February 1st, 2025

Thanks to his innovative technology, from September 2024 to January 2025, the IPCV-LAB's coordinator, Dr. Geovanni Martínez, was invited to conduct a research stay at the Mobility and Robotic Systems Section 347 at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA/JPL), located in Pasadena, California (USA). At JPL, he had the opportunity to test and improve the NIR ToF odometry algorithm, subjecting it to some of the operating requirements of new lunar and Martian exploration robots.

In the future, it will be further improved so that it can work with even faster robots, such as drones, and will also be expanded so that it can simultaneously build a 3D map of the place the robot has been exploring, with the aim of transforming it into a monocular NIR ToF algorithm for simultaneous localization and mapping, which he has called SLAM NIR ToF monocular.

In the photo, Dr. Martinez is testing the NIR ToF odometry algorithm on one of the spots -dog-inspired bot created by Boston Dynamics- at the Mobility and Robotic Systems Section 347 at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA/JPL).