Photorealistic, Reliable 3D Mapping For Robots

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Hans Moravec at Carnegie Mellon University has updated his DARPA-funded MARS program page , including new info about the possibily of having photo-realistic 3D mapping for robots in the near future. "Our machines will navigate employing a dense 3D awareness of their surroundings, be tolerant of route surprises, and be easily placed by ordinary workers in entirely new routes or work areas. The long-elusive combination of easy installation and reliability should greatly expand cost-effective niches for mobile robots, and make possible a growing market that can itself sustain further development...We expect our new data to bring us further towards photorealism, and more importantly extremely reliable 3D maps." Check out all the slides and movies at the bottom of the page."

Comments

Computer Vision's Goal

[fireboy1919]

I am a student studying computer vision. It has long been known that CMU, and especially the famous Dr. Takao Kanade have been interested in autonomous vehicles - that and stereo vision have been the major focus of that school. They're very good, but this is really not just an event at their school. Its more like a community (the vision robotics community) effort. Even Slashdot has posted a few of the other contributions.

HOWEVER, its still a long time coming. In addition, space projects and industry require much more precision and accuracy than academia can offer alone. Keep in mind that CMU already did the "No hands across America" project, where there cars "drove" (they controlled breaks and gas) 99% of the way across the United States autonomously. That was a while ago - so was their total virtual environment mapping dome. Have you seen any autonomous cars for sale? What about 3d videos that you can see from every point of view?

We still have a long way to go.

Classic example of SMPA

[mtDNA]

Moravec's approach is a classic example of the SMPA (sense-model-plan-act) approach to mobile robotics. A lot of people think this is a dead end - not least among them Rodney Brooks, who advocates what is called the behavior-based approach. Behavior-based robotics basically relies on integrating several independently operating reflexes into a robot, which is much more lifelike. A nifty intermediate approach is taken by Ronald Arkin, who seems a little more pragmatic (and less dogmatic).

You can read some superficial information about all of these guys (and others) in the book Robo sapiens.

A review of Robo sapiens can be found here.