IPAB Workshop-22/06/2023

Ran Long

Title: RGB-D-Inertial SLAM in Indoor Dynamic Environments with Long-term Large Occlusion

Abstract: This work presents a novel RGB-D-inertial dynamic SLAM method that can enable accurate localisation when the majority of the camera view is occluded by multiple dynamic objects over a long period of time. Most dynamic SLAM approaches either remove dynamic objects as outliers when they account for a minor proportion of the visual input, or detect dynamic objects using semantic segmentation before camera tracking. Therefore, dynamic objects that cause large occlusions are difficult to detect without prior information. The remaining visual information from the static background is also not enough to support localisation when large occlusion lasts for a long period. To overcome these problems, our framework presents a robust visual-inertial bundle adjustment that simultaneously tracks camera, estimates cluster-wise dense segmentation of dynamic objects and maintains a static sparse map by combining dense and sparse features. The experiment results demonstrate that our method achieves promising localisation and object segmentation performance compared to other state-of-the-art methods in the scenario of long-term large occlusion.

Rob Mitchell

Title: Multimodal cue integration in the insect brain

Abstract: Insects are capable of great feats of navigation; these range from relatively simple straight-line orientation over a few metres to migration over hundreds of kilometres. A robust internal compass is a critical foundation for such navigation and, despite differences in navigational behaviour, the insect compass appears to be remarkably well conserved across the brains of different species.  A variety of insects have been studied for their orientation capabilities and of these, the ball rolling dung beetle presents a uniquely accessible model. These beetles perform straight-line orientation which is readily repeatable in both field and lab environments. Further, they are known to use a plethora of orientation cues to guide their paths and have recently been shown to integrate multiple orientation cues simultaneously. Recent work examining compass cue integration in dung beetles has revealed that the integration likely takes the form of a vector sum. In this talk, I will tie this result to physiology and present our current model of compass cue integration in the insect brain.