ARC@ORU Robotics for Agroecology: Resilience and Interaction in Changing, Deformable Environments

Venue: ARC, Örebro University

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About the seminar

Agroecological practices require robots to operate in environments that are heterogeneous, dynamic, and strongly coupled with living and physical processes. This presentation discusses the challenges of deploying robots beyond structured environments, with a focus on resilience and interaction. First, we consider state estimation under sensor corruption and investigate how to characterize the worst-case impact of undetected faults on robot state estimates. Second, we address navigation and physical interaction in environments that cannot be reduced to binary notions of traversability. We present approaches for characterizing interactions with deformable vegetation through force sensing and mechanical modeling, as well as methods for estimating and predicting robot-induced soil deformation from onboard perception. 

Speaker

Johann Laconte is Professor in the robotics department of the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE). He completed his Ph.D. at Institut Pascal (France) and Laval University (Canada) in 2021 during which he participated in several robotic deployments in unstructured environments, including subarctic forests. This work was awarded the second prize for the best french Ph.D. thesis in robotics. After a six-month postdoc at the Northern Robotics Laboratory (Norlab), he continued his research at the University of Toronto in Mobile Robotics (ASRL). His research interests focus on mobile robotics and the interactions between the robot and deformable, ever-changing environments.