Towards Visual Route Following for Mobile Robots…Forever!

Barfoot, Tim

Title:

Towards Visual Route Following for Mobile Robots…Forever!

dc.contributor.author	Barfoot, Tim	en_US
dc.contributor.corporatename	Georgia Institute of Technology. Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines	en_US
dc.contributor.corporatename	University of Toronto. Institute for Aerospace Studies	en_US
dc.date.accessioned	2013-03-26T20:03:49Z
dc.date.available	2013-03-26T20:03:49Z
dc.date.issued	2013-03-20
dc.description	Presented on March 20, 2013 from 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm in Room 1116 of the Marcus Nanotechnology building.	en_US
dc.description	Dr. Timothy Barfoot (Associate Professor, University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies -- UTIAS) holds the Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Autonomous Space Robotics and works in the area of guidance, navigation, and control of mobile robots for space and terrestrial applications. He is interested in developing methods to allow mobile robots to operate in large-scale, unstructured, three-dimensional environments, using rich onboard sensing (e.g., cameras and laser rangefinders, not the global-positioning system) and computation. Dr. Barfoot's Autonomous Space Robotics Lab (ASRL) is the only university lab in Canada to focus primarily on planetary rover technology. His approach is both theoretical and experimental, as demonstrated by recent field-testing campaigns on Devon Island in the Canadian High Arctic. Dr. Barfoot took up his position at UTIAS in May 2007, after spending four years at MDA Space Missions, where he developed autonomous vehicle navigation technologies for both planetary rovers and terrestrial applications such as underground mining. He is an Ontario Early Researcher Awardholder and a licensed Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario.	en_US
dc.description	Runtime: 61:32 minutes.	en_US
dc.description.abstract	In this talk I will describe a particular approach to visual route following for mobile robots that we have developed, called Visual Teach & Repeat (VT&R), and what I think the next steps are to make this system usable in real-world applications. We can think of VT&R as a simple form of simultaneous localization and mapping (without the loop closures) along with a path-tracking controller; the idea is to pilot a robot manually along a route once and then be able to repeat the route (in its own tracks) autonomously many, many times using only visual feedback. VT&R is useful for such applications as load delivery (mining), sample return (space exploration), and perimeter patrol (security). Despite having demonstrated this technique for over 300 km of driving on several different robots, there are still many challenges we must meet before we can say this technique is ready for real-world applications. These include (i) visual scene changes such as lighting, (ii) physical scene changes such as path obstructions, and (iii) vehicle changes such as tire wear. I’ll discuss our progress to date in addressing these issues and the next steps moving forward. There will be lots of videos.	en_US
dc.format.extent	61:32 minutes
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/1853/46502
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US
dc.publisher	Georgia Institute of Technology	en_US
dc.relation.ispartofseries	IRIM Seminar Series
dc.subject	Robotics	en_US
dc.subject	Visual route following	en_US
dc.subject	Visual teach and repeat	en_US
dc.subject	VT&R	en_US
dc.subject	Localization	en_US
dc.subject	Mapping	en_US
dc.title	Towards Visual Route Following for Mobile Robots…Forever!	en_US
dc.type	Moving Image
dc.type.genre	Lecture
dspace.entity.type	Publication
local.contributor.corporatename	Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM)
local.relation.ispartofseries	IRIM Seminar Series
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication	66259949-abfd-45c2-9dcc-5a6f2c013bcf
relation.isSeriesOfPublication	9bcc24f0-cb07-4df8-9acb-94b7b80c1e46