Replicating human visual perception in robots
Humans excel at navigating in nearly any environment using the vision and vestibular systems to quickly create a mental map of the surrounding area. Robots, however, struggle to navigate new spaces without information from an external source, such as a human operator or GPS, which often fail indoors and have low precision.
During their time at Wyss Zurich, the Zurich Eye team developed a modular, add-on device for robots, also named Zurich Eye, that imitates the human eyes and inner ear. With durable cameras and an inertial measurement unit, Zurich Eye creates a digital map that enables machines to navigate autonomously in any space with high precision and low latency. The Zurich Eye technology could be used to perform automated tasks in places that are unsafe or impossible for humans, such as manufacturing, 3D plans for civil engineering, or driver assistance and autonomous vehicles.
The Zurich Eye project team was acquired by Facebook/Meta in November 2016, when Facebook Oculus opened an office in Zurich dedicated to virtual reality and computer vision.
Faculty Mentor
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