Event
Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar: John Leonard, "Autonomous Vehicles"
Friday, May 6, 2016
1:30 p.m.
2216 JM Patterson
Ania Picard
301 405 4358
appicard@umd.edu
Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar
Mapping, Localization, and Autonomous Vehicles
John J. Leonard
Samuel C. Collins Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering
Associate Department Head for Research
MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Abstract
This talk will discuss the critical role of mapping and localization in the development of autonomous vehicles. After a discussion of some of the recent amazing progress and open technical challenges in the development of self-driving vehicles, we will discuss the past, present and future of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) in robotics. We will review the history of SLAM research and will discuss some of the major challenges in SLAM, including choosing a map representation, developing algorithms for efficient state estimation, and solving for data association and loop closure. We will also present recent results on real-time dense mapping using RGB-D cameras and object-based mapping in dynamic environments. Finally, we will also discuss some of the open research challenges for the development of fully self-driving autonomous vehicles.
Biography
John J. Leonard is Samuel C. Collins Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering and Associate Department Head for Research in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering. He is also a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). His research addresses the problems of navigation and mapping for autonomous mobile robots. He holds the degrees of B.S.E.E. in Electrical Engineering and Science from the University of Pennsylvania (1987) and D.Phil. in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford (1994). Prof. Leonard joined the MIT faculty in 1996, after five years as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and Research Scientist in the MIT Sea Grant Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Laboratory. He is the recipient of an NSF Career Award (1998), the King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Transactions on Robotics Paper Award (2006), and he is an IEEE Fellow (2014).
