René Wagner

is a research assistant with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics and a Ph.D. student in Prof. Udo Frese's Real-Time Computer Vision Group.

René Wagner studied computer science in Bremen and, through the EU Erasmus Programme, in Cardiff. He received his degree in computer science (Diplom-Informatiker) from University of Bremen in January 2010. His thesis (Diplomarbeit) focused on repeating the Grand Challenge experiment on a smaller scale with a robotic vehicle based on an R/C car autonomously traversing an accordingly down-scaled “race track” consisting of a network of sidewalks or paths in a public park.

René Wagner has also actively contributed to a variety of open source projects in the embedded and handheld computing space including but not limited to LCDproc, GPE, Familiar, and OpenEmbedded. More information on the latter activities can be found here on René's personal home page.

Research Interests

• Probabilistic Robotics
• 3D Mapping
• Driverless Cars
• Formal Specification of Software, and Automated Proving/Reasoning
• Mobile Computing and User Interfaces

Current Projects

• Planning with self-acquired 3D environment maps on DLR's humanoid robot Agile Justin

• MTK - The Manifold ToolKit

  MTK provides easy mechanisms to enable arbitrary sensor fusion algorithms to operate on manifolds. The main application is the use of 3D rotations SO(3), as well as the construction of compound manifolds from arbitrary combinations of sub-manifolds. MTK includes a refactored version of Christoph Hertzberg's SLoM (Sparse Least-Squares on Manifolds) framework and René's UKFoM, an Unscented Kalman filter modified to operate on manifold states and measurements.

• ROS.org

  Maintainership of the DFKI SKS ROS package repository which currently contains René's Leuze rotoScan ROD-4 ROS driver.

Publications

to appear 

René Wagner, Udo Frese, Berthold Bäuml. 3D Modeling, Distance and Gradient Computation for Motion Planning: A Direct GPGPU Approach. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2013), Karlsruhe, Germany.

2013 

Christoph Hertzberg, René Wagner, Udo Frese, Lutz Schröder (2013). Integrating Generic Sensor Fusion Algorithms with Sound State Representation through Encapsulation of Manifolds. In Information Fusion, 14 (1), pp. 57–77. Available online 14 September 2011.

2012 

Christoph Hertzberg, René Wagner, Udo Frese (2012). Tutorial on Quick and Easy Model Fitting Using the SLoM Framework. In Stachniss, Cyrill, Schill, Kerstin, Uttal, David (Eds.), Spatial Cognition VIII, Vol. 7463, pp. 128–142, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

2011 

	Christoph Hertzberg, René Wagner, Oliver Birbach, Tobias Hammer, Udo Frese (2011). Experiences in Building a Visual SLAM System from Open Source Components. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Shanghai, China.
	René Wagner, Oliver Birbach, Udo Frese (2011). Rapid Development of Manifold-Based Graph Optimization Systems for Multi-Sensor Calibration and SLAM. In Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2011), San Francisco, California.

2010 

U. Frese, R. Wagner, T. Röfer (2010). A SLAM Overview from a User's Perspective. In KI-Zeitschrift, 24 (3).

2009 

	R. Wagner (2009). Autonomous Outdoor Navigation with a Robotic R/C Car. Diplomarbeit. Universität Bremen.
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Previous Projects and Affiliations

• A7-FreePerspective (Jan-June 2012)

  Research Assistant. SFB/TR 8 Spatial Cognition.

  SLAM in Urban Search and Rescue for 3D mapping of collapsed buildings.

• IGEL (2010-2011)

  Junior Researcher. DFKI Cyber-Physical Systems (previously Safe and Secure Cognitive Systems) research department.

  Design, implementation, and verification of software components of a novel laser range finder that scans the surface of a cone and is intended for use as an opto-electronic protective device in industrial settings primarily involving automated guided vehicles.

• Autonomous Outdoor Navigation with a Robotic R/C Car (2009)

  • Computer science final year project/thesis (Diplomarbeit). [More].

• SAMS (2008-2009)

  Student Assistant. DFKI Safe and Secure Cognitive Systems research department.

  Development of hardware and software components for the control of the SAMSMobil robot which is used at trade shows and exhibitions to showcase the SAMS safety component.

• Carlton (2007)

  Student Assistant. AG Robotik. Universität Bremen.

  Software development within the Carlton quadrocopter project involving least-squares optimization and (Extended) Kalman filtering.

• RescueRobotics Student Project (2005-2007)

  • The RescueRobotics project explored the use of walking robots and micro-UAVs in rescue scenarios and participated in RoboCup Rescue 2006. Within this project René focused on the control and Unscented Kalman filter (UKF) based state estimation of the Aerobot UAV.

• SPASS Integration in Hets (2005)

  Student Assistant. Research group of Prof. Dr. Bernd Krieg-Brückner.

  Development of a prover interface to the automated theorem prover SPASS for the Heterogeneous Tool Set (Hets) enabling automated proving of formal specifications written in e.g. CASL.

A detailed CV is available on request.

Contact

• rene.wagner at dlr dot de
• Office address (at University of Bremen)
+49 421 218 64224
Cartesium 0.49
Enrique-Schmidt Str. 5
28359 Bremen
• Principal address (at DLR)
DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics
Muenchner Str. 20
82234 Wessling