Research seminar "A Time-to-Impact Sensor and applications in robotics"

Abstract:

Time-to-Impact (TTI) sensing can be performed with an ordinary image sensor and suitable processing. Typically an optical flow field is computed and the TTI is derived from it. However, optical flow requires fairly substantial processing and memory which lowers the rate at which TTI values can be achieved, particularly if low power is required. The talk will present a different view on how to compute the optical flow in a way relevant for TTI estimation. Furthermore, the implementation of the algorithm on a focal plane processor (NSIP)  will be presented. Finally, some robotic applications will be addressed.

Biography:

Prof. Robert Forchheimer has expertise in compression of media signals. He received the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm (KTH) in 1972 and the Ph.D degree from Linköping University in 1979. During the academic year 1979 to 1980 he was a visiting research scientist at University of Southern California where he worked in the areas of image coding, computer architectures for image processing and optical computing. Dr Forchheimer's research areas have involved data security, packet radio communication, smart vision sensors and image coding. He has authored and coauthored papers in all of these areas and also holds several patents. He is the cofounder of several companies within the university science park. Dr Forchheimer is currently in charge of the Information Coding Group at Linköping University. His main work concerns algorithms and systems for image and video communication.