MechE PhD Prospectus Defense: Sean Sanchez

TITLE: AUTONOMOUS NAVIGATION PROBLEMS FOR RESOURCE CONSTRAINED MOBILE ROBOTS USING SINGLE PIXEL CAMERAS.

ABSTRACT: Problems in autonomous navigation are often solved with state of the art methods and technology. However in the resource constrained setting, standard tools and algorithms may require modifications, or fundamentally different approaches may be needed.

My research project focuses on the use of a Single Pixel Camera and variable resolution optical flow in order to reduce the number of measurements and overall computational load in acquiring sequences of images, flow fields and maps of unknown environments. Preliminary results with downsampling images using wavelet mask patterns show that both estimated flow fields and reconstructed images can be obtained from very few measurements.

Thus, my further research will study the tradeoff between minimal measurement acquisition and sufficiently accurate reconstruction of unknown environments to develop algorithms and accompanying controllers which tackle increasingly challenging navigation problems.

COMMITTEE: ADVISOR Professor Sean Andersson, ME/SE; Professor John Baillieul, ME/SE/ECE; Professor Roberto Tron, ME/SE