Robohub.org
ep.

172

podcast
 

by
27 December 2014



share this:


two

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Professor John Leonard from MIT about his research on dense, object-based 3D Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM).

Leonard explains what SLAM is, as well as its practical applications. The explanations include what it means for SLAM to be object-based (versus feature-based) and to have dense (versus sparse) environmental mapping. The interview closes with advice for aspiring roboticists.

John Leonard
jleonard_05_nov2014John J. Leonard is Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering and Associate Department Head for Research in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering. He is also a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). His research addresses the problems of navigation and mapping for autonomous mobile robots. He holds the degrees of B.S.E.E. in Electrical Engineering and Science from the University of Pennsylvania (1987) and D.Phil. in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford (1994). He studied at Oxford under a Thouron Fellowship and Research Assistantship funded by the ESPRIT program of the European Community. Prof. Leonard joined the MIT faculty in 1996, after five years as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and Research Scientist in the MIT Sea Grant Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Laboratory. He has served an associate editor of the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering and of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation. He was team leader for MIT’s DARPA Urban Challenge team, which was one of eleven teams to qualify for the Urban Challenge final event and one of six teams to complete the race. He is the recipient of an NSF Career Award (1998), an E.T.S. Walton Visitor Award from Science Foundation Ireland (2004), the King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Transactions on Robotics Paper Award (2006), and he is an IEEE Fellow (2014).

Links:



tags:


Audrow Nash is a Software Engineer at Open Robotics and the host of the Sense Think Act Podcast
Audrow Nash is a Software Engineer at Open Robotics and the host of the Sense Think Act Podcast





Related posts :



The science of human touch – and why it’s so hard to replicate in robots

  24 Dec 2025
Trying to give robots a sense of touch forces us to confront just how astonishingly sophisticated human touch really is.

Bio-hybrid robots turn food waste into functional machines

  22 Dec 2025
EPFL scientists have integrated discarded crustacean shells into robotic devices, leveraging the strength and flexibility of natural materials for robotic applications.

Robot Talk Episode 138 – Robots in the environment, with Stefano Mintchev

  19 Dec 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Stefano Mintchev from ETH Zürich about robots to explore and monitor the natural environment.

Artificial tendons give muscle-powered robots a boost

  18 Dec 2025
The new design from MIT engineers could pump up many biohybrid builds.

Robot Talk Episode 137 – Getting two-legged robots moving, with Oluwami Dosunmu-Ogunbi

  12 Dec 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Oluwami Dosunmu-Ogunbi from Ohio Northern University about bipedal robots that can walk and even climb stairs.

Radboud chemists are working with companies and robots on the transition from oil-based to bio-based materials

  10 Dec 2025
The search for new materials can be accelerated by using robots and AI models.



 

Robohub is supported by:




Would you like to learn how to tell impactful stories about your robot or AI system?


scicomm
training the next generation of science communicators in robotics & AI


 












©2025.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence