When: Friday, October 18, 3:30 p.m.

Where: 1305 Newell-Simon Hall

Greg Dudek, McGill University

RI Seminar

Abstract:
Abstract I will discuss sensor-based position estimation for mobile robots. The emphasis will be on the acquisition and integration of stable measurements that allow an observer's pose to computed, and we will take for granted the avilability of suitable filtering schemes that would allow such data to be integrated over time. The primary theme of the talk will be the computation and use of visual features for pose estimation. Our approach is based in informed sampling of images in the environment to extract robust cues that can be used for pose estimation. Selecting suitable cues depends on the use of a computational interest operator and a subsequent feature recognition operation and interpolation operation. Second half of the talk I will outline a new approach to resolving ambiguity in the pose estimation process. Even for idealized models of sensing and mapping we can show that optimal resolution of ambiguous pose estimates in NP-hard. While a polynomial-time approximating algorithm has been demonstrated (in prior joint work with Romanik and Whitesides), it has certain drawbacks in terms of both cost and robustness. A new approach to this difficulty appears to promise better performance. Speaker Biography Gregory Dudek is an Associate Professor with the School of Computer Science and a member of the McGill Research Centre for Intelligent Machines (CIM) and an Associate member of the Dept. of Electrical Engineering at McGill University. He directs the McGill Mobile Robotics Laboratory which is comprised of a dozen real robots and innumerable simulated ones. He obtained his PhD in computer science (computational vision) from the University of Toronto, his MSc in computer science (systems) at the University of Toronto and his BSc in computer science and physics at Queen's University. He has published over 150 research papers on subjects including visual object description and recognition, robotic navigation and map construction, distributed system design and biological perception. This includes a recent book entitled "Computational Principles of Mobile Robotics" co-authored with Michael Jenkin and published by Cambridge University Press. He research interests include perception for mobile robotics, navigation and position estimation, and machine augmentation of graphical skills. Speaker Appointments For appointments, please contact Sebastian Thrun (thrun@cs.cmu.edu).

Refreshments 3:15 pm

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