Hanumant Singh, Professor, College of Engineering, Northeastern University, USA

E-mail:ha.singh@northeastern.edu

Website: https://coe.northeastern.edu/people/singh-hanumant/

Title:Mapping Icebergs and Glaciers with AUVs, ASVs and UAS

Bio:Hanumant Singh is a Professor at Northeastern University. He received his Ph.D. from the MIT WHOI Joint Program in 1995 and then worked on the Staff at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution until 2016 when he joined Northeastern. His research interests are in the area of field robotics, with an emphasis on SLAM, imaging, and mapping, particularly in the marine, polar and aerial domains.

His group has designed and built the Seabed AUV and the Jetyak Autonomous Surface Vehicle, dozens of which are in use for scientific and academic research across the globe. He also has strong interests in small Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS).  He has participated in 60 expeditions in all of the world’s oceans in support of Marine Geology, Marine Biology, Deep Water Archaeology, Chemical Oceanography, Polar Studies, and Coral Reef Ecology.  In collaboration with his students his awards include the ICRA Best Student Paper Award, the Sung Fu Memorial Best IEEE Transactions on Robotics Paper Award and Best Paper Awards at the Oceans Conference and at AGU.

Abstract:Iceberg and glacier melt is poorly characterized but is an important mechanism for modeling and understanding sea level rise. This talk explores recent advances in using heterogeneous marine robotic vehicles to characterize this melt with repeat surveys over time. We examine the errors in 3D SfM techniques in such environments to showcase our ability to carry out such measurements.