Speaker: Dr. Ioannis Rekleitis, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Carolina.
Time and Place: 1600-1700, Swearingen 1A03 (Faculty Lounge), USC Columbia Campus
Title: Autonomous Operation of Robots in the Field.
Abstract :
In the last few years, robots have moved from the pages of science fiction books into our everyday reality. Currently, robots are used in scientific exploration, manufacturing, entertainment, and household maintenance. While the above advances were made possible by recent improvements in sensors, actuators, and computing elements, the research of today is focused on the computational aspects of robotics.
This talk presents an overview of algorithmic problems related to robotics, with the particular focus on increasing the autonomy of robotic systems in challenging environments. In particular I will discuss the use of discrete structures as such as graphs to efficiently solve robotic problems. Cooperative Localization Mapping and Exploration employs teams of robots in order to construct accurate representations of the environment and of the robot's pose. The problem of coverage has found applications ranging from vacuum cleaning to humanitarian mine removal. A family of algorithms will be presented that solve the coverage problem efficiently in terms of distance travelled. I will present ongoing work on underwater robotics together with recent results from a multi-robot experiment employing a UAV, a USV, and an AUV operating in sync with a remote marine biologist located thousands of kilometers away. Finally, I will present some current work on the problem of searching under uncertainty.
The work that I will present has a strong algorithmic flavor, while it is validated in real hardware.
Ioannis Rekleitis is an Assistant Professor at the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the College of Engineering and Computing, University of South Carolina. He is the director of the Autonomous Field Robotics Lab. Previously he was an Adjunct Professor at the School of Computer Science, McGill University. Between 2004 and 2007 he was a visiting fellow at the Canadian Space Agency. During 2004 he was at McGill University as a Research Associate in the Centre for Intelligent Machines with Professor Gregory Dudek in the Mobile Robotics Lab (MRL). Between 2002 and 2003, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University in the Sensor Based Planning Lab with Professor Howie Choset. He was granted his Ph.D. from the School of Computer Science, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 2002 under the supervision of Professors Gregory Dudek and Evangelos Milios. Thesis title: "Cooperative Localization and Multi-Robot Exploration". His Research has focused on mobile robotics and in particular in the area of cooperating intelligent agents with application to multi-robot cooperative localization, mapping, exploration and coverage. His interests extend to computer vision and sensor networks. He has worked with underwater, terrestrial, aerial, and space robots. Ioannis Rekleitis has published more than sixty journal and conference papers. His work can be found online at: http://www.cse.sc.edu/~yiannisr/