Institute of Technology

OVERVIEW

The Multiple Autonomous Robotic Systems (MARS) Laboratory is a multi-disciplinary research lab at the University of Minnesota. The objective of the MARS Lab is to promote basic research and education in robotics and computer vision with special emphasis on estimation and control of autonomous ground, aerial, and space vehicles.

Researchers in our group have a diverse background in Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Industrial Engineering, and Physics.

The research interests of our group are on:

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SLAM

  • Mobile robot localization, mapping, navigation, and tracking

  • Sensor networks - modeling, analysis, and information fusion

  • Distributed sensing and control in bandwidth-limited environments

  • Vision-aided inertial navigation

  • Structure from motion

  • Fault detection and identification

  • Human-robot interaction

The members of this group are affiliated with the SPINCOM group.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • June 24-26 '09: 17th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation, Thessaloniki, Greece (MED 2009).

  • June 29-July 1 '09: Robotics: Science and Systems Conference, Seattle, WA (RSS 2009).

RESEARCH NEWS & AWARDS:

  • May 16 '09: Esha Nerurkar is the ICRA'09 Best Student Paper Award Finalists for the paper: E.D. Nerurkar, S.I. Roumeliotis, and A. Martinelli, "Distributed Maximum A Posteriori Estimation for Multi-robot Cooperative Localization,'' In Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA'09), Kobe, Japan, May 12-17 2009, pp. 1402-1409. [Picture] [Certificate]

  • Dec. 19 '08: Prof. Roumeliotis receives the NSF Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). White House News Anouncement [Press Release] [NSF link].

  • Sep. 15 '08: New NSF grant: "CDI-Type II: Collaborative Research: Cyber Enhancement of Spatial Cognition for the Visually Impaired" [NSF - award abstract].

  • July 22 '08: New NSF grant: "RI-Small: Motion-induced Extrinsic Calibration of
    Rigid and Reconfigurable Networks of Sensors" [NSF - award abstract].

  • Aug. 1 '08: A.I. Mourikis becomes Assistant Professor at the EE Dept., Univ. of California, Riverside.

  • June 18 '08: A.I. Mourikis successfully defended his Ph.D. Thesis: "Characterization and Optimization of the Accuracy of Mobile Robot Localization".

  • May 2 '08: F. Mirzaei receives the UMN Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship Award

  • Oct. '07: Xun (Sam) Zhou and Prof. Roumeliotis are the IROS'06 Best Paper Award Finalists for the paper: X.S. Zhou and S.I. Roumeliotis, "Multi-robot SLAM with Unknown Initial Correspondence: The Robot Rendezvous Case" , In Proc. 2006 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Beijing, China, Oct. 9-15, pp. 1785-1792.

  • Aug. '07: 3 MARS Lab students receive UMN/CSE Excellence in Research Awards - (i) Joel Hesch for the paper: J. Hesch and S.I. Roumeliotis, "An Indoor
    Localization Aid for the Visually Impaired,'' In Proc. 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA'07), Rome, Italy, Apr. 10-14, pp.
    3545-3551    . - (ii) Faraz Mirzaei for the paper: F.M. Mirzaei, A.I. Mourikis, and S.I. Roumeliotis "On the Performance of Multi-robot Target Tracking,'' In Proc. 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA'07), Rome, Italy, Apr. 10-14, pp. 3482-3489. - (iii) Xun (Sam) Zhou for the paper: X.S. Zhou and S.I. Roumeliotis, "Determining the Robot-to-Robot Relative Pose using Range-only Measurements,'' In Proc. 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
    Automation (ICRA'07), Rome, Italy, Apr. 10-14, pp. 4025-4031.

  • July '07: Prof. Roumeliotis is the co-recipient of the Best Journal Paper Award of the Robotics Society of Japan for the paper: D.M. Helmick, S.I. Roumeliotis, Y. Chang, D.S. Clouse, M. Bajracharya, and L. Matthies, "Slip-Compensated Path Following for Planetary Exploration Rovers" , Advanced Robotics , (20)11, Nov. 2006, pp. 4782-4795.

  • July '07: Joel Hesch receives the NIH Neuro-Physical-Computational Sciences Training Fellowship Award

  • May 1 '07: A.I. Mourikis receives the UMN Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship Award

  • Jan. 4 '07: Prof. Roumeliotis receives the NSF CAREER Award for the proposal "CAREER: Distributed Estimation and Active Sensing with Mobile Robot Networks" [NSF - award abstract].

  • June '06: N. Trawny receives the UMN/CSE Guidant Excellence in Research Award for the paper: N. Trawny and S.I. Roumeliotis, "A Unified Framework for Nearby and Distant Landmarks in Bearing-Only SLAM,'' In Proc. 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA'06), Orlando, FL, May 15-19, pp. 1923-29.

  • June '06: A.I. Mourikis receives the UMN/CSE Excellence in Research Award for the paper: A.I. Mourikis and S.I. Roumeliotis, "Optimal Sensor Scheduling for Resource-Constrained Localization of Mobile Robot Formations,'' IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 22(5), Oct. 2006, pp. 917-931.

  • Apr. 18 '06: One NASA Center Best Award - Team award to the JPL, NASA Ames, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of Minnesota development team of the Coupled Layer Architecture for Robotic Autonomy (CLARAty). Center: Jet Propulsion Laboratory [05/18/06 local copy of JPL Universe].

  • Mar. 9 '06: One NASA Peer Award - Team award to the JPL, NASA Ames, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of Minnesota development team of the Coupled Layer Architecture for Robotic Autonomy (CLARAty). In recognition of the accomplishment of creating and applying a software framework for integrating innovations in robotics into rapid insertion into NASA's flight missions [03/24/06 local copy of JPL Universe].

  • Dec. '05: Prof. Roumeliotis receives the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship award [link].

  • June '05: A.I. Mourikis receives the UMN/CSE Excellence in Research Award for the paper: A.I. Mourikis and S.I. Roumeliotis, "Performance Bounds for Cooperative Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (C-SLAM)," In Proc. Robotics: Science and Systems Conference (RSS'05), Cambridge, MA, June 8-11, 2005, pp. 73-80.

  • Mar. 20-22 '05: Packbot stair climbing demo at SSR-RC Spring Symposium, Tampa, FL (video).

  • Feb. 15 '05: Packbot stair climbing v0.1 (video1, video2, video3, video4).

PREVIOUS EVENTS:

  • May 12-17 '09: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Kobe, Japan (ICRA 2009).

  • Dec. 7-9 '08: 8th International Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics, Guanajuato, Mexico (WAFR 2008).

  • Sep. 22-26 '08: IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Nice, France (IROS 2008)

  • July 14-17 '08: 11th International Symposium on Experimental Robotics, Athens, Greece (ISER 2008).

  • June 24-26 '08: IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Anchorage, AK (CVPR 2008).

  • May 19-23 '08: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Pasadena, CA (ICRA 2008).

  • Oct. 29-Nov. 2 '07: IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, San Diego, CA (IROS 2007).

  • June 27-30 '07: Robotics - Science and Systems, Atlanta, GA (RSS 2007).

  • Apr. 10-14 '07: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Rome, Italy (ICRA 2007).

  • Aug. 16-19 '06: Robotics - Science and Systems, Philadelphia, PA (RSS 2006).

  • Oct. 9-15 '06: IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Beijing, China (IROS 2006).

  • Apr. 28 '06: Prof. Sanjiv Singh, "Shared Control of Assembly Tasks in Robots and Humans" (Robotics Seminar) Fr. Apr. 28, 1:30-2:30, DTC 402.

  • Apr. 24 '06: Prof. Leo Guibas, "Point-Based Methods in Shape Modeling and Physical Simulation" (Cray Lecture Series) Mon. Apr. 24, 11:15-12:15, EE/CS 3-180.

  • Apr. 10 '06: Prof. Daniela Rus, "Self-Organizing Robot Systems" (Unisys Lecture Series) Mon. Apr. 10, 11:15-12:15, EE/CS 3-180

  • Dec. 5 '05: Prof. Lydia Kavraki, "From Robots to Biomolecules: Computing Meets the Physical World" (Cray Lecture Series) Mon. Dec. 5, 11:15-12:15, EE/CS 3-125

  • Oct. 4-5 '05: SSR-RC Fall Symposium, Minneapolis, MN

  • Aug. 2-6 '05: IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Alberta, CA (IROS 2005).

  • July 30 '05: IJCAI-05, Workshop: "Reasoning with Uncertainty in Robotics," Edinburgh, Scotland (RUR 2005).

  • July 18-20 '05: IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics, Seattle, Washington (ICAR 2005).

  • June 8-11 '05: Robotics - Science and Systems, Boston, MA (RSS 2005).

  • April 18-22 '05: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Barcelona, Spain (ICRA 2005).

  • Feb. 24-26 '05: Asimo visit (poster)

 

 

 

  
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
Computer Science and EngineeringUniversity of MinnesotaInstitute of Technology