Pierre-Yves Lajoie

aryan.kargwal@mila.quebec

gharibsidney@gmail.com

PhD - Polytechnique Montréal

Principal supervisor :

Lina Marsso

Master's Research - Polytechnique Montréal

julien.lagace@mila.quebec

Github

Étienne LeBailly

Research Intern - Polytechnique Montréal

etienne.lebailly@mila.quebec

Github

Yichen Wu

Master's Research - Polytechnique Montréal

yichen.wu@mila.quebec

Publications

3D Foundation Model-Based Loop Closing for Decentralized Collaborative SLAM

Benjamin Ramtoula

Daniele De Martini

Decentralized Collaborative Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (C-SLAM) techniques often struggle to identify map overlaps due to signifi… (see more)cant viewpoint variations among robots. Motivated by recent advancements in 3D foundation models, which can register images despite large viewpoint differences, we propose a robust loop closing approach that leverages these models to establish inter-robot measurements. In contrast to resource-intensive methods requiring full 3D reconstruction within a centralized map, our approach integrates foundation models into existing SLAM pipelines, yielding scalable and robust multi-robot mapping. Our contributions include: 1) integrating 3D foundation models to reliably estimate relative poses from monocular image pairs within decentralized C-SLAM; 2) introducing robust outlier mitigation techniques critical to the use of these relative poses and 3) developing specialized pose graph optimization formulations that efficiently resolve scale ambiguities. We evaluate our method against state-of-the-art approaches, demonstrating improvements in localization and mapping accuracy, alongside significant gains in computational and memory efficiency. These results highlight the potential of our approach for deployment in large-scale multi-robot scenarios.

2025-10-31

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (published)

Multi-Robot Decentralized Collaborative SLAM in Planetary Analogue Environments: Dataset, Challenges, and Lessons Learned

Karthik Soma

Haechan Mark Bong

Alice Lemieux-Bourque

Rongge Zhang

Vivek Shankar Varadharajan

Decentralized collaborative simultaneous localization and mapping (C-SLAM) is essential to enable multirobot missions in unknown environment… (see more)s without relying on preexisting localization and communication infrastructure. This technology is anticipated to play a key role in the exploration of the Moon, Mars, and other planets. In this article, we share insights and lessons learned from C-SLAM experiments involving three robots operating on a Mars analogue terrain and communicating over an ad hoc network. We examine the impact of limited and intermittent communication on C-SLAM performance, as well as the unique localization challenges posed by planetary-like environments. Additionally, we introduce a novel dataset collected during our experiments, which includes real-time peer-to-peer inter-robot throughput and latency measurements. This dataset aims to support future research on communication-constrained, decentralized multirobot operations.

2024-12-31

IEEE Transactions on Field Robotics (published)

Frequency-based View Selection in Gaussian Splatting Reconstruction

Monica Li

Three-dimensional reconstruction is a fundamental problem in robotics perception. We examine the problem of active view selection to perform… (see more) 3D Gaussian Splatting reconstructions with as few input images as possible. Although 3D Gaussian Splatting has made significant progress in image rendering and 3D reconstruction, the quality of the reconstruction is strongly impacted by the selection of 2D images and the estimation of camera poses through Structure-from-Motion (SfM) algorithms. Current methods to select views that rely on uncertainties from occlusions, depth ambiguities, or neural network predictions directly are insufficient to handle the issue and struggle to generalize to new scenes. By ranking the potential views in the frequency domain, we are able to effectively estimate the potential information gain of new viewpoints without ground truth data. By overcoming current constraints on model architecture and efficacy, our method achieves state-of-the-art results in view selection, demonstrating its potential for efficient image-based 3D reconstruction.

2024-09-23

ArXiv (preprint)

PEOPLEx: PEdestrian Opportunistic Positioning LEveraging IMU, UWB, BLE and WiFi

Bobak H. Baghi

Sachini Herath

Francois Hogan

Xue Liu

Gregory Dudek

This paper advances the field of pedestrian localization by introducing a unifying framework for opportunistic positioning based on nonlinea… (see more)r factor graph optimization. While many existing approaches assume constant availability of one or multiple sensing signals, our methodology employs IMU-based pedestrian inertial navigation as the backbone for sensor fusion, opportunistically integrating Ultra-Wideband (UWB), Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and WiFi signals when they are available in the environment. The proposed PEOPLEx framework is designed to incorporate sensing data as it becomes available, operating without any prior knowledge about the environment (e.g. anchor locations, radio frequency maps, etc.). Our contributions are twofold: 1) we introduce an opportunistic multi-sensor and real-time pedestrian positioning framework fusing the available sensor measurements; 2) we develop novel factors for adaptive scaling and coarse loop closures, significantly improving the precision of indoor positioning. Experimental validation confirms that our approach achieves accurate localization estimates in real indoor scenarios using commercial smartphones.

2024-06-08

ICC 2024 - IEEE International Conference on Communications (published)

Hierarchies define the scalability of robot swarms

Vivek Shankar Vardharajan

Karthik Soma

Sepand Dyanatkar

The emerging behaviors of swarms have fascinated scientists and gathered significant interest in the field of robotics. Traditionally, swarm… (see more)s are viewed as egalitarian, with robots sharing identical roles and capabilities. However, recent findings highlight the importance of hierarchy for deploying robot swarms more effectively in diverse scenarios. Despite nature's preference for hierarchies, the robotics field has clung to the egalitarian model, partly due to a lack of empirical evidence for the conditions favoring hierarchies. Our research demonstrates that while egalitarian swarms excel in environments proportionate to their collective sensing abilities, they struggle in larger or more complex settings. Hierarchical swarms, conversely, extend their sensing reach efficiently, proving successful in larger, more unstructured environments with fewer resources. We validated these concepts through simulations and physical robot experiments, using a complex radiation cleanup task. This study paves the way for developing adaptable, hierarchical swarm systems applicable in areas like planetary exploration and autonomous vehicles. Moreover, these insights could deepen our understanding of hierarchical structures in biological organisms.

2024-05-02

ArXiv (preprint)

Device-Free Human State Estimation using UWB Multi-Static Radios

Saria Al Lahham

Bobak H. Baghi

Amal Feriani

Sachini Herath

Steve Liu

Gregory Dudek

We present a human state estimation framework that allows us to estimate the location, and even the activities, of people in an indoor envir… (see more)onment without the requirement that they carry a specific devices with them. To achieve this"device free"localization we use a small number of low-cost Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) sensors distributed across the environment of interest. To achieve high quality estimation from the UWB signals merely reflected of people in the environment, we exploit a deep network that can learn to make inferences. The hardware setup consists of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) single antenna UWB modules for sensing, paired with Raspberry PI units for computational processing and data transfer. We make use of the channel impulse response (CIR) measurements from the UWB sensors to estimate the human state - comprised of location and activity - in a given area. Additionally, we can also estimate the number of humans that occupy this region of interest. In our approach, first, we pre-process the CIR data which involves meticulous aggregation of measurements and extraction of key statistics. Afterwards, we leverage a convolutional deep neural network to map the CIRs into precise location estimates with sub-30 cm accuracy. Similarly, we achieve accurate human activity recognition and occupancy counting results. We show that we can quickly fine-tune our model for new out-of-distribution users, a process that requires only a few minutes of data and a few epochs of training. Our results show that UWB is a promising solution for adaptable smart-home localization and activity recognition problems.

2023-12-25

ArXiv (preprint)