Thesis Defense Announcement for Will Meadows
May 15, 2019
Faculty and Students,
You are cordially invited to my thesis defense.
Title: Multi–LiDAR placement, calibration, and co–registration for off–road autonomous vehicle operation
When: Thursday, June 6th at 9:00 a.m.
Where: Simrall Hall, Room 228 (Conference Room)
Candidate: Will Meadows
Degree: Masters, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Committee:
Dr. John Ball
(Major Professor )
Dr. Christopher Archibald
(Committee Member)
Dr. Qian Du
(Committee Member)
Abstract:
For autonomous vehicles, 3D, rotating LiDAR sensors are critically important towards the vehicle’s ability to sense its environment. Generally, these sensors scan their environment, using multiple laser beams to gather information about the range and the intensity of the reflection from an object. For multi–LiDAR systems, the placement of the sensors determines the density of the combined point cloud. I perform preliminary research on the optimal LiDAR placement strategy for an off–road, autonomous vehicle known as the Halo project. I use simulation to generate large amounts of labeled LiDAR data that can be used to train and evaluate a neural network used to process LiDAR data in the vehicle. The performance metrics of the network are then used to generalize the performance of the sensor pose. I also, describe and evaluate intrinsic and extrinsic calibration methods that are applied in the multi–LiDAR system.