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Foundations of Robotics Seminar, November 29, 2006
Time and Place | Seminar
Abstract | Speaker Biography | Presentation
Slides | Speaker Appointments
DEPTHX and Beyond: Underwater Robots at CMU
George
Kantor
Smith
Hall 100
Refreshments 4:45 pm
Talk 5:00 pm
Everybody
knows that underwater robots are cool. In this talk I will attempt to go
beyond the "gee whiz" factor to argue that autonomous underwater
vehicles (AUVs) can push robotics research in two important
ways. First, they can serve as testbeds to
study fundamental robotics problems such as motion control and mapping in 3D
environments. Second, they can provide a solutions
to practical problems such as oil rig maintenance, ship hull inspection, water quality
surveys, and autonomous scientific exploration.
The thrust of this talk will be centered around the
DEPTHX project, a collaborative effort to build an AUV to explore and map a
flooded cave system while providing data for biological and geological science.
I'll begin by briefly describing the environment, the anticipated mission
scenarios, and the related science efforts. I'll then describe some of
our technical contributions, one of which is a control architecture that
provides both coarse "open water" navigation functions and fine
"prox ops" functions for hovering near and
moving along walls. I'll also describe the localization and mapping
system which accomplishes full 3D SLAM in real time using a Rao-Blackwellized
particle filter. Experimental results for both will be presented.
I'll conclude the talk by proposing some directions for future research in AUVs. This will include a brief overview of our
efforts to develop SHALLOWX, a low-cost ($5K) hovering AUV that can be deployed
in a swimming pool by a single person.
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Speaker Bio |
George
Kantor is a Project Scientist at the Robotics Institute at
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Speaker Appointments |
For
appointments, please contact George Kantor (kantor@ri.cmu.edu).
The Robotics Institute is part of the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.