Chris McCarthy's Web Page

Phone: +61 2 6267 6287     Email: cdmcc-at-rsise.anu.edu.au

Vision for the Bionic Eye Project (ViBE) Embedded Systems Theme National ICT Australia (NICTA) Canberra Research Laboratory

Department of Information Engineering, College of Engineering and Computer Science Australian National University

I am a researcher with NICTA, and the Department of Information Engineering at the Australian National University in Canberra.

My research interests are in vision for navigation (for both robotics and human assistance), and more broadly in the development and application of computational models of biological vision.

I am a member of the Visual Processing for the Bionic Eye Project, lead by Dr. Nick Barnes. I am working on computer vision algorithms for potential use on a visual prosthesis, and for use in other technologies to assist the visually impaired. I also retain interest in the development of bio-inspired techniques for vision-guided robot navigation and threat avoidance.

Click here for a copy of my CV.

Journal Papers

1. "A robust docking strategy for a mobile robot using flow field divergence", by C. McCarthy, N. Barnes and R. Mahony. IEEE Transaction on Robotics, Volume 24(4), 2008;   PDF.

Conference Papers

1. "Real time biologically-inspired depth maps from spherical flow", by C. McCarthy, N. Barnes and M.V. Srinivasan. Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2007), Rome, Italy, 2007.   PDF.
2. "Insect Inspired Robots", by J. Lim, C. McCarthy, D. Shaw, N. Barnes and L. Cole. Proceedings of the 2006 Australiasian Conference on Robotics and Automation (ACRA2006), Auckland, New Zealand, 2006.   PDF.
3.  "A robust docking strategy for a mobile robot using flow field divergence", by C. McCarthy and N. Barnes. Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2006), Beijing, China, 2006.   PDF.

4. "Comparison of temporal filters for optical flow estimation in continuous mobile robot navigation", by C. McCarthy and N. Barnes. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics: Experimental Robotics IX: The 9th International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (Singapore 2004), Volume 21, pp 481-90, 2006.   PDF.
   (paper received "International Foundation of Robotics Research Student Fellowship Award" .

5. "Performance of optical flow techniques for indoor navigation with a mobile robot", by C. McCarthy and N. Barnes. Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA2004), pp 5093-5098, New Orleans, USA, 2004.   PDF.

6. "Performance of temporal filters for optical flow estimation in mobile robot corridor centring and visual odometry", by C. McCarthy and N. Barnes. Proceedings of the 2003 Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation. Brisbane, Australia, 2003.   PDF.

Workshop Papers

1. "Towards a Hazard Perception Assistance System using Visual Motion", by C. McCarthy, N. Barnes, K. Anstey and M. Horswill. ECCV Workshop on Computer Vision Applications for the Visually Impaired (CVAVI 08). Marseille, France, Oct. 18, 2008.   PDF.

Sample Video Demonstrations

• The "belco kitchen" sequence (MPG). Video demonstrates the estimation of egomotion direction using the Nelson and Aloimonos (1988 Bio Cybernetics) de-rotation algorithm. Blue and yellow flow vectors signify direction of flow on the circle (CW or CCW).
  [McCarthy et al, ICRA 2007].
• Docking using time-to-contact estimation from flow field divergence(WMV). Video shows three temporal filters used with Lucas and Kanade's gradient-based flow algorithm.
  [ McCarthy and Barnes, ISER 2004, IROS 2006].

• Centring and Docking comparisons(MPG). Temporal filter comparisons in corridor centring and flow divergence based docking trials.
  [McCarthy and Barnes, ICRA 2004].

Past Projects

• Performance of Optical Flow Techniques for Mobile Robot Navigation: My Masters thesis compared optical flow techniques for mobile robot navigation. While comparisons have been done previously, these have not adequately addressed the specific issues associated with embedding such techniques in the control loop of a real-time system (like a robot). This needs to be addressed if this paradigm of robot navigation is to gain more attention from main stream mobile robot reseacrh. We seek to provide a systematic basis on which to choose an optical flow technique, which previously did not exist.

• Robocup: Click here to read about the RoboCup project. I have been involved with the Dog leauge (which uses the Sony Aibo robots shown below) since 2001 as a co-supervisor and general team adviser and have also assisted with software development. In 2002, our team came 4th in the world in Fukuoka, Japan.

• Web Based Telerobot: My honours project, completed in June 1999, was to develop a telerobotic control and monitoring system on the WWW. The robot had a radio link with a local PC that performed all local navigation. This system also communicated with a remotely run applet which displayed images from an overhead camera and a GUI for different modes of control (Direct or Supervisory).

Professional Society Memberships

• Robotics and Automation Society (IEEE_RAS).
• Australian Robotics and Automation Association.