The Johns Hopkins University

Whiting School of Engineering

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Single Chip Integration of 3-D Imaging Systems

Seminar By

Ralf Philipp

Graduate Research Assistant

Abstract

An autonomous robot, whether flying, wheeled, or walking, requires sensory information to characterize and navigate through its environment. Sensing depth information is critical for path planning, obstacle avoidance, and object manipulation. An ideal depth sensor would be small, lightweight, low power, operate at high speed, and have a high spatial resolution. Many depth-sensing techniques are used in robots, including vision, ladar, radar, sonar, and tactile interaction.

We will discuss some of the tradeoffs involved with some of the many solutions to the stereo vision problem. The motivation for choosing stereo vision over the many other depth-sensing methods will be discussed in reference to the target application of autonomous robots. The talk will review the foundations of stereo vision and the problems seen when trying to integrate a stereo vision system onto a robot.

In this talk we present a second generation Single-chip Stereo Imager (SSI), a single integrated circuit (IC) including both imagers and depth computation circuitry. Integrating all of the stereo sensing and processing onto a single IC offers the advantages of a smaller form factor, lower weight, and lower power consumption, while providing high speed (30 fps) operating and high spatial resolution. Finally, we will outline the plans to integrate the SSI onto autonomous robots, including a wheeled vehicle and a bipedal walking robot.

Thursday, April 28, 2005

4:00 p.m.

117 Barton

Refreshments will be served at 3:45 p.m.

FOR DISABILITY INFORMATION

CONTACT: Candace Abel, (410) 516-7031 cabel@jhu.edu