Dr. Cédric Pradalier

Google Scholar Public Profile

Technical Coordinator for the V-Charge Project.

Control of the CoaX helicopter

Here are some results of some work we did with Mike Bosse (ICT Center, CSIRO, Australia) on the stabilisation and control of a coaxial helicopter. The videos below show some results obtained with wall following, using a simple PID (left) and a model-based LQR controller (right), with a model acquired from a system identification phase. The helicopter is equipped with 3 forward looking range sensors, from which we estimate the distance and angle to the wall. In addition, the helicopter low-level dsPIC provides altitude stabilisation, and yaw control. In both demo, the remote control is used to manually control the lateral motions as the robot cannot observe lateral motion.

All the control is running on-board on a gumstix overo (earth) computer.

The next step is to add a layer of lateral stabilisation using the coax embedded webcam. Look at www.skybotix.com for more info about the helicopter -- for completeness, please note that I am involved in the company.

These videos are mpeg2, and plays with all my video player on ubuntu. On other platforms, use VLC. Otherwise, use the ASL youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/aslteam.

Autonomous Lake Sampler

I'm currently leading the robotic side of the Limnobotics project: www.limnobotics.ch. Our goal is the development and deployment of an autonomous boat, aimed at studying the biology of the lake of Zurich. The boat has been operating since early 2010 on the lake of Zürich. Click on the image below for more details.

The Autonomous Sailing Boat (Sept. 2008 - Sept. 2009)

• SSA - Studenten Segeln Autonom
• Swiss TV show about the autonomous boat (Einstein/SF2, in german)

The Lunar Rover Challenge (Jun. 2008 - Oct. 2008)

Overview

• Computer Scientist (Ingénieur: Computer Science and Applied Maths, Grenoble, France)
• PhD in Robotics, Imaging and Computer Vision (Localisation, SLAM, Control, Bayesian Inference, Obstacle Avoidance, ...)
• Special interest in mobile robotics, field robotics, system engineering, sensing, ...
• French

Information Processing in Robotics

Videos

All these videos have been encoded with various tools (most of the time divx). Useful tools such as mplayer or VLC should be able to play them. When using other painfully useless players, your mileage may vary...

Video related to my ETH position

• Testing of Exomars Breadboard: phase B1. A summary video is available here (33MB)

Video related to my PostDoc at CSIRO, Australia

• Self Similar Landmarks(2007): raw detection using GPU and Docking task using Starbug UAV

• Hot Metal Carrier (2007): video presented at ICRA'07 related to article listed above
• Reversing Trailer (2007): video presented at ICRA'07 related to article listed above

• Parking Assistance (2005): implementation on ANU Smart Car . Based on parking lot location, a path is planned to steer the vehicle into the lot. Velocity control and gear shifting is the responsibility of the driver.

Videos related to my PhD thesis at INRIA Rhone-Alpes

• Path planning and trajectory tracking on the Cycab (2004): Trajectory planning and control made using differential flatness. See MIROC article above.
• Sensory-Motor trajectory replay using Bayesian inference (2004): See book chapter above.
  

Key Skills and Experiences

• Engineering degree in Computer science and applied mathematics, 2001: ENSIMAG, Engineering school, part of the French university INPG
• Masters and PhD in Computer Science specialized in Imaging, Computer vision and Robotics, from INPG as well.
  
• PhD at INRIA Grenoble (France, 2001-2004): "Intentional navigation for a mobile robot": work on autonomy functions of the CyCab autonomous car: Low Level Interface, Localisation, Environment Mapping, Obstacle Avoidance, Bayesian Fusion,... get the thesis here (in French).
• CSIRO ICT Centre, Autonomous System Lab (Australia, 2004-2007): Work on various project with this Australian team, including a Heavy Industrial Robot, a Tractor Trailer System and a Submarine with topic such as Computer Vision, Control, System Architecture, Mission Management, Shared Control, ...

Professional Interests

• Mobile robotics, with real robots in real environment, in real time!
• Perception processing and understanding
• Bio-inspired robotics (even if it is not my current thread of research)

Publications

Links below refers to draft version of the papers. Please refer to the editor pages for final versions.

• The CyCab: Bayesian navigation on sensory--motor trajectories, C. Pradalier and P. Bessiere.
  
  Chapter 3 of " Probabilistic Reasoning and Decision Making in Sensory-Motor Systems ", Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics , Vol. 46,
  Bessière, Pierre; Laugier, Christian; Siegwart, Roland (Eds.)
• Vision-based Operations of a Large Industrial Vehicle - Autonomous Hot Metal Carrier, C. Pradalier, A. Tews, J. Roberts, Journal of Field Robotics, 2008
• Robust trajectory tracking for a reversing tractor-trailer, C. Pradalier and K. Usher, Journal of Field Robotics, 2008
• Bayesian Occupancy Filtering for Multi-target Tracking: an Automotive Application, C. Coué, C. Pradalier, C. Laugier, T. Fraichard and P. Bessière, Int. Journal of Robotics Research, 2006
• Autonomous Navigation of a Bi-steerable Car : Experimental Issues, J.Hermosillo, C.Pradalier and S.Sekhavat and C.Laugier, Machine Intelligence and Robotic Control Journal, 2004
• Simultaneous Localization and Mapping using the Geometric Projection Filter and Correspondence Graph Matching, C. Pradalier and S. Sekhavat, Journal of Advanced Robotics, 2004
• Navigation intentionnelle d’un robot mobile (PhD Thesis, in French)

Plus some conference papers in major robotics conferences: especially ICRA, IROS and FSR. My complete publication list is available in PDF format: Publication_List.pdf

Other Links

• My web page as a CSIRO employee, here. I don't know how long the link will exist...
• My personal web page, with draft version of pre-CSIRO, pre-ETHZ publications and tools for running Linux on a iBook G3... just here .

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