and a crowd sourcing platform using smartphones and tablets to aid in the processing of vast volumes of visual data. The outputs of the proposed techniques will be displayed in real world applications including underwater archeology and marine science. This talk will show results from the monitoring of Australia’s Coral Reefs and the archeological mapping of a 5,000 year-old submerged city. Finally, the talk will look forward towards new work in underwater grasping and manipulation and a proposal for drastic cost reduction in deep water monitoring approaches.