1. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo1 Informatica e Robotica per lAutomazione (IRA) Lab. Dipartimento Informatica, Sistemistica e Comunicazione, Università degli Studi di Milano – Bicocca Domenico G. Sorrenti domenico.sorrenti@unimib.it http://www.disco.unimib.it/sorrenti lab. website: http://www.ira.disco.unimib.ithttp://www.ira.disco.unimib.it

2. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo2 Research activities In the IRAlab we pursue research in autonomous systems; Most of our work concerns autonomous robots; What are autonomous robots? Lets see 3 examples.

3. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo3 Autonomous robots - example 1

4. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo4 Autonomous robots - example 2

5. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo5 Autonomous robots - example 3

6. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo6 Autonomous robots - example 4

7. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo7 Autonomous robots - example 4

8. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo8 So, what are autonomous robots? A machine that receives information from its working environment by means of its sensors, and basing on this information decides autonomously what action to execute, out of the ones available, in order to pursue a given task. Perception Action Decision Percezione Azione Decisione Perception Action Decision

9. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo9 Autonomous robots as controllers modeling of physics probabilistic reasoning programming analog and digital electronics complex modeling of physics control systems programming

10. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo10 Staff Domenico G. Sorrenti, assoc. prof. Daniele Marzorati, research assoc. Axel Furlan, research assist. students

11. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo11 Main research topics Vision-based SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping); Multi-target tracking; Benchmarking, a cultural approach, orthogonal to the topics.

12. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo12 Vision-based SLAM costruzione di un modello (mappa) dellambiente di lavoro

13. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo13 Vision-based SLAM we tackled the uncertainty modeling problem, relevant in vision- based SLAM; we are now at the frontier of the research, at the international level, with the inverse scaling parameterization; expectations: to consolidate the results publishing comparisons with other proposals on known benchmarks; to handle large maps (CISLAM approach from Zaragoza); to handle dynamic scenes; this is a joint work with Politecnico di Milano; cooperation: Universidad de Zaragoza, Albert Ludwig Universiteit Freiburg;

14. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo14 Multi-target tracking

15. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo15 Multi-target tracking we tackled the problem of handling ambiguities in tracking, relevant in vision-based navigation (indoor and outdoor); in this field we are now behind the frontier of the research, at the international level; expectations: to publish our current results in papers based on comparisons with other proposals, on known benchmarks; to integrate with the research in SLAM o increase accuracy in both systems; to apply our systems to both indoor (project Grandi Attrezzature 2008) and outdoor (robotic cars/buses) navigation. cooperation: Politecnico di Milano

16. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo16 Benchmarking in SLAM

17. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo17 Benchmarking in SLAM we tackled the problem of procuring datasets for benchmarking of SLAM algorithm by any research groups, in a project funded by the EEC, quite successful; this is a support of the research activity, though innovation had to be brought in for: the definition of the Ground Truth collection systems for the robot pose, the definition of performance measures, the definition of some algorithms, i.e., benchmark solutions; in this field we are the frontier of the research, at the international level; expectations: to publish our results in papers devoted to robotic benchmarking; to apply our SLAM research results to the collected datasets; to maintain the lead in the field, e.g., by using the Grandi Attrezzature 2008 infrastructure for benchmarking research fields where offline datasets are not viable. cooperation: Politecnico di Milano, Universidad de Zaragoza, Albert Ludwig Universiteit Freiburg;

18. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo18 Why robotics is different? Taxonomy of research activity: at the conceptual level: pure pencil and paper work; at the software implementation level: software development; at the hardware level: robotics, and other real research activities. Real example: during the SantAmbrogio week in December 2008 about 10 people from UNIMIB and POLIMI spent the something more than one week, after preparing for this activity, collecting indoor datasets for SLAM benchmarking in the Bicocca location. about 8 top-qualified people from UNIZR and ALUFR spent at about the same amount for checking and validating the datasets. End of January it turned out that a bug in a newer version of the IEE1394 (Firewire) driver invalidated all such datasets. The datasets had to be re-collected; it took about one month of full pipelined work for the same number of people, which amounts to more than one year of labor. Pure pencil and paper research do not risk such troubles, and the same applies to pure software research.

19. 16.06.09State of the art and research perspectives at DISCo19 Conclusions Both SLAM and multi-target tracking are required for autonomous driving, in any application: robotized car/buses, indoor autonomous navigation services, unmanned ground / air / underwater vehicles. In a few years many robotic product will reach the market; shall we be ready for selling them or we will be just customers?