Abstract:
In this presentation we will discuss the motivation for design of last mile autonomous vehicles for material and people transportation. The UCSD campus in many respects is an ideal area for evaluation of this new transportation as a service modality with 65,000 people on campus daily and more than 700,000 out-patient hospital visitors per year. To study this challenge two golf-carts have been retrofitted with cameras, LiDAR, ultrasonic sensors, drive by wire control and a modest computer. The vehicles are used for design of a systems that ultimately will be driverless and serve as a basis for a broader campus transportation initiative. Design of such a functionality requires methods for localization, dynamic mapping, detection of other road-users / road-furniture such as traffic light and traffic signs, coding of the traffic laws and basic control methods into an integrated system. Interfacing with other road-users and signaling / interpreting intent is essential to achieve fluency in interaction. We will describe the overall design and some of the underlying techniques developed within the autonomous vehicle laboratory. We will give examples of the present status of the project.
Bio:
Henrik I Christensen is the Qualcomm Chancellor's Chair of Robot Systems and the Director of the Contextual Robotics Institute at UC San Diego. He does research on vision, robotics and AI with an emphasis on a systems approach to problems. A solution must have a solid theoretical foundation, an efficient implementation and be evaluated in realistic settings. Henrik has held faculty positions at Aalborg University, Royal Institute of Technology, UPENN, and Georgia Tech prior to joining UCSD. He has published more than 350 contributions across AI, vision and robotics. He was awarded the Joseph Engelberger Award 2011, the highest award bestowed by the Robotics Industry. His research has been commercialized by companies such as Electrolux, ABB, KUKA, Boeing, iRobot, Fives, and GM. He was named Boeing Supplier of the Year 2012. He has co-founded 6 companies and serves as an advisors to companies, governments and non-profits on four continents. He received his education from Aalborg University and awarded an honorary doctorate from the same university 2014.