Aisha Walcott CSAIL

I am truly passionate in seeing physical environments becoming seamlessly enhanced with robotics and autonomous systems. I am currently working on an architecture for an autonomous mobile robot operating in dynamic environments for long periods. The robot is required to operate in large-scale, unknown environments, detect and collect specific data that changes over time, cope with physical changes, and manage large amounts of data. As a result, the robot must construct and maintain a current model of its environment. The model must capture both the physical layout and the specific data in the environment that the robot is tracking. My research focuses on two key challenges. The first is to develop autonomous exploration and mapping algorithms for sustained operation in dynamic environments. The second is to develop a strategy that enables a persistent robot to maintain an up-to-date model of its environment, while coping with physical changes.

A. Walcott and John Leonard. “Long-Term Autonomous Navigation And Mapping In Dynamic Environments,” MIT
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Abstract. 2007. [paper]

-A. Walcott and B. Williams, "Efficient Extraction of Optimal, Temporally Flexible Plans," in Proceedings of the 4th International Symp. on Robotics and Automation (ISRA 2006), Hidalgo, México, August 2006. [paper]

-Aisha Walcott, “Unifying Model-based Programming and Randomized Path Planning Through Optimal Search.” MIT SM Thesis, Cambridge, MA, June 2004. [paper]

-Brian C. Williams, Phil Kim, Michael Hofbaur, Jon How, Jon Kennell, Jason Loy, Robert Ragno, John Stedl and Aisha Walcott, “Model-based Reactive Programming of Cooperative Vehicles for Mars Exploration.” Int. Symp. on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space, St-Hubert, Canada, June 2001. [paper]