II-New: Acquisition of a Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) Scanner System

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This award provides funding for a new Computing Research Infrastructure (CRI) project focused on acquisition of a LiDAR scanner, a GPS unit, and an omnidirectional video camera to collect indoor and outdoor 3D positional data and imagery at George Mason University (GMU). Several research and educational opportunities will be enabled by the requested infrastructure. The intellectual merit of this project revolves around enabling research on several CISE research fields at GMU, including three-dimensional (3D) mapping for robotic navigation and manipulation, semantic parsing, motion planning and visibility-based tracking under significant environmental uncertainties. The equipment also provides data sources for studying and evaluating important geometric algorithms under significant sensor uncertainties including data compression, scene segmentation, and object recognition. The broader impacts of this project, beyond enabling research in robotic navigation and manipulation, include support for research in other disciplines, and education. The new infrastructure will also enable multidisciplinary research teams at GMU to conduct research on important problems in homeland security, home and factory automation, disaster recovery, and environmental and infrastructure monitoring; and lead to enhanced research collaboration with other institutions. Research results, collected and processed geometric data, and software developed using this instrumentation will be made available to the wider research community. With strong institution support from GMU, the acquisition has sustainable management and maintenance plans to support STEM programs for underserved communities at GMU, activities in undergraduate and graduate courses and independent studies in robotics, computer vision, geometric computing, computer game design and GIS, and will help spawn student learning and interest in these cutting-edge technology areas.