Episode 91: Robot navigation on land and in water - John Leonard

Robot Talk · 27 Sept 2024 · 30m · Episode 91

What this episode covers

John Leonard, a Professor at MIT and Technical Advisor at Toyota Research Institute, explains the challenges of autonomous navigation for underwater vehicles and self-driving cars. He details how pose graph optimization and SLAM allow robots to build maps and localize themselves, while discussing the specific difficulties of underwater sonar and perceptual aliasing. Leonard also describes his concept of 'robot dreaming' for lifelong learning and Toyota's human-centric AI approach, which includes autonomous drifting to improve safety systems for human drivers.

Mentioned

Companies
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Toyota Research Institute, Waymo, Tesla, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford
Tools
Sonar
Also
DARPA Urban Challenge, ChatGPT, Segment Anything

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