Event
CDS Invited Lecture Series: Control and Navigation for Autonomous Exploration of Flooded Caverns
Monday, February 20, 2006
4:00 p.m.
2460 AVW
Pam White
301 405 6576
pwhite@umd.edu
http://www.isr.umd.edu/ISR/about/isrevents.html#220
George Kantor
Carnegie-Mellon University
ISR and ECE alumnus
Abstract
DEPTHX is a hovering autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that will be used to explore, map, and look for life in the depths of the Zacaton Cenote, a flooded limestone cavern that is known to be at least 300 meters deep. This talk will begin with a brief overview of the Zacaton environment, the scientific mission objectives, and the vehicle design. Once the context has been established, the focus will be shifted to technical issues related to the core capabilities of control and localization of the DEPTHX vehicle. Control algorithms for open water velocity tracking, wall following, and near-wall hovering will be discussed and simulation results will be presented. An algorithm for localization and mapping based on a Rao-Blackwellized particle filter with 3D occupancy grid maps will be outlined, with results presented both in simulation and using data gathered during a preliminary expedition to Zacaton. The talk will conclude with a brief sketch the algorithms required for the necessary higher level behaviors such as path planning and exploration.
Biography
Dr. George Kantor received a Ph.D. in ECE at the University of Maryland in 1999 (advisor: Prof. P.S. Krishnaprasad). He is currently a Project Scientist at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University with joint appointments in the Field Robotics Center and the Center for the Foundations of Robotics. His primary interests lie in the control of mobile robotic mechanisms with interesting dynamics such as RHEX (a six-legged walking/running mobile robot) and Ballbot (an omnidirectional mobile robot platform that balances on a single spherical wheel.) Other research interests include simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and distributed sensor networks. Dr. Kantor teaches classes in control theory and robotic manipulation at CMU, and he is a coauthor of the recently published textbook Principles of Robot Motion: Theory, Algorithms, and Implementation (MIT Press, 2005).
This lecture is part of the Control and Dynamical Systems Invited Lecture Series.
