Fall 2013 Physics Colloquium
December 6; PAS 224, 3pm
Wolfgang Fink
University of Arizona
Autonomous Robotic Reconnaissance Missions in Extreme Environments
Robotic reconnaissance missions are called for in extreme space
environments, including planetary atmospheres, surfaces, and
subsurfaces, as well as in potentially hazardous or inaccessible
operational areas on Earth. Such future missions will require
increasing degrees of operational autonomy, especially when following
up on transient events. Operational autonomy requires: (1) Automatic
characterization of operational areas from different vantages; (2)
automatic sensor deployment and data gathering; (3) automatic feature
extraction and region-of-interest identification; (4) automatic target
prediction and prioritization; (5) and subsequent automatic
(re-)deployment and navigation of robotic agents. The talk reports on
the development of a robotic test bed for a NASA award-winning mission
paradigm, termed "Tier-scalable Reconnaissance", as the foundation for
autonomous C4ISR systems of the future. In addition to aerial
platforms, the test bed currently comprises several worldwide
computer-controllable land and sea rovers equipped with a variety of
sensors for autonomous operations in aerial, terrestrial, and
riverine/maritime environments. Moreover, the talk discusses some
mathematical approaches for instilling autonomy into robotic
platforms, such as feature vector extraction and comparison, unbiased
anomaly detection in feature space, and target-of-interest
determination through hypothetical probing.
Short bio for Dr. Wolfgang Fink:
Associate Professor Dr. Wolfgang Fink is the inaugural Edward & Maria
Keonjian Endowed Chair of Microelectronics with joint appointments in
the Departments of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Biomedical
Engineering, Systems & Industrial Engineering, Aerospace & Mechanical
Engineering, and Ophthalmology & Vision Science at the University of
Arizona in Tucson. He is a Visiting Associate in Physics at the
California Institute of Technology, and holds concurrent appointments
as Visiting Research Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and
Neurological Surgery at the University of Southern California. Dr.
Fink is the founder and director of the Visual and Autonomous
Exploration Systems Research Laboratory at Caltech and at the
University of Arizona. He was a Senior Researcher at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory from 2000 till 2009. He obtained a B.S. and M.S.
degree in Physics and Physical Chemistry from the University of
Göttingen, Germany, and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the
University of Tübingen, Germany in 1997.
Dr. Fink, pursuing an inter-disciplinary systems engineering approach
in human-machine interfaces, evolutionary optimization, and
autonomous/reasoning systems, has focused his research on biomimetic
(implantable) systems, biomedical sensor development, artificial
vision, computer-optimized design, cognitive systems, and autonomous
robotic space exploration. Throughout his tenure at JPL and Caltech
Dr. Fink received 6 NASA Patent Awards. In July 2009, Dr. Fink was
named co-recipient of the R&D Magazine's R&D 100 Award and
subsequently in November 2009 he was also named co-recipient of the
R&D Magazine's R&D 100 Editors' Choice Award (the highest of the R&D
100 Awards in 2009), both for the DOE-funded Artificial Retina
Project. Furthermore, in November 2009 he received the NASA Board
Award for his pioneering work on a novel autonomous space exploration
paradigm. Dr. Fink has over 170 publications (including journal, book,
and conference contributions) as well as 13 patents awarded to date in
the areas of autonomous systems, biomedical devices, MEMS fabrication,
and multi-dimensional optimization. In 2011 Dr. Fink was elected to
the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and
Biological Engineering (AIMBE). Dr. Fink holds a Commercial Pilots
License for Rotorcraft.