Prof. Davide Scaramuzza, director of the Zurich University Robotics and Perception Group, visits Prophesee
Davide Scaramuzza, who runs the Robotics and Perception Group of the University of Zurich visited us at Prophesee’s office recently and presented his work on motion estimation with event cameras (SLAM, visual-inertial odometry, feature tracking).
Davide has extensive experience with autonomous drones, including in the emerging sport of drone racing, which requires highly precise and responsive vision capabilities. The talk he gave focused on how Event-Based Vision enables better operational performance for drones used in rescue and inspection missions, where a fast response is also critical.
Davide showed how drones have the potential to navigate quickly through unstructured environments, enter and exit buildings through narrow gaps, and fly through collapsed buildings. However, their speed and maneuverability still need improvement. Indeed, agile navigation through unknown, indoor environments poses a number of challenges for robotics research in terms of perception, state estimation, planning, and control.
In his talk, Davide demonstrated that tightly-coupled perception and control is crucial in order to plan trajectories that improve the quality of perception. He also touched upon how using event-based vision better enables low latency sensory motor control and navigation in both low light and dynamic environments, where traditional vision sensors fail.
You can read more about Davide and the Robotics and Perception Group here.
