The Robotics Institute

This lab has been superseded by the Vision and Mobile Robotics Lab

The domains we consider cover a range of scales, including small-scale object modeling and recognition, medium-scale modeling of building interiors, and large-scale environment mapping and localization. We exploit the fact that many aspects of these problems that are independent of scale, which allows us to use a common base of general algorithms. At the same time, we explore the issues specific to each domain.

From a sensing standpoint, we employ a variety of devices capable of measuring 3-D data. Current sensing systems include desktop laser rangefinders, field-deployable scanning and single-line laser rangefinders (mounted on autonomous vehicles), stereo camera systems, and a 3-D sonar system.

For representing free-form surfaces, we primarily use triangular meshes. Our group has developed new representations to aid in solving surface matching problems, including harmonic maps and spin-image signatures. These representations are examples of surface signatures, meaning they distinctively encode local properties of arbitrary points on a free-form surface.