Congratulations to Shehryar Khattak for successfully defending his PhD on "Resilient Multi-Modal Robot Localization in Perception Degraded Environments"! Committee included

• Prof. Dr. Kostas Alexis | UNR
  
• Prof. Dr. Margarita Chli | ETH Zurich
  
• Prof. Dr. George Bebis |UNR 
  
• Prof. Dr. Christos Papachristos |UNR
  
• Dr. JIhwan Yoon | UNR

Our group has received the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR) 2019 Best Paper Award for our contribution on: 

• T. Dang, S. Khattak, F. Mascarich, K. Alexis, "Explore Locally, Plan Globally: A Path Planning Framework for Autonomous Robotic Exploration in Subterranean Environments", 19th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR), Belo Horizonte - Brazil, December 2-6, 2019 (Best Paper Award) 

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During the last 2 months we have provided multiple talks on Field-hardened Robotic Autonomy, namely at Duke University (U.S.), NTNU (Norway), Stanford University (U.S.), internally at UNR (U.S.), and as industry workshop speaker. We thank all those that hosted our talks. Below, a youtube video of our presentation at Stanford University. 
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Two papers accepted at ICAR2019: 

• T. Dang, S. Khattak, F. Mascarich, K. Alexis, "Explore Locally, Plan Globally: A Path Planning Framework for Autonomous Robotic Exploration in Subterranean Environments", 19th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR), Belo Horizonte - Brazil, December 2-6, 2019
• K. Alexis, "Resilient Autonomous Exploration and Mapping of Underground Mines using Aerial Robots", 19th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR), Belo Horizonte - Brazil, December 2-6, 2019

Our IROS 2019 submission

• T. Dang, F. Mascarich, S. Khattak, C. Papachristos, K. Alexis, "Graph-based Path Planning for Autonomous Robotic Exploration in Subterranean Environments", IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2019, Macau, China

was accepted! Check out the video of results. 
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Our FSR paper:

• T. Dang, F. Mascarich, S. Khattak, H. Nguyen, N. Khedekar, C. Papachristos, and K. Alexis, "Field-hardened Robotic Autonomy for Subterranean Exploration", Conference on Field and Service Robotics (FSR), 2019, Aug. 29-31, Tokyo, Japan

Was accepted! 

Dr. Kostas Alexis received the University's College of Engineering Excellence Award for 2019. 

The following papers were recently accepted: 

• C. Papachristos, S. Khattak, F. Mascarich, T. Dang, K. Alexis, "Autonomous Aerial Robotic Exploration of Subterranean Environments relying on Morphology-aware Path Planning", International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), June 11-14, 2019, Atlanta, GA, USA
  
• T. Dang, S. Khattak, C. Papachristos, K. Alexis, "Anomaly Detection and Cognizant Path Planning for Surveillance Operations using Aerial Robots", International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), June 11-14, 2019, Atlanta, GA, USA
  
• S. Khattak, F. Mascarich, T. Dang, C. Papachristos, K. Alexis, "Robust Thermal-Inertial Localization for Aerial Robots: A Case for Direct Methods", International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), June 11-14, 2019, Atlanta, GA, USA

Our paper:

• S. Khattak, C. Papachristos, K. Alexis, "Visual-Thermal Landmarks and Inertial Fusion for Navigation in Degraded Visual Environments", IEEE Aerospace Conference (AeroConf) 2019, Yellowstone Conference, Big Sky, Montana, Mar 2-9, 2019

Was awarded the Best Paper Award in the "Air Vehicle Systems and Technologies" Track of the IEEE Aerospace Conference 2019. Special congratulations to our PhD Candidate Shehryar Khattak! 

Our group releases new results on autonomous subterranean exploration using aerial robots.