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Fall 2014 GRASP Seminar – Hong Zhang, University of Alberta, “Scalable Visual Mapping”

November 21, 2014 @ 11:00 am - 12:00 pm

Abstract: One area of significant progress in robotics research in recent years has been the use of visual sensing by mobile robots to map an environment and negotiate routes within the environment. This growth is mostly attributed to the rich textural information in visual sensory data compared with the traditional range data, as well as to the great strides made in the development of efficient and robust computer vision and image processing algorithms. In this talk, I will give an overview of the recent progress in appearance-based visual SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) algorithms, and highlight our research in scalable and accurate visual SLAM algorithms using whole image descriptors. As well, I will describe our current work in dealing with dynamically changing environments, and our involvement in the NSERC Canadian Field Robotics Network (NCFRN).

Presenter

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Dr. Hong Zhang received his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1986 in Electrical Engineering. Subsequently he spent 18 months with the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania as post-doctoral fellow before joining the University of Alberta, Canada where he is currently a Professor in the Department of Computing Science and the Director of the Centre for Intelligent Mining Systems.

Dr. Zhang’s research interest spans robotics, computer vision, and image processing, and he has published close to 200 papers in top international journals and conferences in these areas. He is mostly known for his research in collective robotics – introducing biologically inspired solutions to decentralized control of a multirobot system – and in applied image processing for Alberta’s oil sands industry to measure key performance indicators, creating a unique expertise that never existed before. His current research focuses on visual robot navigation and its application to environment monitoring in Canadian outdoors.

Dr. Zhang has been active in professional activities. His journal editorial responsibilities include IEEE Transaction on Cybernetics, the journal of Robotics, and International Journal of Robotics and Biomimetics. Dr. Zhang chairs the technical committee on Robotics and Intelligent Sensing of the IEEE SMC Society, and is a member of the AdCom of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (2014-2016). Among the many conference organization involvements, he serves as the General Chair of 2017 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), to be held in Vancouver, Canada. Dr. Zhang’s achievements have been recognized through many awards including IEEE Millennium Medal in 2000, the 2006 Canadian Image Processing and Pattern Recognition Society (CIPPRS) Award for Research Excellence, and a 2008 ASTech Award in recognition of his contributions
to industrial research in Alberta. He is the holder of an NSERC Industrial Research Chair and a Fellow of IEEE.

Details

Date:
November 21, 2014
Time:
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Event Category:

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