Frank Dellaert is a professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the

Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part of ...

. He is also affiliated with the IRIM@GT center and is well known for contributions to

Robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

and

Computer Vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...

Early Education

Since his first interest in robotics when he was ten, Dellaert has attended the

Catholic University of Leuven University of Leuven or University of Louvain (french: Université de Louvain, link=no; nl, Universiteit Leuven, link=no) may refer to: * Old University of Leuven (1425–1797) * State University of Leuven (1817–1835) * Catholic University of ...

, in Belgium, from 1984 to 1989 and received an academic engineering degree (Burg. Ir.) in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

. He attended the

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Reser ...

from 1993 to 1995 and received a

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

in computer science and engineering. In 1995 he began studying at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

, where he worked as a research assistant and received his Ph.D. in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

in 2001. In August of that same year, he joined the faculty of

Research

Frank Dellaert holds interests in the areas of robotics and computer vision, including

Bayesian inference Bayesian inference is a method of statistical inference in which Bayes' theorem is used to update the probability for a hypothesis as more evidence or information becomes available. Bayesian inference is an important technique in statistics, a ...

and Monte Carlo approximations and how to attain efficiency with approximation methods. In 1999, together with his colleagues

Dieter Fox Dieter Fox is a German-American roboticist and a Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. He received his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Bonn in 1998. He is most notable ...

Sebastian Thrun Sebastian Thrun (born May 14, 1967) is a German-American entrepreneur, educator, and computer scientist. He is CEO of Kitty Hawk Corporation, and chairman and co-founder of Udacity. Before that, he was a Google VP and Fellow, a Professor of Comp ...

, and

Wolfram Burgard Wolfram Burgard (born 1961 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany) is a German roboticist. He is a full professor at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg where he heads the Laboratory for Autonomous Intelligent Systems. He is known for his substantial ...

, Frank Dellaert helped develop the Monte Carlo localization algorithm, a probabilistic approach to mobile robot localization that is based on the

particle filter Particle filters, or sequential Monte Carlo methods, are a set of Monte Carlo algorithms used to solve filtering problems arising in signal processing and Bayesian statistical inference. The filtering problem consists of estimating the i ...

. His methodologies for estimating and tracking robotic movements have become a standard and popular tool in mobile robotics. Since joining Georgia Tech, he has explored probabilistic model-based reasoning, paired with randomized approximation methods in advanced sequential Monde Carlo methods, Spatio-Temporal Reconstruction from images, and Simultaneous Location and Mapping. While at Tech, he has applied

functional programming In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm where programs are constructed by Function application, applying and Function composition (computer science), composing Function (computer science), functions. It is a declar ...

to robotics research and education, aiming to educate students about how functional languages embody many of the advancements in computer science and how well-suited it can be in that field. Dellaert's research is also being used in such projects as SWAN, augmented reality research, and 4D Cities. SWAN (System for Wearable Audio Navigation) is a wearable computer system that takes in details about the web and relays certain signals to the user, aimed at assisting the blind or others during low-visibility situations. Dellaert is researching ways to make its awareness system more exact and efficient. The 4D Cities project, developed by Dellaert and Grant Schindler with help from Sing Bing Kang of

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

, provides a way to look at a

3D model In 3D computer graphics, 3D modeling is the process of developing a mathematical coordinate-based representation of any surface of an object (inanimate or living) in three dimensions via specialized software by manipulating edges, vertices, an ...

of a city over time. After looking at different images of a city from different points in time, the program is able to build a 3D model of the city for those times.

Awards

Dellaert won a School of Computer Science Student Award during his stay at

. In 2005 Dellaert received a $90K

NSF NSF may stand for: Political organizations *National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party *NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party *National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political gr ...

CAREER award for "Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods for Large Scale Correspondence Problems in Computer Vision and Robotics." In 2006, Dellaert was one of 8 Virtual Earth RFP (research for proposal) winners who each received a grant of up to $50,000. As a recipient of the

grant Grant or Grants may refer to: Places *Grant County (disambiguation) Australia * Grant, Queensland, a locality in the Barcaldine Region, Queensland, Australia United Kingdom *Castle Grant United States * Grant, Alabama *Grant, Inyo County, C ...

, Dellaert will research basic digital geographics that are expected to advance the state of the art, such as the 4-D Cities project.

References

External links

Frank Dellaert's home page

SWAN project

Frank Dellaert on Flickr
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dellaert, Frank 1966 births Living people Belgian roboticists Artificial intelligence researchers Georgia Tech faculty Carnegie Mellon University alumni