Learning ROS for Robotics Programming -

Enrique Fernandez has a PhD in computer engineering from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and is a senior robotics engineer currently working at Clearpath Robotics, Inc. He did his MSc master's thesis in 2009 on SLAM. Enrique addresses the problem of path planning for autonomous underwater gliders (AUGs) in his PhD thesis, which was presented in 2013. During that period, he also worked on Computer Vision, AI, and other robotics topics, such as inertial navigation systems and Visual SLAM at the CIRS/ViCOROB Research Lab of the University of Girona for AUVs. He also participated in the Student Autonomous Underwater Challenge, Europe (SAUC-E) in 2012 and collaborated in the 2013 edition; in the 2012 edition, he was awarded a prize. After his PhD, Enrique joined PAL Robotics in June 2013 as a senior robotics engineer in the Autonomous Navigation department. There, he developed software for REEM, REEM-C, and mobile-based robots and also for corresponding projects, such as Stockbot, using the ROS framework intensively. He worked on motion planning (path planning and control for mobile robots), robot localization, and SLAM. Recently, in 2015, he joined Clearpath Robotics, Inc. to work as a senior autonomy developer on SLAM, within the Autonomy department. From an academic perspective, Enrique has published several conference papers and publications, two of them on the International Conference of Robotics and Automation (ICRA), in 2011. He is also an author of chapters of a few books and a previous book about ROS, Learning ROS for Robotics Programming by Packt Publishing. His MSc master's thesis was about the FastSLAM algorithm for indoor robots using a SICK laser scanner and the wheel odometry of a Pioneer differential platform. His PhD thesis contributed path planning algorithms and tools for AUGs. He also has experience with electronics and embedded systems such as PC104 and Arduino. His background covers SLAM, Computer Vision, path planning, optimization, and robotics and artificial intelligence in general. Luis Sanchez Crespo completed his dual master's degree in electronics and telecommunication engineering from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. He has collaborated with different research groups at the Institute for Technological Development and Innovation (IDETIC), the Oceanic Platform of Canary Islands (PLOCAN), and the Institute of Applied Microelectronics (IUMA), where he actually researches the imaging of super-resolution algorithms. His professional interests lie in computer vision, signal processing, and electronic design applied to robotics systems. For this reason, he joined the AVORA team, a group of young engineers and students working on the development of underwater autonomous vehicles (AUVs) from scratch. In this project, Luis has started developing acoustic and computer vision systems, extracting information from different sensors, such as hydrophones, sonar, and cameras. With a strong background gained in marine technology, Luis cofounded Subsea Mechatronics, a young start-up, where he works on developing remotely operated and autonomous vehicles for underwater environments. Here's what Dario Sosa Cabrera, a marine technologies engineer and entrepreneur (and the cofounder and maker of LPA Fabrika: Gran Canaria Maker Space) has to say about Luis: "He is very enthusiastic and an engineer in multiple disciplines. He is responsible for his work. He can manage himself and can take up responsibilities as a team leader, as was demonstrated at the SAUC-E competition, where he directed the AVORA team. His background in electronics and telecommunications allows him to cover a wide range of expertise from signal processing and software, to electronic design and fabrication." Luis has participated as a technical reviewer for the previous version of Learning ROS for Robotics Programming by Packt Publishing. Anil Mahtani is a computer scientist who has been working for the past 5 years on underwater ...