Author name cluster

Vandi Verma

Possible papers associated with this exact author name in Arrow. This page groups case-insensitive exact name matches and is not a full identity disambiguation profile.

5 papers

2 author rows

ICRA Conference 2024 Conference Paper

Censible: A Robust and Practical Global Localization Framework for Planetary Surface Missions

Jeremy Nash
Quintin Dwight
Lucas Saldyt
Haoda Wang
Steven Myint
Adnan Ansar
Vandi Verma

To achieve longer driving distances, planetary robotics missions require accurate localization to counteract position uncertainty. Freedom and precision in driving allows scientists to reach and study sites of interest. Typically, rover global localization has been performed manually by humans, which is accurate but time-consuming as data is relayed between planets. This paper describes a global localization algorithm that is run onboard the Perseverance Mars rover. Our approach matches rover images to orbital maps using a modified census transform to achieve sub-meter accurate, near-human localization performance on a real dataset of 264 Mars rover panoramas. The proposed solution has also been successfully executed on the Perseverance Mars Rover, demonstrating the practicality of our approach.

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ICRA Conference 2005 Conference Paper

First Experiments in the Robotic Investigation of Life in the Atacama Desert of Chile

David Wettergreen
Nathalie Cabrol
James P. Teza
Paul Tompkins
Chris Urmson
Vandi Verma
Michael Wagner 0007
William Whittaker

The Atacama Desert of northern Chile may be the most lifeless place on Earth, yet where the desert meets the Pacific coastal range desiccation-tolerant micro-organisms are known to exist. The gradient of biodiversity and habitats in the Atacama’s subregions remain unexplored and are the focus of the Life in the Atacama project. To conduct this investigation, long traverses must be made across the desert with instruments for geologic and biologic measurements. In this paper we motivate the Life in the Atacama project from both astrobiologic and robotic perspectives. We focus on some of the research challenges we are facing to enable endurance navigation, resource cognizance, and long-term survivability. We conducted our first scientific investigation and technical experiments in Chile with the mobile robot Hyperion. We describe the experiments and the results of our analysis. These results give us insight into the design of an effective robotic astrobiologist and into the methods by which we will conduct scientific investigation in the next field season.

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IJCAI Conference 2003 Conference Paper

Variable Resolution Particle Filter

Vandi Verma
Sebastian Thrun
Reid Simmons

Particle filters are used extensively for tracking the state of non-linear dynamic systems. This paper presents a new particle filter that maintains samples in the state space at dynamically varying resolution for computational efficiency. Resolution within siatespace varies by region, depending on the belief that the true state lies within each region. Where belief is strong, resolution is fine. Where belief is low, resolution is coarse, abstracting multiple similar states together. The resolution of the statespace is dynamically updated as the belief changes. The proposed algorithm makes an explicit bias-variance tradeoff to select between maintaining samples in a biased generalization of a region of state space versus in a high variance specialization at fine resolution. Samples are maintained at a coarser resolution when the bias introduced by the generalization to a coarse resolution is outweighed by the gain in terms of reduction in variance, and at a finer resolution when it is not. Maintaining samples in abstraction prevents potential hypotheses from being eliminated prematurely for lack of a sufficient number of particles. Empirical results show that our variable resolution particle filter requires significantly lower computation for performance comparable to a classical particle filter.

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NeurIPS Conference 2001 Conference Paper

Risk Sensitive Particle Filters

Sebastian Thrun
John Langford
Vandi Verma

We propose a new particle ﬁlter that incorporates a model of costs when generating particles. The approach is motivated by the observation that the costs of accidentally not tracking hypotheses might be signiﬁcant in some areas of state space, and next to irrelevant in others. By incorporat- ing a cost model into particle ﬁltering, states that are more critical to the system performance are more likely to be tracked. Automatic calculation of the cost model is implemented using an MDP value function calcula- tion that estimates the value of tracking a particular state. Experiments in two mobile robot domains illustrate the appropriateness of the approach.

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ICRA Conference 2000 Conference Paper

Recent Progress in Local and Global Traversability for Planetary Rovers

Sanjiv Singh
Reid G. Simmons
Trey Smith
Anthony Stentz
Vandi Verma
Alex Yahja
Kurt Schwehr

Autonomous planetary rovers operating in vast unknown environments must operate efficiently because of size, power and computing limitations. Recently, we have developed a rover capable of efficient obstacle avoidance and path planning. The rover uses binocular stereo vision to sense potentially cluttered outdoor environments. Navigation is performed by a combination of several modules that each "vote" for the next best action for the robot to execute. The key distinction of our system is that it produces globally intelligent behavior with a small computational resource - all processing and decision making are done on a single processor. These algorithms have been tested on our outdoor prototype rover, Bullwinkle, and have recently driven the rover 100 m at a speed of 15 cm/sec. In this paper we report on the extension on the systems that we have previously developed that were necessary to achieve autonomous navigation in this domain.

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