DATE:	Wednesday, March 30, 2005
TIME:	4:00 to 5:30 p.m.
ROOM:	1005 EECS

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Computer Science and Engineering Division

CSE FACULTY CANDIDATE SEMINAR

Probabilistic Techniques for Mobile Robot Mapping
and Exploration

Dr. Wolfram Burgard
University of Freiburg, Germany

In recent years, probabilistic techniques have enabled novel and 
innovative solutions to some of the most important problems in 
mobile robotics. Major challenges in the context of probabilistic 
algorithms for mobile robot navigation lie in the questions of how 
to deal with highly complex state estimation problems and how to 
control the robot so that it efficiently carries out its task. In 
this talk I will discuss both aspects and present some techniques 
currently being developed in my group regarding the problem of 
autonomously learning a map of an unknown environment with a mobile 
robot. I will first present an efficient approach based on particle 
filters to solve the simultaneous mapping and localization problem. 
Then I will describe how this approach can be combined with an 
exploration strategy that simultaneously takes into account the 
uncertainty in the pose of the robot and in the map. For all 
algorithms I will present experimental results, which have been 
obtained with mobile robots in real-world environments as well as in 
simulation. I will conclude the presentation with a discussion of 
open issues and potential directions for future research.

Dr. Burgard is being considered for a faculty position in the 
Department, in the Computer Science and Engineering Division. 
Everyone is welcome to attend.