IROS in Tokyo

IROS in Tokyo was good this year.  ASRL presented two papers and both seemed well received.  The picture on the right was from our motion-compensated RANSAC talk.  Glad to see some familiar faces in the crowd listening in.

On the cover of the Rollin' Stone...

Every year the Journal of Field Robotics has a photo competition to select shots for its cover.  This shot was from one of ASRL's field tests to the Canadian Space Agency's Mars Emulation Terrain in 2011.  At the time we were testing our laser-based 3D site mapping capabilities as well as our main stereo navigation pipeline (network of paths, teach and repeat).  The photo came second in the competition and will appear on the cover of all the 2014 JFR issues.  

1893 Stereo Camera

Tim is on sabbatical in the Mobile Robotics Group at Oxford until January.  There is a wealth of interesting history in Oxford.  The image on the right shows an early stereo camera on display in the History of Science museum.  Notice the gear in the middle used to simultaneously adjust the aperture on both cameras.

CREATE Deployment at CSA Mars Emulation Terrain

This week ASRL members participated in a mock Mars sample return mission at the Canadian Space Agency in Montreal.  Our role was to support the science team in planning and executing rover traverses.  We also demonstrated our new vertical-surface robotic explorer, vScout, on some of the rubble and cliff faces on Mars Emulation Terrain.  In all it was a success week and was a great collaboration between academia, government, and industry.

ASRL AR Drone Video Mentioned on IEEE Spectrum

Here's the link:  ASRL AR Drone Video on IEEE Spectrum

Chi Passes FOE

Yesterday, Chi Hay Tong passed his PhD final oral examination (FOE).  Congratulations, Dr. Tong!  Prof. Frank Dellaert, world-renowned expert on simultaneous localization and mapping from Georgia Tech, was the external examiner; he asked lots of excellent questions!  Prof. Radford Neal from UofT CS was the internal examiner and also weighed in with some fantastic questions about Gaussian Processes.  In the end, Chi emerged with a PhD and was rewarded with this very nice cookie, courtesy of the UofT Institute for Robotics and Mechatronics.  Chi will be hanging around ASRL for the next couple of months and then heading off into the world!

vSCOUT: First Ascent

We've been working with geologists from Western for several years now to look at how geological investigations could be done on other planets using robotics.  One thing we've learned is that a lot of the interesting places are not on flat ground but rather up on vertical surfaces where stratigraphy, for example, can be seen.  Enter vSCOUT, a mobile robot with a powered rope ascender to allow it to drive on near-vertical surfaces.  Today we demonstrated that we could successfully drive up and down the MarsDome at UTIAS under manual control.  The next step will be to do this autonomously using visual navigation and eventually we want to build photorealistic 3D models and more.

NCFRN Field Trials at UTIAS

From April 17 to 23 we held a series of field trials at UTIAS as part of the new NSERC Canadian Field Robotics Network (NCFRN).  There were about 50 participants from UofT, McGill, Queen's, SFU, UAlberta, York, CSA, MDA, ODG, Clearpath, DRDC, and more.  The MarsDome really saw a lot of action with about 8 different robots being tested, both on the ground and in the air.  It was a fun event and we made lots of plans for future collaborations.  Here is a story by UofT media relations.

Institute for Robotics and Mechatronics Official Opening

A little delayed, but UofT announces the Institute for Robotics and Mechatronics today...and opens a flashy new website.

Get out your bear bells!

Clearpath Robotics officially announced their new Grizzly RUV platform (see right).  It's half robot, half tractor.  The tires are standard ATV size and there is a nice passive suspension.  The industrial design on this robot is fantastic, too.  We plan to be one of the first customers for this beast of a machine!  

IEEE Aerospace Adventures

Tim and Jon are attending IEEE Aerospace 2013 in Big Sky, Montana.  It's held at a ski resort so naturally some skiing is involved.  Both attendees survived the Summit cross-country trail during a blizzard, but a little MacGyverin' was required after Jon stress-tested his ski pole past its yield strength; the guy at the rental shop said he'd, "never seen anything quite like it".  On the way back to the hotel, they also learned how to get a bus back onto a mountain road using a towtruck.  Let's hope the rest of the conference is as educational!

Belated Sendoff

Tim attended a sendoff event on Parliament Hill for astronaut Colonel Chris Hadfield back in September (just got the photo now).  Hadfield is currently aboard the International Space Station conducting several experiments and is due to take over as station commander, the first Canadian to do so, fairly shortly.  

NSERC Canadian Field Robotics Network

On Friday, Feb 8, our successful $5M NSERC Strategic Network Grant (led by McGill) was officially announced.  We were mentioned in a space.com article and the network website is now up if you want to learn more.

Done, done.

We had a nice social event at the nearby Montana's restaurant with special appearances from such alumni as Andrew Lambert and Goran Basic; it only took Goran about 15 minutes to realize we were all wearing T-shirts with his face printed on them Che-Guevara style!