Applications

Cooperative Maping of Indoor Areas

The SenseNet Project is part of DARPA's Tactical Mobile Robotics initiative. SRI International's Artificial Intelligence Center is developing a team of mobile robots to cooperatively map indoor areas. The STH-V1 is mounted on the top front of the robot. It's being used to avoid obstacles, to map and model the environment, and to detect and track people.

There are a lot of other sensors on the robot, too -- check out the SenseNet web pages.

MIT AI Center: the Wheelesley Project

Holly Yanco's robotics thesis is about assistive wheelchairs with semi-autonomy.

The picture shows Wheelesley, a robot wheelchair project she started at Wellesley College, and then carried over as her thesis work at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Center.  Wheelesley uses an STH-V1 stereo head, coupled to an onboard computer running SVS, to detect obstacles in realtime.

Extra Set of Eyes

The Extra Sets of Eyes Project was part of DARPA's VSAM effort. Under this project, SRI developed people detection and tracking algorithms that work robustly in crowded environments.

Visual Surveillance and Monitoring

This is another people-tracking project that was part of DARPA's VSAM effort. The W4S system reliably tracks people and identifies the head, torso, and limbs. W4S uses stereo from the STH-V2 head to augment its basic motion detection algorithm.

Real-time Articluated Object Tracking

This joint research project tracks articulated 3D objects (e.g., humans) using the STH-V2 and SRI's Small Vision System to acquire realtime range data. Check out the MPEG movies of articulated arm/head/torso tracking!

Autonomous Mobility

This joint research project, which is part of the the Collaborative Technology Alliance (CTA), is developing perception technologies that allow robotic vehicles to understand their environment

Check out the stereo output from the STOC camera by clicking on the image. The video shows the street scene on the left and a color-coded distance image on the right.

Sun-Synchronous Vehicle

Under a NASA grant, CMU is prototyping a sun-synchronous vehicle for planetary exploration.  Name Hyperion, this robot will continuously travel at an appropriate latitude to stay in the sunlight, supplying continuous power.

The SVS was chose to operate a stereo system on the robot, because of its outstanding processing efficiency and stereo performance.  A tech report describing the use of SVS for terrain mapping can be found here.

Personal Satellite Assistant

The PSA is envisioned as a device about the size of a softball, with advanced sensors and actuators that enable it to maneuver in the zero gravity of a space station or other space structure. Its ultimate task is to detect and fix problems with space structures.

The STH-V2 and SRI's Small Vision System were used on the first working prototype, to perform station-keeping tasks.  The next version is being designed with the MEGA-D sensor for increased performance.