Prof. Dr.-Ing. Geovanni Martinez

Coordinator

 
Address:

IPCV-LAB
Escuela de Ingeniería Eléctrica
Apartado Postal 11501-2060 UCR
San José, Costa Rica
Central America
---
Phone: ++506 2511 2631
Fax: ++506 2511 3920
Email: geovanni.martinez@ucr.ac.cr

 
Short biography:

Geovanni Martínez received his Doktor-Ingenieur (Dr.-Ing.) degree from the Institut für Theoretische Nachrichtentechnik und Informationsverarbeitung (TNT) at the University of Hannover, Germany, in 1998. His doctoral thesis focused on computer vision-based estimation of human shape, motion and color for very low bit rate video compression. His thesis supervisor was Prof. Dr.-Ing. H.-G. Musmann. From August 2000 to June 2002, he undertook postdoctoral research on computer vision-based human motion estimation for the teleoperation of a humanoid space robot called ROBONAUT at the University of Houston and the NASA Johnson Space Center. He joined the faculty of the University of Costa Rica in 1997 and is now a full professor there. He founded and coordinates the Image Processing and Computer Vision Research Laboratory (IPCV-LAB). He is currently working on a computer vision-based algorithm, known as monocular NIR ToF odometry, capable of determining the motion, position and orientation of an exploration robot from the processing of two multidimensional signals, a monocular near-infrared (NIR) video signal and a time-of-flight (ToF) depth signal, both provided by a NIR ToF camera rigidly attached on the side of a robot facing the terrain. From September 2024 to January 2025, he was a visiting researcher at the Mobility and Robotic Systems Section 347 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). There, he tested the NIR ToF odometry algorithm under some of the operating requirements of new lunar exploration robots. He is also extending the algorithm to work with even faster robots, such as drones, and to simultaneously map the location the robot has passed through, in order to transform it into a monocular NIR ToF simultaneous localization and mapping algorithm, often referred to as monocular NIR ToF SLAM. He also has research experience in computer vision-based monitoring of biological processes using in situ microscopy, as well as in computer vision-based inspection for the semiconductor and food industries. Early in his academic career, he worked on designing, implementing and testing flexible, low-cost, expandable digital private automatic branch exchange (PABX) systems. He has numerous publications in international peer-reviewed and indexed conferences and journals. In 2002, he was awarded the Clodomiro Picado Twight National Technology Award by the Costa Rican government in recognition of his outstanding contributions to technological research. In 2010, he received the Researcher Award from the University of Costa Rica in recognition of his contributions to the country's technological development. He is seeking new collaboration opportunities to advance his monocular near-infrared time-of-flight (NIR ToF) odometry and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) research by testing it on the latest generation of solar system exploration robots, particularly those intended for lunar and Martian exploration.

Video about the IPCV-LAB (in spanish)