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David R Thompson
PhD Student

No longer a member of RI.

For more information, see my personal homepage.

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Research interests

I am interested in autonomous robots that explore dangerous or inaccessible environments for the benefit of human knowledge. Understanding what features to visit, which instruments to deploy, and what data or samples to bring back are challenging perception issues. My current research tackles these problems with onboard machine learning. We leverage learning techniques to interpret data from multiple sensors, identify science targets and model the targets' distribution in the explored environment. This enables the exploration robot to identify scientifically-interesting trends and anomalies.

Research interest keywords

computer vision, field robotics, machine learning, mobile robots, pattern recognition, and space robotics

Past Projects

Science Autonomy - The Science Autonomy project seeks to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of robotic planetary investigations by enabling automatic detection of relevant science features, classification of feature properties, and exploration planning that responds on-the-fly.

Recent publications [View all 16 publications]

• Intelligent Mapping for Autonomous Robotic Survey
  D.R. Thompson
  doctoral dissertation, tech. report CMU-RI-TR-08-33, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, August, 2008. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [16913 KB] copyrighted

• Information-Optimal Selective Data Return for Autonomous Rover Traverse Science and Survey
  D.R. Thompson, T. Smith, and D. Wettergreen
  IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation, May, 2008. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [470 KB] copyrighted

• Autonomous Rover Reflectance Spectroscopy with Dozens of Targets
  F. Calderon, D.R. Thompson, and D. Wettergreen
  International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space (iSAIRAS), February, 2008. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [513 KB] copyrighted

• Intelligent Maps for Autonomous Kilometer-Scale Science Survey
  D.R. Thompson and D. Wettergreen
  International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space (iSAIRAS), February, 2008. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [758 KB] copyrighted

• Long-Distance Autonomous Survey and Mapping in the Robotic Investigation of Life in the Atacama Desert
  D. Wettergreen, M.D. Wagner, D. Jonak, V. Baskaran, M. Deans, S. Heys, D. Pane, T. Smith, J. Teza, D.R. Thompson, P. Tompkins, and C. Williams
  International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space (iSAIRAS), February, 2008. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [4990 KB] copyrighted

• Multi-scale Features for Detection and Segmentation of Rocks in Mars Images
  H. Dunlop, D.R. Thompson, and D. Wettergreen
  IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, June, 2007. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [1253 KB] copyrighted

• A Performance Comparison of Rock Detection Algorithms for Autonomous Planetary Geology
  D.R. Thompson and R. Castaņo
  Proceedings of the IEEE Aerospace Conference, March, 2007. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [2110 KB] copyrighted

• Onboard Autonomous Rover Science
  R. Castaņo, T. Estlin, D. Gaines, C. Chouinard, B. Bornstein, R.C. Anderson, M. Burl, D.R. Thompson, A. Castaņo, and M. Judd
  Proceedings of the IEEE Aerospace Conference, March, 2007. [Abstract]

• Spatial Point Process Models for the Clustering Behavior of Northern Plains Boulders
  D.R. Thompson and D. Wettergreen
  Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, March, 2007. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [1042 KB] copyrighted

• Generating Exponentially Smaller POMDP Models Using Conditionally Irrelevant Variable Abstraction
  T. Smith, D.R. Thompson, and D. Wettergreen
  Proc. Int. Conf. on Applied Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), 2007. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [706 KB] copyrighted