TRACLabs moved on Monday to a new facility in the Clear Lake area of Houston Texas. Before we moved all of our furniture, we had our robot build a map of the new location. The map was built using a laser scanner and a technique called Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). The laser scanner cannot “see” glass, so any floor length windows simply looked out to objects in the area behind them. This can be seen in the left and right of the image below (the front and back of the building). TRACLabs researchers have pioneered new SLAM techniques that make mapping and navigation easier and more robust. Current government contracts are extending SLAM into new domains such as night-time operations.
A robot-generated map of the new TRACLabs offices
