Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics seminar: Christoffer Heckman

Description

Christoffer Heckman, an assistant professor of Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder, will present a Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics seminar.

Abstract:

Perception precedes action, in both the biological world as well as the technologies maturing today that will bring us autonomous cars, aerial vehicles, robotic arms, and mobile platforms. The problem of probabilistic state estimation via sensor measurements takes on a variety of forms, resulting in information about our own motion as well as the structure of the world around us. In this talk, Christoffer Heckman will discuss some approaches that his research group has been developing that focus on estimating these quantities online and in real-time in extreme environments where dust, fog, and other visually obscuring phenomena are widely present and when sensor calibration is altered or degraded over time. These approaches include new techniques in computer vision, visual-inertial SLAM, geometric reconstruction, nonlinear optimization, and even some sensor development. The methods he will discuss have an application-specific focus to ground vehicles in the subterranean environment but are also currently deployed in the agriculture, search and rescue, and industrial human-robot collaboration contexts.