PhD Thesis Proposal

Event Location: Newell Simon Hall 1305Abstract: Optimization systems traditionally focus on static problems, also known as offline or a priori optimization problems. Many real-world problems may be better modeled as dynamic optimization problems, also known as stochastic, in situ, or online optimization problems. In these types of problems, the fitness landscape of the search space [...]

Event Location: Newell Simon Hall 1305Abstract: Achieving robust and reliable operation even in complex unstructured environments is a central goal of field robotics. As the environments and scenarios to which robots are applied have continued to grow in complexity, so has the challenge of properly defining preferences between various actions, and the terrains they result [...]

Event Location: Newell Simon Hall 1305Abstract: Dynamics in locomotion is highly useful, as can be seen in animals and gradually in robots. For instance, chimpanzees are dynamic climbers that can reach virtually any part of a tree and even move to neighboring trees, while sloths are quasistatic climbers confined only to a few branches. Although [...]

Event Location: Smith Hall 100Abstract: The appearance of an outdoor scene is determined to a great extent by the prevailing illumination conditions. However, most practical computer vision applications treat illumination more as a nuisance rather than a source of signal. In this thesis proposal, we suggest that we should instead embrace illumination, even in the [...]

Event Location: Newell Simon Hall 1109Abstract: Currently deployed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) rely on preplanned missions or teleoperation and do not actively incorporate information about obstacles, landing sites, wind, position uncertainty, and other aerial vehicles during online trajectory planning. However, to enable autonomous missions in cluttered environments it is necessary to react to all available [...]

Event Location: Newell Simon Hall 1109Abstract: Recently the operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has expanded from military to civilian applications. Contrary to remote-controlled tasks in a high altitude, low-altitude flight in an urban environment requires a higher level of autonomy to respond to complex and unpredictable situations. Vision-based methods for autonomous navigation have been [...]

Event Location: Newell Simon Hall 1305Abstract: Global illumination effects, such as inter-reflections, sub-surface scattering and volumetric scattering form an integral part of our daily visual experience. In fact, it is almost impossible to find a real world scene without any global illumination. Unfortunately, however, due to its complex nature, it is hard to build tractable [...]

Event Location: Newell Simon Hall 3305Abstract: In a recent demonstration, a monkey was able to feed itself with a robot arm it controlled through a cortical brain-computer interface (BCI) [1]. This work extended past brain control based on 3-D target acquisition alone to add the control of grip aperture. We now extend this further to [...]

Event Location: Newell Simon Hall 1507Abstract: Every planning problem in robotics involves constraints. Whether the robot must avoid collision or joint limits, there are always states that are not permissible. Some constraints are straightforward to satisfy while others can be so stringent that the allowed states are very difficult to identify. What makes constrained planning [...]