Research

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a robotic system that is fully capable of autonomous survey tasks with little to no human interaction. The system uses a Veloydne VLP-32 LIDAR sensor and an Intel RealSense D435 camera to simultaneously map the environment and avoid all obstacles autonomously. Combination of these sensor to detect positive, negative, and overhead obstacles results in 3D object detection, which is then used to create a 2D map using SLAM mapping algorithms.

Our Group

The Nuclear & Applied Robotics Group is an interdisciplinary research group whose goal is to develop and deploy remote systems in hazardous/challenging environments to minimize the risks undertaken by human personnel. 'Interdisciplinary' refers not just to the many facets of modern robotics (mechanical, electrical, controls, etc.) but developers also gather the necessary knowledge of the domains where they will be deployed (nuclear, energy, military, etc.).

Our Mission

We want to reduce the exposure of human operators to hazards while minimizing the overall costs (training, execution, time, and money) associated with the use of remote systems, and do so in a way that increases the number of engineering scientists in the world who can develop these systems at UT and beyond.

Our Vision

We aim to develop easy, hardware-agnostic interfaces that allow non-expert users to command mobile, ground, or aerial platforms, manipulators, and mobile manipulators with any level of autonomy and complete complex tasks in time periods comparable to a human.

 

Below the line is under development. For recent activity see our YouTubeChannel, Twitter News Feed, Publications, or Dr. Pryor's CV on the People Page.