DEPTHX- Drawing the Map

music
ambience: DEPTHX ambience

To explore and map the world’s deepest lakes and sinkholes, scientists have created a self-navigating robot. But how does the device know to where go when no other robot has gone before? I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. Nathaniel Fairfield is a graduate student at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute. He helped to develop the DEPTHX robot’s self-navigation system. In order to complete its mission, the DEPTHX must both keep track of where it is and accurately map its surroundings.

“The problem is that we neither have a map because we’re exploring into a completely unknown environment, nor do we have a really clear idea of exactly where we are.”

The DEPTHX robot explores its underwater surroundings with the help of multiple sonar units. But why not use something simpler, like a GPS system to help keep track of the robot’s location?

“If we had a GPS or something like that, it would tell us, you know, “You are here,” all the time, and that’s great. That’s what you do if you possibly can, absolutely use GPS. But when we’re underwater, radio signals don’t travel at all underwater, really, except for very low frequency ones that are pretty much useless. So, we don’t have GPS. We don’t have a given global position, so we have to put it together. We have to try and build a map as we’re going along, and then, we have to use that map at the same time. So, it’s as if we’re walking down a tunnel, drawing the lines that we see behind us, and then looking forward and saying, “Okay. It looks like the walls continue on ahead. Let’s draw those lines on a little bit,” and then, we take 10 steps forward, and we look back, and we see, “Okay. The walls are there, and I thought”you know, lining yourself up with where you thought you thought the walls were and then putting the new information that you’re collecting in front of you. So, that starts to get into technically how this data’s represented on the robot.”

Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation, with additional support from NASA. I’m Jim Metzner.

DEPTHX- Drawing the Map

Drawing a map is easy. Drawing a map when you have no idea where you are? A bit more tricky.
Air Date:11/27/2007
Scientist:
Transcript:

music
ambience: DEPTHX ambience

To explore and map the world’s deepest lakes and sinkholes, scientists have created a self-navigating robot. But how does the device know to where go when no other robot has gone before? I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. Nathaniel Fairfield is a graduate student at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute. He helped to develop the DEPTHX robot’s self-navigation system. In order to complete its mission, the DEPTHX must both keep track of where it is and accurately map its surroundings.

“The problem is that we neither have a map because we’re exploring into a completely unknown environment, nor do we have a really clear idea of exactly where we are.”

The DEPTHX robot explores its underwater surroundings with the help of multiple sonar units. But why not use something simpler, like a GPS system to help keep track of the robot’s location?

“If we had a GPS or something like that, it would tell us, you know, “You are here,” all the time, and that’s great. That’s what you do if you possibly can, absolutely use GPS. But when we’re underwater, radio signals don’t travel at all underwater, really, except for very low frequency ones that are pretty much useless. So, we don’t have GPS. We don’t have a given global position, so we have to put it together. We have to try and build a map as we’re going along, and then, we have to use that map at the same time. So, it’s as if we’re walking down a tunnel, drawing the lines that we see behind us, and then looking forward and saying, “Okay. It looks like the walls continue on ahead. Let’s draw those lines on a little bit,” and then, we take 10 steps forward, and we look back, and we see, “Okay. The walls are there, and I thought”you know, lining yourself up with where you thought you thought the walls were and then putting the new information that you’re collecting in front of you. So, that starts to get into technically how this data’s represented on the robot.”

Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation, with additional support from NASA. I’m Jim Metzner.