Fusing Sensor Data to Improve Perception in Autonomous Systems

Overview

Autonomous systems continue to be developed and deployed at an accelerated pace across a wide range of applications including automated driving, robotics, and UAVs. The four main components of an autonomous system are sensing, perception, decision making, and action execution and control.

In this webinar, we will focus on the perception component of an autonomous system. We will demonstrate a sensor fusion development framework that includes an integrated test bed, algorithms, and metrics for performance analysis. We will look at the strengths and weaknesses of different sensor modalities for localization and multi-object tracking. We will also explore how measurements from different sensor modalities such as radar and lidar can be combined to improve the quality of the perception system.

Multiple examples will be used to highlight concepts that are critical to architecting and integrating systems that perform sensor fusion.

Highlights

Attendees will learn:

• Why sensor fusion and tracking are a key part of perception systems
• How to combine measurements that are taken from different sensor to improve pose estimates and situational awareness
• How to explore system level trade-offs including sensor accuracy, location, and update rates 

About the Presenter

Rick Gentile focuses on Phased Array, Signal Processing, Radar, and Sensor Fusion applications at MathWorks. Prior to joining MathWorks, Rick was a Radar Systems Engineer at MITRE and MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where he worked on the development of many large radar systems. Rick also was a DSP Applications Engineer at Analog Devices where he led embedded processor and system level architecture definitions for high performance signal processing systems, including automotive driver assist systems. Rick co-authored the text “Embedded Media Processing”. He received a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Northeastern University, where his focus areas of study included Microwave Engineering, Communications and Signal Processing.