Field Robotics Center Seminar

Event Location: NSH 1109Bio: David Silver is a PhD candidate at the Robotics Institute, researching robust mobile robot navigation systems. He has a B.S. in Computer Science and a M.S. in Robotics from CMU. Previously, he has worked with the TSLAM and Subterranean Robotics groups at CMU, and the UPI program at NREC. He is [...]

Event Location: NSH 3305Bio: Pearse received the B.S. in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989 and the M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of California, San Diego in 1994. Pearse Ffrench is a project manager and senior technical staff member at Vision Robotics. He has been developing 3-D stereo vision SLAM [...]

Event Location: NSH1109Bio: Uland Wong is an RI PhD candidate in Field Robotics advised by Red Whittaker. His research interests are 3D perception, calibrated imaging in dark environments and exploration robotics. His work has resulted in the development and commercialization of miniature borehole LIDAR and actively-illuminated vision sensors for mapping subterranean voids. He received his [...]

Event Location: NSH 1109Bio: Bryan is a Masters student in the Robotics Institute. He is conducting his thesis research at the National Robotics Engineering Center under the guidance of Dr. Dimi Apostolopoulos and plans to graduate in December 2009. His interests include mobile robot system design, design of mechanisms for controllability, and control for unique [...]

Event Location: NSH 1109Bio: Michael is a Ph.D student at the Robotics Institute.Abstract: Cooperative surveillance using teams of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is a fruitful area of study given the many real-world applications and open research problems it offers. In this talk I will present our vision for such teams in an air-ground collaboration context [...]

Event Location: NSH 1109Bio: Don Burnette is a Ph.D. student at the Robotics Institute. Abstract: I propose a laser based odometry algorithm which utilizes line feature based scan matching to determine the pose of a robot in an unknown, structured environment, while incrementally building a map of that environment. The algorithm is tested on a variety of data sets, using different types of laser range scanners, in various real world environments. The algorithm incrementally generates line-feature based maps in  real-time as the  robot moves throughout the environment, [...]

Event Location: NSH 1109Bio: Alan Kraut is a student in the Robotics Institute, conducting research under David Wettergreen. His current research interests focus on the application of machine learning to computer vision for space robotics. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College in 2008.Abstract: Data about Mars are being [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Abhinav Valada is a Research Assistant in the Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon University. He is working on the Distributed SensorWebs project under Dr. George Kantor. His current research interests focus on algorithms for multi-agent coordination, scheduling and control. He received a Bachelor of Technology degree in Electronics and Instrumentation [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Lyle specializes in perception systems for flying vehicles of all sizes. He has worked as a Research Engineer at the CMU Field Robotics Center for the past five years. He has also worked on perception and mobility systems for robots at JPL and IBM. At Caltech, he completed a B.S. in [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Dr. Bassi is an engineer, researcher, entrepreneur and consultant with a broad experience in automation and business intelligence areas. He graduated from Universidad de Chile (BSc EE, PEE and MSc EE) and University of Southern California (PhD Computer Science). He has held academic positions at the U. of Chile (Dept. Industrial [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Somchaya Liemhetcharat is a Ph.D. student at the Robotics Institute, under Prof. Manuela Veloso. He is interested in multi-robot coordination, in particular the areas of information sharing, role assignment and modeling of capabilities.Abstract: We consider a set of static towers with communication capabilities, but not within range of each other due [...]

Event Location: NSH 3305Bio: William “Red” Whittaker is the Fredkin professor at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. He served on the National Academy of Sciences Space Studies Board. Science Digest named Whittaker one of the top [...]

Event Location: GHC2109

Event Location: NSH3305Bio: Geoffrey A. Hollinger is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Robotic Embedded Systems Laboratory and Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California. He is currently interested in adaptive sensing and distributed coordination for robots operating with limited communication. He has also worked on multi-robot search at Carnegie Mellon University, [...]

Event Location: GHC2109Bio: Stephen is a Project Scientist at the Robotics Institute and was a PostDoc at the RI from 2008-2010. Prior to arriving at the RI he completed his PhD in Australia conducting the research jointly at the Commonwealth Science and Industry Research Organisation and the University of Queensland. He has worked on a [...]

Event Location: NSH1507Bio: Alberto Speranzon received a "Laurea" degree in Computer Engineering from University of Padova, Italy, in November 2000. In May 2006 he received a Ph.D. in Automatic Control from the School of Electrical Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. Between May 2006 and October 2006 he was post-doc at the same institute. [...]

Event Location: 3305 Newell-Simon HallBio: Professor Ana Paiva is a research group leader at INESC-ID and an Associate Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon. She is well known in the area of Virtual Agents, Artificial Intelligence Applied to Education and Affective Computing. After her PhD in the UK (University of Lancaster), she [...]

Event Location: GHC2109Bio: Heather Jones is a PhD student at the Robotics Institute. Before coming to Carnegie Mellon, she earned bachelors degrees in engineering and computer science from Swarthmore College and worked for nearly three years at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Abstract: This talk presents complementary flyover and surface exploration for reconnaissance of planetary point [...]

Event Location: GHC2109Bio: Andrew Chambers is a Masters student at the Robotics Institute, advised by Sanjiv Singh. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California. Before coming to the RI, he worked as an electrical engineer at iRobot in Boston, MA, where he designed hardware for the bomb disposal robots.Abstract: [...]

Event Location: GHC2109Bio: Michael Furlong is a Ph.D candidate in the Field Robotics Center working on science autonomy.Abstract: Pattern cells in area V5/MT represent an intriguing step in the visual hierarchy, whereby neurons become sensitive to global motion, rather than simply to the motion of constituent components, cells in the primary visual cortex (V1). A [...]

Event Location: GHC2109Bio: I hold a PhD in Electrical Engineering and a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Queensland, awarded in 2006 and 2002 respectively. I recently joined the Queensland University of Technology as Lecturer, having previously worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at QUT and before that for three years as a Research [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Richard Volpe is Manager of the Mobility and Robotic Systems Section of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. The section is a team of over 90 robotics engineers doing research and spaceflight implementation of robotic systems for Roving, Digging, Ballooning, Drilling, and other modes of in-situ planetary exploration. In [...]

Event Location: GHC 4307Bio: William “Red” Whittaker is the Fredkin University Professor of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. He has developed dozens of robots, breaking new ground in autonomous vehicles, field robotics, space exploration, mining and agriculture. Whittaker developed the robots that cleaned up the Three-Mile Island nuclear accident. His ground vehicles have driven [...]

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Dr. John Christian is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at West Virginia University (WVU). He is an expert in spacecraft navigation and space systems. Prior to joining WVU, Dr. Christian was an aerospace engineer in the GNC Autonomous Flight Systems Branch at the NASA Johnson [...]

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: James Lee is a Masters student at the Robotics Institute developing algorithms to map subterranean spaces. He received his Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in 2011.Abstract: Robots are the perfect matches for the dull, dangerous, and dirty job of mining. Recent advances in robotics have enabled [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Daniel is a Masters student at the Robotics Institute working on controlled rover descent of lunar craters. He has a Bachelors degree in Mechatronics Engineering.Abstract: Recent efforts in planetary robotic exploration aim toward craters, skylights, and other depressions with challenging terrain conditions. The access to such places requires traversing on extreme [...]

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Florian Adolf is a research scientist at the DLR Institute of Flight Systems in Braunschweig, Germany, where he is the group lead for mission planning and execution systems at the department of Unmanned Aircraft Systems. He joined DLR in 2005 to research automated guidance and decision making systems for use on [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Chen (pronounced “Ken”) is a PhD Candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research focuses on SLAM for micro aerial vehicles. Previously, he worked as an engineer for the Israel CFD center and in Helicopter Simulations at the Aerospace Engineering Department at Technion, Israel. He received his BS and [...]

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Joerg Dittrich is a research scientist and a department head at DLR Braunschweig. DLR is the primary German government funded research organization in the field of aerospace engineering as well as the German space agency, employing around 7000 people across multiple sites in Germany. During his first years at DLR he [...]

Event Location: NSH 1305Bio: Brian Wilcox is the manager of Space Robotics Technology in the Solar System Exploration Directorate and is the Principal Investigator for ATHLETE – the All-Terrain, Hex-Limbed, Extra-Terrestrial Explorer. He was the supervisor of the JPL Robotic Vehicles Group for over 20 years, during which the group was responsible for planetary rover [...]

Event Location: Newell-Simon Hall 1109Bio: Weilin Wang is a doctoral candidate of the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia. He received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from China Agricultural University in 2002 and his M.S. degree in Biological Engineering from the University of Georgia in 2010. His current doctoral research is focused [...]

Event Location: NSH 1305Bio: Issa Nesnas is a principal member of the technical staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the supervisor of the Robotic Mobility group. He is leading research in extreme terrain mobility and microgravity mobility projects, in collaboration with university partners. Prior to that, he led a multi-center project for developing reusable [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Dr. Young-Woo Seo is currently a post-doctoral fellow, working with GM-CMU Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research Lab (AD-CRL) and the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. During his post-doctoral period, he has been working on developing robust perception algorithms for reliable autonomous driving. His tasks involve in developing computer vision algorithm for understanding [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Professor Franz S. Hover is the Finmeccanica Career Development Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Hover earned the B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering at Ohio Northern University, and the S.M. and Sc.D. degrees from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution/Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program in [...]

Event Location: NSH 1109Bio: Junya received Bachelor's degree (1993), master's degree (1995) and Doctor’s degree (2004) in electrical engineering from Hosei University in Japan. In 1996, he started to work for Faculty of Regional Environment Science, Tokyo University of Agriculture and undertook a study of the automation and robotization of agriculture machinery. In 2006, he [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Michael Furlong is a Ph.D. Student in the Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon. He works on the Life in the Atacama Desert project.Abstract: Science Autonomy is an exciting application of Active Learning but it comes with constraints that only appear when the learning agent is embodied. In the case of [...]

Event Location: 1507Bio: Girish Chowdhary received his PhD and MS degrees from Georgia Institute of Technology. He has postdoctoral research experience at the Georgia Tech UAV Research Facility, and at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems and the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also has research experience [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Chris Cunningham is a Ph.D. student in the Robotics Institute advised by Red Whitaker. He received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia in 2012. His current research focuses on terrain classification and slip prediction for planetary robots.Abstract: Loose, granular soil can trap planetary rovers causing costly [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Hiroaki Inotsume is a M.S. student in the Robotics Institute, advised by Prof. David Wettergreen. His work focuses on analysis of vehicle-terrain interactions for design, motion planning, and control of planetary rovers. He received his B.E. and M.E. degrees in Aerospace Engineering from Tohoku University in Japan.Abstract: Because of great successes [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Matthias Althoff received the diploma in Mechatronics and Information Technology from the department of mechanical engineering at the Technische Universität München, Germany, in 2005. He received his PhD degree (summa cum laude) in electrical engineering from the same university under the supervision of Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing./Univ. Tokio Martin Buss in 2010. From [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Pratik Agarwal received his B.E. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology, India in 2010, and M.S.E. in Computer Science and Engineering from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2012, where he also worked as a research assistant at the APRIL robotics laboratory. Currently, he is a [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Dr. Gideon Avigad has recently joined Vineland Research and Innovation Centre as Program Leader - Robotics & Automation. He has been a tenure at the Mechanical Engineering Department, Braude College of Engineering, Israel where he taught control and mechatronics related courses and led many robotics R&D projects. In the last two [...]

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Sankalp Arora is a Ph.D. student in the Robotics Institute advised by Sebastian Scherer. He received his B.E. in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the University of Delhi in India in 2010. His current research focuses on exploration senor and path planning for aerial vehicles. He was research staff at FRC [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Kristen Holtz is a Ph.D. student in the Robotics Institute advised by Dr. Sebastian Scherer. She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Control and Dynamical Systems from California Institute of Technology in 2013. Her current research focuses on increasing robustness to unanticipated faults and failures, with the [...]

Event Location: NSH 3305Bio: Erik Nelson is an M.S. student in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Dr. Nathan Michael. He received a B.S. in materials engineering from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in 2013. His research interests lie at the intersection of robotic mapping, perception, and exploration.Abstract: This talk will focus [...]

Event Location: GCH 2109Bio: Joerg Dittrich is a research scientist and a department head at DLR Braunschweig. DLR is the primary German government funded research organization in the field of aerospace engineering as well as the German space agency, employing around 7000 people across multiple sites in Germany. During his first years at DLR he [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Hiroaki Inotsume is a Masters student in the Robotics Institute advised by David Wettergreen. His research focuses on vehicle-terrain interaction analysis for design, planning, and control of planetary rovers. He holds a B.E. and a M.E. degrees in Aerospace Engineering.Abstract: What direction should a rover drive to efficiently ascend slope of [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Abstract: During this free seminar, we will explore using Mathematica and WolframAlpha for a wide variety of practical and theoretical applications across a variety of disciplines. Attendees will not only see new features in Mathematica 10 and WolframAlpha, but will also receive examples of this functionality to begin using immediately. No experience [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Sebastian Dingler is a visiting master's student form the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany. He is currently working with the Aerial Robotic Infrastructure Analyst (ARIA) and is advised by Sebastian Scherer. He received his Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.) in Computer Engineering from the University of Applied Science Esslingen, Germany in [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Eugene Fang is a M.S. student in the Robotics Institute advised by William “Red” Whittaker. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley in 2014. His current research focuses on route determination for planetary rovers.Abstract: One of the primary challenges of planetary rover [...]

Event Location: NSH 1305Bio: Ed Belbruno is both an astrophysicist and artist. He is a recognized painter, with a recent exhibition at Lincoln Center and a painting in NASA's executive collection in Washington. Ed is affiliated with Princeton University. He received his doctorate in mathematics in 1980 from the Courant Institute of New York University. [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Fernando Auat Cheein received the Doctorate degree in 2009 and the Master of Science degree in 2005, both in San Juan, Argentina. Since 2013 he is a Professor with Federico Santa María Technical University (UTFSM), in Valparaíso, Chile, after doing his post doc research stay in agricultural robotics also in Argentina [...]

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Curtis Boirum is a M.S. student in the Robotics Institute advised by William “Red” Whittaker. He received an M.S. and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Bradley University in Peoria, IL in 2011 and 2009, respectively. He also received a B.S. in Physical Science from Eureka College in Eureka, IL in 2010. [...]

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Tanmay Kumar Mandal is an Aerospace Engineering Ph.D. candidate in Interactive Robotics Laboratory at West Virginia University. He received his Dual Degree (B.Tech + M.Tech) in Aerospace Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 2011. His current research interests are aerial robotics, guidance, navigation, control, and sensor fusion. He has [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Joseph Amato is a M.S. student in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University co-advised by Profs. William "Red" Whittaker and David Wettergreen. He received his B.S. in Robotics Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 2012 and spent two years working for Army Operational Test Command at Ft Hood, Texas, before [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Neal Bhasin is a M.S. student in the Robotics Institute advised by Prof. Red Whittaker. Neal received his bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon in 2015 and has done research in the Planetary Robotics Lab since 2012. He served as team leader on the NASA funded instrument project "Flyover [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Tiffany Huang is a M.S. student in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University advised by Prof. Michael Kaess. She received her B.S. with honors in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2014. Her current research focuses on perception and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithms for autonomous [...]

Event Location: GHC 4405Bio: Garrett Hemann received his bachelors in Aerospace Engineering from MIT in 2011. During that time, he worked in CSAIL under Nick Roy working on control for indoor UAVs. After graduation, he worked at Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Lab for 3 years. There he worked on control and multirobot coordination of monocopters, [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Eugene Fang is a M.S. student in the Robotics Institute advised by William “Red” Whittaker. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley in 2014. His current research focuses on route determination for planetary rovers.Abstract: Today’s planetary robotic exploration is carried out by [...]

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Zongyi Yang is a M.S. student in the Robotics Institute advised by David Wettergreen. He received a B.S. in Engineering Science ECE Option from University of Toronto in 2014. His current research focuses on robot brachiation. Abstract: Branching structures are ubiquitous elements in several environments on Earth, from trees found in [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: John Walker completed his aerospace PhD at Tohoku University in 2016. His Mechanical Engineering degree was earned at the University of Alberta in 2005. In 2010 he attended the International Space University in Strasbourg, France. This was followed by an internship at the Space Robotics Lab at Tohoku University in Japan [...]

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Grace Xingxin Gao is an assistant professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the GPS Laboratory at Stanford University in 2008. Before joining Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an assistant professor in 2012, Prof. Gao was a research [...]

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Samuel Yim is an M.S. student in the Robotics Institute advised by David Wettergreen. He received a B.S. in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College in 2014. His current research focuses on robustly detecting and describing features for SLAM applications.Abstract: Autonomous outdoor localization is a challenging but important task for rovers. This [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Bastian Schürmann is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Robotics and Embedded Systems at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. There he works in the Cyber-Physical Systems group with Professor Matthias Althoff. His research focuses on obtaining controllers with high performance and formal guarantees for safety-critical systems. This is achieved [...]

Event Location: GHC 2109Bio: Daniel Lu is an MS student at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University advised by Prof. George Kantor. Daniel received his Bachelor's of Applied Science in Engineering Physics from the University of British Columbia in 2014. His research currently focuses on perception and pose estimation using a combination of cameras [...]

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Shichao Yang is a Ph.D. student in the Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Prof. Sebastian Scherer in the Robotics Institute. He received a B.S in Mechanical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2013. His research focuses on visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) combined with semantic scene [...]

Matthias Althoff Technische Universität München Abstract Modern manufacturing companies are expected to quickly and efficiently adapt to production changes, and robotics has long been known as the candidate solution for the required flexibility. To improve such flexibility, future working environments will be populated by both humans and robot manipulators, sharing the same workspace. This scenario [...]

Abstract: Unmanned aerial vehicles have many potential applications, such as monitoring crops and inspecting infrastructure. The potential benefits are greater if the UAV is semi- or fully-autonomous, requiring only occasional human oversight or none at all. This would allow the above use cases to be performed at lower cost, during any time of day, or [...]

Abstract Off-the-shelf digital camera sensors often have limited dynamic range and real-world dynamic lighting changes adversely impact visual state estimation algorithms. This is because most conventional visual state estimation algorithms make the constancy of brightness assumption, wherein the intensity of a pixel is expected to be constant across small motions of a camera. However, this [...]

Abstract Underwater localization and mapping are unusually difficult problems in robotics due to the poor propagation of light through water, which prohibits receiving GPS signals underwater and using cameras to see more than a few meters in turbid water. Due to this, acoustic imaging sonars have been widely used on underwater vehicles as the primary [...]

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Shobhit Srivastava is an M.S. student in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Prof. Nathan Michael. The primary focus of his research is to enable high-fidelity and efficient multimodal environment modeling on mobile autonomous systems to enable efficient inference with respect to the environment. He previously received his [...]

Event Location: NSH 1305Bio: Timothy E. Lee is a M.S. in Robotics graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Prof. Nathan Michael. Timothy's field robotics research seeks to enable robust, efficient, and autonomous inspection of critical infrastructure. Specifically, he is working towards improving the efficiency of nuclear power by enabling camera-based navigation of underwater [...]

Event Location: GHC 6501Bio: Merritt Jenkins is an M.S. student in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Dr. George Kantor. Merritt's field robotics research focuses on perception and intelligent manipulation of plants in outdoor environments, enabling plant breeders and geneticists to make better-informed breeding decisions. Prior to CMU, Merritt received a B.E. [...]

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Alberto Candela Garza is an M.S. in Robotics student at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Prof. David Wettergreen. Alberto is affiliated to the Field Robotics Center and is interested in science autonomy for planetary rovers. Prior to CMU, Alberto received a B.S. in Mechatronics Engineering and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering [...]

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Silvio joined the FRC group in 2012 and since then worked with several unmanned ground and aerial vehicles doing a lot of systems integration, testing and performance improvements. Before joining the FRC, he worked for several consumer electronics industries for more than 10 years developing embedded software using both conventional and [...]

Abstract Cameras are widely used for localization and navigation in GNSS‐denied environments. By exploiting VSLAM (Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) techniques, vehicles equipped with cameras are capable of estimating their own trajectories and simultaneously building a map of the surrounding environment. In many applications, multiple cooperative robotic agents (robotic swarms) are used in order to [...]