SPRING 2023 GRASP On Robotics: Frank Dellaert, Georgia Tech

“Factor Graphs for Perception and Action”
ABSTRACT
Factor graphs have been very successful in providing a lingua franca in which to phrase robotics perception and navigation problems. In this talk I will re-visit some of those successes, also discussed in depth in a recent review article. However, I will focus on our more recent work in the talk, centered on using factor graphs for *action*. I will discuss our efforts in motion planning, trajectory optimization, optimal control, and model-predictive control, highlighting SCATE, our recent work on collision avoidance for autonomous spacecraft.

PRESENTER
Frank Dellaert is a Professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing, and CTO at Verdant Robotics. He has previously done stints at Skydio, a drone startup, Facebook Reality Labs, and most recently Google AI. His work is on sensor fusion and the use of large-scale graphical models for robotics sensing, thinking, and acting. With his students and collaborators, he created the popular sensor fusion/SLAM library GTSAM, see gtsam.org. SCATE was joint work with Matthew King-Smith and Panagiotis Tsiotras in the School of Aerospace Engineering, where Prof. Dellaert is also adjunct faculty.