3-D scanners are devices that can create a 3-D model of an object or scene. This has applications in fields from healthcare to video games, tele-presence and more. 3-D scanners are often used in robotics applications to allow localization and scene understanding. Many low-cost 3-D scanners, such as the Kinect, have only a single resolution mode available and aren’t tunable to application needs. A 3-D scanner is being developed in CSAIL with the ability to change resolution and other parameters such as energy use automatically and on-the-fly. This project aims to improve the speed and stability of the scanner, as well as integrate and evaluate its performance in an existing robotic system compared to existing 3-D sensing solutions.

While at MIT I’ve had a lot of great experiences with robotics along the whole hardware to software spectrum. This project will allow me to dig into a few aspects I’m especially interested in exploring further: ROS, low-level code where speed is key, and computer vision. 3-D scanners have huge potential in a variety of fields and I’m excited to be a part of that.