C. BARRETT AMES

Scientist, Entrepreneur, Adrenaline Junkie

Welcome! Take a look around, feel free to contact me if you have any questions. 

Valkyrie, a humanoid robot developed to help out in crisis situations. 

I contracted to NASA for 18 months under both Oceaneering and Rob Platt Ph.D at Northeastern.  During which I designed and implemented Valkyrie's perception system. I primarily focused on the robot's sense of pose, which was accomplished by sensor fusion of Inertial Measurement Units via Extended Kalman Filter. I also worked extensively on  sensor selection, as well as data interpretation.  Specifically, we developed a novel algorithm for the detection of grasp affordances, as well as point cloud compression algorithm based on SPIHT. Lastly, I developed tasks for the robot in simulation, largely in Gazebo, although a small amount of time was spent in V-REP. If you'd like to learn more about the robot feel free to read this article by IEEE Spectrum.