The Robotics Institute
 Search the site
RI | People | Alex Foessel

Text only version of this site

Alex Foessel
PhD Student

No longer a member of RI.

Jump to: Biography | Research interests | Keywords | Projects | Publications

Biography

Currently working at John Deere,
reachable at: FoesselAlexD@JohnDeere.com
+1 (309) 765 3774
Personal email: afoessel@gmail.com

Research interests

I am interested in autonomous machines that operate in harsh environments capable robots that explore and work in construction, mining, agricultural and planetary-exploration environments. Most robot tasks require terrain and environment models . Sensors able to perceive under all visibility conditions provide the information to build these models under extreme conditions and enable continuos robot operations in harsh environments.

My focus is on using radar for precise environmental imaging and terrain models. Vacuum, dust, fog, rain, snow and light conditions compromise the effectiveness of laser and stereo. Radar can offer remarkable advantages as a robotic perception mode because it is not as vulnerable to the aforementioned conditions. However, radar has shortcomings such as a large footprint, sidelobes, specularity effects and limited range resolution, all of which result in poor perception models. I investigate interpretation techniques for building high-resolution and high-fidelity perception models from radar sensing.

Research interest keywords

field robotics, mobile robots, range data, range finders, sensors, and space robotics

Past Projects

Atacama Desert Trek - Robotic traversal of the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile
Autonomous Rover Technologies - Pursuing breakthroughs and insights into fundamental aspects of robot perception, navigation, position estimation, and integrated exploratory science from a robot.
Lunar Rover Initiative - first interactive space exploration event
Motion Free Scanning Radar - We incorporate the current state of the art in non-mechanical scanning antenna technology with advanced millimeter-wave ranging technology to enable a small, reliable, and affordable imaging-radar sensor with no moving parts. Sensors will be demonstrated on the sponsor's equipment in typical operating scenarios and environments.
Robotic Antarctic Meteorite Search - Developing robots to search for meteorites in Antarctica, as an analog of a planetary exploration robot.
 

Publications

Note: This list may not be comprehensive. It contains only those publications in the RI publications database. Entries are listed in reverse chronological order.

The Robotics Institute is part of the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.
For updates and comments, please see these instructions.
This page maintained by robotwebmaster@ri.cmu.edu