Simultaneous Localization, Mapping and Moving
Object Tracking
Localization, mapping and moving object
tracking serve as the basis for
scene understanding, which is a key prerequisite for making a robot
truly autonomous. Simultaneous
localization, mapping and moving object
tracking (SLAMMOT) involves not only simultaneous localization and
mapping (SLAM) in dynamic environments but also detecting and tracking
these dynamic objects. It is
believed by many that a solution to the SLAM problem would open up a
vast range of potential applications for autonomous robots. Accordingly, a
solution to the SLAMMOT problem would expand robotic applications in
proximity to human beings where robots work not only for people but
also with people.
[More information]
4D Spatio-Temporal Mapping of Urban Environments
Many applications in
robotics, civil
engineering, architecture, landscape architecture, city planning,
computer graphics and computer vision require accurate
three-dimensional (3D) models of real-world objects. SLAMMOT not only build models of
stationary objects but also dynamic activities. In this project, we
develop systems and algorithms for building four-dimensional (4D)
spatio-temporal maps of both urban and indoor environments.[More information]
Robotics for Safe Driving
The focus of this project
is on short-range sensing, to look
all around the vehicle for improving driving safety and preventingtraffic injuries caused by human factors
such as
speeding, or distraction. We believe that being able to detect and
track every
stationary object and every moving object, to reason about the dynamic
traffic
scene, to detect and predict every critical situation, and to warn and
assist
drivers in advance, is essential to prevent these kinds of accidents.
[More information]
Past
Internships
I
spent the 2002
Summer at RIACS, NASA Ames Research Center, working
with Peter
Cheeseman and Doron Tal, on three-dimensional
extended Kalman filter based simultaneous localization and mapping.
I
spent the 2001
Summer at Z+F USA, Inc. in
Pittsburgh, working on 3D range image processing and Spin-Images
Implementation.
Modelling and control
of marine vehicles have been a great challenge due to the nonlinear
nature of both the vehicles themselves and the environments in which
they operate. From
1993 to 1996 and 1998 to
1999, I worked with Jenhwa
Guo and Chiu-Forng
Chen at National Taiwan
University on
design,
modelling and control of marine vehicles, such as autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), remotely operated vehicles (ROV) and autonomous surface vessels (ASV). I developed a numerical motion simulation
system for modelling marine vehicles in which the effects of trimming weight subsystem,
deballast subsystem, control
surfaces and main propulsion subsystem are taken into account. I developedan
adaptive controller for marine vehicles using neural network. The experimental results show that the
neural network adapts to time-varying
plant dynamics as well as disturbance upsets when the learning process
is kept active
through the control operation. [More information]