Autonomy in the Wild: Good, Bad and the Ugly

Dr. Srikanth Saripalli

 Professor in Department of Mechanical Engineering, Director for Center for Autonomous Vehicles and Sensor Systems (CANVASS)

Texas A&M University

11/10/2023

11AM – 12PM CST

Location: UTSA San Pedro 1, Yotta Room 430

Zoom: https://utsa.zoom.us/j/91049981814

UxVs (Unmanned Aerial/Ground/Surface/Underwater Vehicles) are expected to expand their applications to several civilian domains such as Autonomous Driving, precision agriculture, infrastructure monitoring & disaster response. However for these UxVs to perform these tasks with full autonomy they must satisfy multiple requirements: 1) Navigate in GPS-denied Environments 2) Sense and Avoid Obstacles 3) Able to determine interesting phenomenon. In this talk, I will give an overview of our algorithms on combining vision with Inertial Measurement Unit and GPS for accurate state estimation of the vehicle. I will describe our algorithms for mapping using thermal, visual and LIDAR sensors that enable autonomous navigation in various challenging conditions.  A major portion of the talk will be on applications of the above algorithms to real vehicles (aerial, ground) and the lessons that we have learned i.e. what worked and what didn’t and how we should go about building such systems.